Creation standards for long term results at APSense

In this intel, I will give my opinion of what looks like serious efforts to create content at APSense, in the 2 best known areas : articles and RevPages.

I like to give suggestions on how to improve content. I write my suggestions in comments, or I send a PM to the member if I feel the suggestion might be embarrassing. It's a fine line, and sometimes members are offended and block me. Or simply delete my comment, although I saw that for the first time today.

It's the price to pay, and I?m ready to pay it. In the long run, it?s better, I think.

I will now give some information about the types of content we see most often at APSense : articles and RevPages.

An article is a Qondio intel's twin brother. Here are some suggestions I give on how to improve an article.

1. One short paragraph is not enough, it will hurt your brand

2. No text, only a banner is even worse than point 1

3. Many times, we see question marks instead of single quotes. That happens when people copy their text from somewhere else, i.e. a Word document, a blog post, etc... Only after submitting the article does the ? appear. The solution is simple : be aware of the problem and edit the article right after you submit it. There's no way around that other than writing the article directly in the APSense article creation/modification page.

4. Use subheadlines, colors, different fonts, different sizes. Make your links into hyperlinks. I have created screencast videos to give more information about everything point 4. See the external links of this intel for more details

5. Don't put a truckload of links

6. Remember, you can put links into the body of an article, but not in comments, cause the APSense scripts will change it for  - link hidden-  whatever your intentions were, to eliminate spam.

Let's talk about RevPages.

A RevPage is short for Review Page. It's a kind of sales page. You can use the URL of a RevPage on Traffic Exchanges instead of traditional splash pages.

Altough a RevPage looks better than an article, it takes longer to create, cause it is divided into sections :

1. About

2. Features

3. Tags

4. Review

5. Resources ( videos, articles, other RevPages found on the Internet through a search tool)

6. A link to what you offer

1.      

6.       

My expectations might appear high to many APSense members. Here's what I expect, although it's my opinion, it's not in the APSense TOS.

1. No blatant advertisement, this is supposed to be a review

2. A few words in the "About" and "Features" sections and a short paragraph in the review section are lazy efforts, IMHO

3. Write about your personal experience with the product/site/program. It will give more credibility to your RevPage

4. Give some pros and cons, that is self-explanatory

Of course, I don't expect that a RevPage will be a rant about a product. Why take the time to write it, since you wouldn't want to put a link ? I must admit I've never seen a negative RevPage. Of course, I've been active at APSense since September 2010, so a lot of things happened in the 3 years before that.

A RevPage looks very professional when well done, but some people might find it limiting because, contrary to an article, there is no HTML, nor can you have bold, color, different fonts or sizes, etc...

A RevPage is plain text. The sections are presented in a way to make it attractive, for instance the features are bullet points written in bold.

If you've never been to APSense, it's free to join. APSense is awesome for building an online presence. There are so many features besides articles and RevPages.

Soon a guide will come out to give information about the main features of APSense. I wrote the guide, it's been approved by Wincer Song, the owner of APSense.

I also create screencast videos to teach features of APSense. I give more information about these videos in other intels here at Qondio.

One last thing : since last week, there's been a blog for APSense News. In the blog, you will find news, special announcements, updates, and more.

Anyone can access the blog and the screencast videos