Finally, we get to the content itself. To have a strong content component, we need to have:
- An understanding of what high-quality content looks like for your audience
- The ability to produce it on a consistent basis
Back in 2012, there were about 500,000 blog posts published every single day. Today, there’s 3.5 million blog posts published every single day. It’s crazy!
It’s impossible to win on quantity. You have to have something valuable to say to stand out. If you can write one really good post per week, I’m here to tell you, it will have far more impact than writing four crappy ones. So, just need one really good one.
As evidence of that, a recent report by Track Maven said that brands published 35 percent more content last year, but they got 17 percent less engagement on that content. So, quality is the only thing that works.
The signal to noise ratio is only going to increase. If you’re not creating truly great content, you’re only just wasting your time.
Creating quality content
So how do we create quality content? How do we create content that truly matters?
We tend to think about quality content in two ways:
- How do search engines determine quality?
- How does your audience determine quality?
People look at your content. Google, they spend their time looking at how people interact with your content.
So Google has over 200 ranking factors that go into ranking content when you type in a query into Google. That’s 200 that we know about—they probably have way more than that, that they don’t tell us about. But let’s say it’s 200. If you’re trying to optimize every single piece of content for all 200 factors, you’ll never get anything out the door.
So I’m going to give you four key elements to think about as you’re creating content that will help satisfy both your audience and Google.
1. First is the main topic or headline. Identify a theme that’s going to be incredibly valuable to your audience.
2. Keywords. Your readers, and Google for that matter, they really don’t care how many times you can stuff one keyword into your content. What they do want to see is how well you use keywords to talk comprehensively about the topic.
3. And you need perspective. How can your expertise add something truly unique to the conversation?
4. And the last one is trustworthy links. Using authoritative sources in your content will tell both your users and Google that you know your stuff.
I know this might seem a little daunting. We covered a lot of ground. There are countless content types and tactics and channels to consider.
But to be successful, you don’t have to be everywhere. If you know your audience doesn’t read blogs, don’t write blogs. If you know your audience isn’t on social media—which, I don’t know who those people would be—but if they’re not, don’t spend time writing social media posts.
The important thing is to understand who your audience is, where they are and what they need.
Brandpoint has helped brands create engaging, high-performing content for 20+ years. Learn more about our content creation services.
The Content Marketing Operating System is a six-part actionable guide to help you build a foundational and systematic content marketing practice.
