The sexy word currently doing the rounds among many digital marketers is leverage. This means using the right tools to get content in front of an audience. The tools must be appropriate to the task, using different media to increase brand visibility. This means having the right content strategy in place.
However, leverage will only work if your content is up to scratch. Before you can put your content strategy into action, you must have content that is sufficiently strong that it will attract your target audience. In other words, the foundation to successful content marketing is the quality of the content itself.
Will Your Content Stand Out?
Creating good content is hard work and time-consuming, but it is the thing that will differentiate you. Any content you create faces an enormous amount of competition ? think of the sheer number of businesses marketing themselves online ? so your content must work to make your business stand out.
Look at it another way: creating bad content is easy, and quick, but it is bad precisely because it fails to connect with your target audience, or to raise awareness of your business because it fails to stand out from the crowd.
Creating Distinctive Content
Yes, the sheer volume of blogs and articles, vlogs and videos, images and infographics is staggering, but there are ways of constructing content to make it distinctive and appealing.
Choose your topic. Do your research and consider:
- What your target audience will be interested in; and
- What issues, relevant to your business area, are currently popular online.
Then think in terms of perspective ? how can you write about these things differently, what unique angle can you bring to bear on them?
Also think in terms of format ? can you include an infographic or image to illustrate your theme?
And then, what about your headline? A strong headline is crucial to the success of your content. It must intrigue and strike a chord with your target audience. Does your headline have an emotional impact, how will it make your audience want to click on your article and read more?
You must also include the right technical aspects to help get your content noticed, which means optimising it for search engines. Have you included popular industry keywords in your copy, because these will help improve your rankings.
A word of warning, however: don?t be tempted to over-optimise. Any keyword stuffing is likely to result in poorly constructed content that will be more likely to turn your readers off. And Google may penalise you for it.
Better Content or More of It?
Much professional opinion on the success of content marketing has focussed on volume, with the idea that producing enough content regularly is what will help generate clicks and drive SEO.
But this can feel very demanding if, at the same time, you?re trying to ensure your content is of a consistently high quality.
The answer is to get more out of the quality content you produce, by republishing it, on your own site, or as a guest article on someone else?s.
You can also re-shape it. So, for example, you can turn a more journalistic article into an opinion-piece for a more personalised blog; or turn an infographic into a written piece, or vice-versa. This allows you to be inventive in recycling your content, while ensuring that you retain what made it distinctive in the first place.
Reform Creative is a Manchester-based agency specialising in design and marketing. We know what makes great content, and what?s required to use it strategically and effectively. Give us a call and see how we can help your business build a better online presence.
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