In our digital world, content is king.
When it comes to driving traffic and sales, though, what does content mean?
It’s actually not a complicated answer!
If you’re wondering how to make digital content work for your business, we’ve got you covered. Read on to find out!
What does content mean?
Generally speaking, “content” itself isn’t difficult to define.
Content is kind of digestible information on the web.
That anime website with weekly updates? It has content.
It might not be good content or the type you need, but it’s content all the same.
Similarly, businesses and brands need content to drive traffic and keep themselves fresh and up-to-date.
Nothing’s worse than finding a business that hasn’t updated its website since the early 2000s.
A lack of updates and relevant content can drive people away from your page, meaning you lose them as customers.
There are several different ways to get content on your page.
With attention spans shrinking and more people in the audience using mobile devices rather than personal computers, visuals like pictures and videos are great ways to make your content stand out.
Content is what your audience sees or interacts with, so you want to ensure your content is effective, accurate, and original.
If it’s not, why are they coming to you for information in the first place?
Why do I need content?
Put yourself in this scenario: you walk into a brick-and-mortar store, and the shelves are empty.
There’s nothing in the windows. There’s a salesperson there, but they run to the back the minute you enter.
There’s nothing actually to purchase.
What reason do you have to stay there? There’s none, right?
On a base level, content lets your audience know somebody else is behind the computer screen.
People want to know that their brand cares about them and wants to connect with them in ways that don’t just involve exchanges of money and products.
Sure, profiting is vital for your continued success, but how will you make it without customer support and engagement?
Social media
Enter social media.
This is an excellent way for your brand to develop its unique, specific, and marketable voice to broadcast to the world.
This way, you can connect with your audience and continue to drive traffic in an organic way.
Back to the physical store scenario, how did you even find the store if they didn’t have anything to sell?
No advertising means you didn’t hear about it from a campaign or a friend.
You probably just stumbled upon it.
Without content, you make it impossible for people to stumble upon your business because the search engines will pass it on.
How do you prevent that from happening?
There’s a magic little thing called SEO that can send your traffic through the roof.
How can content boost your traffic?
Search engines work by grabbing specific, natural-sounding keywords in your content and sorting it into results in order of relevancy.
How do they know what’s relevant and what’s not? Keyword optimization.
Those sites you find on the first or second page of Google (because, let’s be honest, nobody looks further than that)?
They have highly optimized keywords used several times in ways that sound natural.
In the early days of SEO, businesses and content creators would jam-pack their pages with keywords sneaky by typing a ton of them at the bottom of a webpage.
If they changed the font color to match the background, nobody would ever know, right?
Here’s the thing. Search engines are smart. They know what’s going on.
When search engines began to catch on, they lowered the rankings of those sites and sites with duplicate content.
Gone are the days when you could recycle and throw something haphazard together.
However, this means that to drive traffic, you have to think creatively.
You must use relevant keywords in natural places and create content solely yours.
You can use this as a unique opportunity to develop your brand’s original voice.
For instance, take a look at Denny’s.
Sure, you might think their marketing strategy is a little weird, but it works for the brand and drives traffic.
Visual content
This doesn’t only apply to written content!
Did you know that videos can be optimized for SEO? Images, too!
Creating video or other visual content means you’re already ahead of the curve on the uniqueness front.
There’s way more text on the Internet than video.
When it comes to video, what does “content” mean?
Create video tutorials for your products.
Give your audience the chance to see your product up close and in motion.
You can also provide a transcript of your video.
Make sure your audio is filled with relevant keywords to pepper the transcript.
That way, it’ll be optimized for search engines.
Give your audience content that’s fresh, creative, and highly relevant to what they’re looking for (don’t forget those keywords!), and they’ll keep coming back to you for more.
How to develop a content strategy
Like it or not, in the digital age, great content is mandatory.
Whether that means keeping up with a blog jammed with juicy relevance or maintaining a stellar social media presence, you must keep your audience engaged and updated.
Now that we’ve answered the question, “What does content mean?” you’re probably on the edge of your seat with another question: “How do I create good, marketable content?”
The answer may be more straightforward than you think.
Goals
The first step to creating good content is to determine your goals.
If the goal of your business is to sell your product, you’re probably not going to reach your goals if you’re publishing recipes (unless your business is related to cooking!)
Though you may already know your goals, getting them written out is not a bad idea.
It lets you focus on the goal itself, and if you’re working in a team, it ensures that everybody is on the same page with your game plan.
Make sure your goal is specific!
Do you want to inform people? Is there something you want to sell?
If it’s the latter, ensure your content is enticing, sleek, and informative.
Tap into what makes your product unique and develop a plan to get it in front of people’s eyes.
This also lets you connect with your audience via a blog, videos, or social media.
This is the content you’ll keep updated and what your audience will keep coming back to see.
Audience
What demographic are you marketing to? Who does your current content speak to?
Speaking to an audience is sometimes like taking on a character.
If you’re marketing clothing to teenagers, it can be hard to tap into that mindset when you’re older.
Looking toward your audience with an analytic eye can help.
How does your audience talk? What values do they have?
The character you adopt needs to have those values, that way of speech.
Simply put, you need to be relatable.
You need to produce the information they’d be looking for – before they look for it.
Keep in mind that attention spans change depending on demographics.
If you’re writing for an older crowd, more text is fine.
Younger, however, you’ll want more text, video, and multimedia.
Schedule
Remember, your content needs to be updated regularly while still maintaining that voice for your audience.
Schedule blogs, videos, or other content however you have to.
Break a big segment into smaller pieces and publish them throughout the week or the month.
Allow yourself plenty of time to produce the content before release, but don’t plan too far out!
Remember, life happens, and your business’ track could change quicker than a blink.
Create!
Make your content! Whatever format you’ve chosen, get writing, filming, or whatever!
Just get creating. Your content isn’t going to make itself, after all!
Analyze
Make sure to keep up with the analytics portion of your website.
This will break down your traffic into easily digestible segments, allowing you to see who your content is reaching.
If it’s the demographic you intended, fantastic! If not, that doesn’t mean that you’ve failed.
Feel free to regroup and rethink your strategy, or embrace your unexpected audience and cater to them!
There’s much more to digital content than just tossing up a webpage as a storefront and hoping people will come along to buy your products.
Remember, when it comes to SEO, keywords reign supreme.
Stay one step ahead of your audience and determine what they’ll search for before they search for it.
Then, repeat that search term in your content as often as possible while sounding natural.
Make sure that you come up with a strategy for content release and production.
If you get overwhelmed or lose focus, remember your goal.
Remember who you’re trying to reach and speak to.
With a plan in place and knowledge at your fingertips, your digital content is guaranteed to be unstoppable!
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