By publishing quality content, businesses can expand their influence, boost search engine rankings, position themselves as thought leaders, and win more customers. But how do you define quality content?
The following tips will help you create a content marketing plan that gets results.
Big Advantages
In essence, content marketing is the practice of generating, publishing and sharing unique content with the goal of building the reputation and visibility of your brand. Whether you’re a B2C company or a B2B company, you can leverage content marketing to achieve the following:
Higher SEO rankings: Years ago, websites could manipulate their search engine rankings using all sorts of "black hat" tactics that are now obsolete. These days, search engine algorithms have been tweaked to punish shady practices and reward sites that offer quality content that's informative and relevant to specific subject matter.
A wider net: If you are trying to drive traffic to your website using only an index page, expect disappointing results. By creating regular blog posts covering a wide amount of relevant topics, you can create hundreds or thousands of pages, which can all funnel traffic back to your main page.
Increased credibility: By publishing informative posts on timely topics, you can position yourself - and your company - as an authority in a specific field or industry. You might analyze current market trends and explain how they will affect your customers. You could profile recent technologies and show how they can benefit your clients. Whatever the case, when you regularly publish quality content about your field or industry, you are demonstrating expertise that can turn casual visitors into loyal followers, which should ultimately translate into more customers down the road.
What Is Quality Content?
There's no point in publishing mountains of content if it never gets read or shared. To get optimal return on your investment, make sure each piece of content includes key attributes that drive engagement. These include:
Plenty of facts: When people think about content, they tend to think creative. In reality, however, effective content marketing should blend creativity with data. Well-written, engaging copy is critical for attracting and maintaining a visitor's attention. At the same time, you need accurate facts to inform the reader and back up whatever position you are taking. The facts should also come from a credible source and include citations where appropriate. Instead of saying it yourself, see if someone with a bit more prestige said it first. You should also make sure all of your data is up-to-date. After all, a study on business trends from 2005 isn't particularly relevant to a reader in 2017.
Unique and sharable: Obviously, your content should be 100 percent free from plagiarism; however, that's not what unique means in this instance. The most engaging type of content provides new information or fresh takes on the subject. Citing data from another source is fine. Just make sure you have a fresh angle on the topic; otherwise, there's nothing to differentiate your content from the rest. At the same time, your content should be compelling enough for others to want to share it or cite it on their own blog or publication. This is best achieved through a combination of engaging, professional writing and data-driven copy that educates a reader while keeping them - at least somewhat - entertained.
Digestible: No one enjoys content that reads like an HVAC manual. Make sure your content is readable and conversational, when appropriate. You should also keep your word count between 300 to 1000 words.
Professional: Since your content represents your company, it should always be well-written and free of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes.
You can boost engagement by supplementing your content with images, graphics, videos and infographics. Whatever bells and whistles you choose, however, make sure your content educates readers, while reflecting your status as an expert in your specific field or industry.
If you’re looking for more ways to expand your business’s influence beyond a content program, consider Intelligent Office virtual assistant services. Having highly trained, specialized support from a professional administrative assistant makes a real difference in serving the needs of your clients and meeting the unique challenges of your business.
