Government statistics are finally available online from one easy search site. Sir Tim Berner-Lee, a founder of the www, is one of the people responsible for overseeing the government project: www.data.gov.uk.

The site has been available in its beta format since September 09 and has had 2,400 developers working on it. This resource is available for personal or commercial use. It will be invaluable as a business and marketing resource. What is surprising, or perhaps not, , is why this kind of project has not been available before.

Talking to the BBC, Sir Tim said:

‘It’s such an untapped resource. Government data is something we have already spent the money on… and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody’s office it is wasted.’

Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University, helped develop the website. He said:

‘A lot of this is about changing assumptions. If [the data] can be published under an FOI (Freedom of Information) request why not publish it online?’

Of course, as with all statistics, caution needs to be exercised. The very nature of statistics means that you have to understand what is behind the stats. Why was the information gathered? How was it gathered? Who gathered it? Where their methods valid? These are all important questions that need to be answered in order to get the most from the statistics.

For online content managers the new site is a real boon. On the whole government statistics provide a great basis for online content that is valuable and well informed. Search marketing relies of good content more than ever since the implementation of Google Caffeine. Furthermore, the aim is that the site will also host local government data and location based data with collaboration from the Ordinance Survey who plan to provide free location maps.  This will be very important if your target audience is locality specific.

The site encourages business collaboration:

‘We’re very aware that there are more people like you outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative relationship with you.’

A recent report from Nielsen shows, perhaps not surprisingly internet users are more willing to pay for some internet services than we once thought.

The question of payment for services is always in and out the headlines. Consumers are used to trading: they have the ability to access online content and in return they have to put up with advertising. For a long time it was thought that it would be difficult to change this model on a wide scale because of consumer resistance.

As more and more content becomes available for free the internet audience is diluted and advertising is spread more thinly.

As we recently reported Rupert Murdoch is complaining that Google is taking sections his newspapers stories and publishing them online without having to pay for the privilege.

Matt Brittin, Managing Director of Google UK suggested that one of the ways that the publishing industry could stay vibrant is to charge for some of their content. It is ironic that Google itself is producing more and more content and applications for free.

The latest report from Nielsen however suggests that this may not be such a problem as was once thought. Their evidence points to the willingness of consumers to pay for quality content.

Nielsen’s study surveyed more than 27,000 consumers in 54 countries and asked them about their attitudes to online content and what kind of things they were prepared to pay for.

There was an overall willingness to pay for quality content but there were large variations depending on participant’s geography, demographics and content type in question.

On the whole people were more willing to pay for things that they were already paying for and in particular for professional services and information.

Only 39% of Europeans were prepared to have more advertising in order to keep free content compared to 57% of respondents in Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan.

Great content is what draws in interested consumers. But what is great content? Here are a few tips that will help you create website and blog content that will keep your readers coming back for more.

Identify your readers
You cannot write convincingly if you don’t know who your audience is. Who do you intend to read your blog or article? How old are they? What are their interests?

Identify the purpose
What are you writing for? To get more visitors, to get more sales? Identifying your purpose will help you to create content that is not only interesting for your reader but that is in line with your business objectives.

Interesting
Write about things that will interest your readers. This is the key. This is what will bring people back to your website or blog and help you to fulfil your business objectives.

For your readers
This is the number one rule. You may only have ever started a blog in order to get higher search rankings but you need to forget about this once you start blogging. Concentrating on your audience and then working your strategies around that is what will work best.

Two-way communication
Allow your readers to respond to your writing. This keeps your blog active and you can allow the feedback that you get to inform you as a business as well as give you more ideas for future blogs. Some blogs of course do not allow feedback from readers and this is fine too.

Good looks
What you write has to be appealing. That means it has to be well written and crafted to be read online. That means small paragraphs and information that is concise and to the point. Reading from a screen is much harder than reading from the written page. It will turn readers off if they feel uncomfortable when they read your work.

Go gently with keywords
Of course, using keywords in your writing helps with search engine optimisation but be gentle. Silly keyword stuffing is likely to do you more harm than good.  Not only will readers be put off but the search engines could penalise you for doing it.