Many businesses are taking to Social Media to enhance their marketing. But without something relevant, timely and personal to say, success is unlikely. Likewise, many businesses rely on having their websites found via Google, but without great content, any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics are unlikely to make a significant impact.
The key to SEO is inbound links – which account for 75 to 80% of Google search engine ranking. And the key to obtaining inbound links is great original content.
While many SEO managers generate links via reciprocal linking agreements, this does not result in the same level of SEO juice as one-way inbound links. And since you don’t have the ultimate control over who links to your website, you must inspire others to link to you. One of the best ways to do this is via a blog that provides something of value.
So what constitutes great content? Well it depends… on your customers’ needs, wants, and interests – you get the picture. Assuming you know who your customers are and their needs… there are some key ingredients to creating great content.
1) Personal… even if you are a B2B or professional services firm your customers are human, and humans prefer to read and engage in a personable way. So forget the stuffy business jargon and get real with your customers.
2) Relevant… based on what your customers are interested in. What challenges are your customers facing? What interests them? Develop content with your customers’ needs in mind not your business’s needs. Such as an article centered on solving a customer problem.
3) Value… providing something of value will enable you to build a relationship with your customers. Consider how you can add value to what your customers’ are striving to achieve. Content that contains value helps to build a solid relationship and constitutes shareable content.
4) Timely… provide new content frequently – ideally daily, but at least weekly – if you really want to see benefits. According to research conducted by Hubspot – Increased frequency of blogging correlates with increased customer acquisition. The research shows that 100% of blog users who posted multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog, this number drops to 58% for those who blogged weekly, and only 38% for monthly bloggers.
5) Brevity… get to the point quickly. Focus on need to know, rather than nice to know information. People have limited time, attention spans, and memories. What do you really want them to take away from your post?
Ensuring content contains these key ingredients will help to ensure your content is shareable… linkable… and valuable to your marketing efforts.
