Every business wishes to find one effective marketing tool to bring returns. That kind of wishful thinking may be true for some part. Content marketing is probably the most popular area of investment among many businesses and one that is constantly developing as well. Why solo entrepreneurs and global corporations are equally prioritizing this direction in their marketing plans?
So, content production and its distribution aimed at attracting and retaining an audience are what content marketing essentially means. There are multiple avenues for content popularization, from social media to podcasts and from email newsletters to YouTube videos. What’s very important here – the content must be of high quality. And it should be equally so for human readers and search engines’ algorithms.
What Can We Call a Quality Content?
As quality is a subjective category, numerous opinions try to define it. For content marketing, quality usually means a combination of substantial and technical factors. Let’s look at them.
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Content is Original
Plagiarism or partial similarities with other sources online would be identified by search engines, and it lowers the website’s position on a search result page. Probably even more important, if a customer or a regular visitor notices a case of content stealing, the consequences for a brand could be dire.
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Texts Must Have no Language Issues
Spelling errors are pretty irritating on their own but also trigger the algorithms, which consider poor grammar a sign of low-quality content. As a result, fewer people would be able to see the content piece, and the marketing goals would not be fulfilled.
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Not Overburdened with Keywords
For a long time, most of the textual content had been only produced to feed the relevant keywords to the search engines. Such blog posts or articles were often packed with keywords to the point when they became unreadable. It had no proven effect on the company’s position in search results and has even become undesirable over time.
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Truly Useful and Valuable
If a company’s website has a blog with dozens of generic texts on the same topic, neither a customer nor AI will find it helpful. The same goes for superficial short blog posts published solely for catchy headlines. Content should be rich in substance, engaging, thought-provoking, or inspiring. And the algorithms measure it through various metrics like minutes of reading spent per page, rates of page closing with no scrolling, etc.
As we have refreshed our understanding of content marketing and quality content concepts, the logical transition would be the benefits of this strategy for business. What makes companies spend thousands and millions of dollars annually on content makers, writers, podcasting, and video-making? Positive returns are numerous, so we’d just focus on several of the most remarkable ones.
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High-quality Content Builds a Name and Reputation for Your Business
Even people who never used your services or products can have an image of your company. Through informal recommendations, advertising, or accidental finding online, people learn about brands long before deciding to purchase from them. As a business owner, you should work to have more interested not yet customers and ensure they have the best possible impression. These people have not yet experienced the quality of your services or products, but they can consume the content your company produces and distributes.
Imagine I’m a student looking for someone to write my essay cheap professionally. Would I go to a random company from a Google search? Or would I prefer a company I’ve followed for some time because of their study tips and funny grammar mnemonic tools? The answer is almost always the latter.
Content marketing is among the most economical ways to control the narrative and promote a positive brand reputation. Let’s say a company is facing a manufacturing error or employment dispute about to go public. The business has a unique opportunity to embrace the momentum and own up to a mistake or present the company’s position first.
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Giving Valuable Information for Free is the Best Way to Gain a Loyal Audience
For this marketing strategy to work, the content should be very relevant and on-demand by your audience. The most straightforward way is to create expert content people would logically go for to you.
If you sell gardening tools, produce expert articles on plants, seasonal works, and lifehacks on how to grow some sensitive flowers or vegetables. People would read them with interest and, at the same time, would validate the professionalism and expertise of your company. Without a penny spent, those readers would know the company’s name associated with a positive memory of helpful information obtained. And if stuck with a choice of what brand to choose, they’ll be much more inclined to choose your business.
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It Gives Your Business a Human Face
Another popular type of content for businesses is ‘behind the scenes’ content. People always buy from people. Brands and names and fancy stores or websites are just storefronts. With more than one option, humans tend to refer to their natural curiosity and fascination with a good story. And clever content production ensures just that.
A great example of this theory is Apple. Yes, their electronic devices are great on their own. But also, the company had Steve Jobs, whose personality was so influential that he still attracted customers to the company even long after his passing. Not-so-gigantic businesses do not need to despair. Their stories are not less important for people to know. For your content, plan a storyline about business origins, dreams of the company’s founders, and interviews with employees. Make videos of your team working or how some tiny but important detail of the operational process work.
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Extra Incentive When Making Purchasing Decision
Quality content keeps a good connection with the loyal audience who are not yet customers. But it also helps to move these followers further through the sale funnel. The brand supporters, at some point, should become customers and verified brand fans with experience of product or service use. Content helps in this delicate phase as well.
Many companies track their website visitors and detect if, after the screening of inventory or even putting some of them in the basket, no purchase is completed. Of course, one could send an automated reminder to proceed with the purchase. But a bit of creativity turns this standard message into a valuable tool. Along with the reminder, customers can receive links to helpful content published before. Relevant advice or quality photos of using the product in real life would be an appropriate nudge to purchase.
Content marketing is on the rise as a number-one tool for building and retaining the audience. It is important to remember that the content must be highly relevant to the customers. Focus your business resources on creating captivating human-centered stories to gain the most from this marketing strategy.
