Who in the world hasn’t heard that ‘Bacon makes everything better?’ Who in the marketing world has not heard the idiom ‘Content is King’?
Well, the truth of it is content marketing can be a huge headache! Especially if that is not your area of expertise. Imagine eating bacon that’s undercooked, overcooked, or cooked by someone that doesn’t know how to cook. Ugh…talk about a huge stomachache.
Right now, let us focus on creating content that draws in customers and compels them to use your service, buy your products, or simply talk about your company with others. You know, high quality content that makes everything better?
Sizzle with Quality Content Creation
Once upon a time, not so long ago, the only thing you needed to do to get to the top of the major search engines’ rankings was to churn out lots and lots of blog posts. They were stuffed to bursting with keywords and meaningless fluff with little to no substance.
Thankfully, the rapid progress of the digital world marched on and a new form of helpful, targeted content emerged as the preferred medium.
Remarkable content can set you apart from the competition. In the long run, it may help you lock down a spot at the top of SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and catch the attention of customers.
So, how do you create this amazing content?
We are so glad that you asked!
The core of remarkable content is straightforward and the most basic of marketing principles: it’s all about attending to your customers and meeting their needs. It’s basic customer service. Like serving up perfectly cooked bacon, right? Maybe?
To guide your content to be meaningful to your customers, and thus reap long-term benefits, you need to know how well you are meeting their needs with your content. To do this, you should ask yourself:
- Does this blog post answer questions that current customers are asking, and future customers may want to know as well?
- Does your blog cover a wide range of subjects that relate to your business?
- Did you – or the writer – hone in on the topic and cover it in-depth?
- Have you done in-depth research and analyze that information to form your content?
- Does your content offer exclusive information that others cannot?
- Have I researched my customers to identify what my target audience likes, dislikes, wants, needs, etc.?
These kinds of questions can help you to create content that will engage your customer base and draw them in. Now that you know how to gauge the quality of your content you can focus on the quantity.
Two Strips or Four? Quantity is NOT Expendable
While quality has taken center stage, the quantity of these remarkable posts is still a crucial factor. Research into the ideal quantity or frequency of posts to meet the needs of your customer base will help you to know how many blog posts to publish each month.
Luckily, others have done some of the research for you.
A study conducted by HubSpot researchers into ideal posting frequency failed to consider the quality of those posts. It indicated that a higher number of posts inherently leads to more traffic on your website. Up to four times as much traffic!
However, this increase in traffic only lasts as long as you don’t sacrifice the quality of your blog posts. Yet how on earth is somebody supposed to accurately gauge if a blog post has adequate substance over fluff?
Google to the rescue!
The 2011 Panda algorithm update that Google announced changed the world forever – as most new innovations do. Well, as it changed the content marketing world forever, the rest of the world likely spins as it always does, paying little attention to the massive shift in the content they read.
Panda focuses on content with substance over sneaky SEO tricks and hollow meaningless content. Those pages were demoted after the advent of Panda. It also penalized:
- high ad to content ratios
- duplicate content
- poor content tied to affiliate links
- shallow, low-quality content
- any page designed for the search engine algorithms rather than for the readers’ edification.
Brian Dean, Backlinko CEO and one of the most sought-after SEO experts in the world, did a study that supported Google’s assertion that it weighs customer service and quality of content heavily when ranking sites.
He analyzed the word count of one million Google search results. This study showed that longer content outperforms shorter. It solves the problems and answers the questions of customers – both current and prospective – better than short content. In fact, the first position rankings had an average of 1,890 words.
Conversely, it’s important to remember that if you are writing a piece that is that long, it needs to contain valuable information rather than filler and fluff. Use all the words you need to fully:
- Supply readers with resources that correlate with their distinctive interests.
- Answer any questions the reader may have.
- Stay relative to the questions at hand and tailor the content accordingly.
- Initiate a call to action (CTA) to increase conversions in transactional contexts.
Bottomline
As content calendars demand content on a continuous basis, it is easy to get swept up. Too often the most important aspect of writing is forgotten in the rush.
Don’t worry, that’s why we’re here. We’ll remind you. (At least WriterAccess makes it easy to find highly qualified, talented writers to create this highly informative content!)
The most important aspect of writing is to produce content that speaks to your audience and hopefully drives them to become loyal customers, the way the best diners consistently serve up perfect bacon to their customers. Answer the questions that they have and invest yourself in the profile of your target audience.
While putting out a lot of content will get higher rankings on search engines, to convert those visitors into customers you need to provide something in that content into which they can sink their teeth.
So, dig in and do the research to put a little meat on your content!
Aimee B has been writing fiction for many years and is currently hashing out a contract with Penguin Random House for publication of a full-length novel. Further, she has been doing freelance writing through another site since June of this year. She has written over 50 articles on everything from health and fitness to John Wayne Gacy.
