Why Does Content Work For Some And Not For Others?

The online space is witnessing increasing deployment of focused content by companies to drive better user engagement and build awareness of one’s brand. The reason is obvious. Content marketing is proving to be a profitable proposition for creating brand appeal among niche users and reaping rich dividends.  The creation and distribution of meaningful, relevant, informative, easy to understand and implement, consistent and purposeful content can turbocharge your brand’s scalability index.

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Content marketing done in right perspective not only attracts and retains customers but also triggers word of mouth promotion by satisfied evangelists. With content, you are actually making the potential buyers more empowered and intelligent which motivates them to make informed and conscious purchasing decision in your brand’s favour. The underlying theme is that, if you keep providing your prospects with valuable and actionable information, it would get reflected in the form of steady traffic to your site and higher conversions.

Have Companies Benefited from Investment in Content Marketing?

Yes.

Stats from various studies show that the lead generation for content is 3x more compared to outbound marketing whereas the money pumped in for content generation and deployment is 62% lesser.

Additionally, content works because it is in demand. This demand for content can be seen in the online audience – a vast majority of people in the demographic class of 18-50 years prefer online news and content to secure the latest information. As a result, the growth in leads for SMEs which have their own blogs has been reported to be 126% more than those counterparts which don’t believe in blogging. In the USA alone, about 61% of online customers have made their purchasing decisions after going through fact-driven recommendations in blogs.

What Makes Content A Successful Strategy For Brands?

If you go by market-based insights, the reasons would be quite straightforward but many:

• Good content has the right balance of short and long tail keywords which prompts the search engine crawler to index the related sites for all relevant search queries.
• Quality content must be posted at frequent intervals; delayed or staggered posts are perfect catalysts for driving away your prospective buyers.
• Content shouldn’t just be limited to your own blog. To make it work, target high authority sites and build your authority through guest posting.
• Believable content has to be relatable and authoritative so that readers can rely on the information shared and become experts in navigating problems.
• Exciting content never lets the focus of readers stray and grasps the short attention span through shorter paragraphs and extensive use of visual creatives.
• Strong content is never overwhelmed with unnecessary words just for fulfilling the expected length.
• Readable content uses easy to comprehend words and simple sentence constructs. Good content also eliminates the use of jargon.
• Marketable content does not repeat ideas and never sports cookie-cutter characteristics.
• Unique content is plagiarism free; even if ideas have to be borrowed, they are presented with a fresh perspective.
• Engaging content allows sufficient scope to gauge the sentiments of readers and measures the resonance of ideas shared through user polls, reviews, social media shares etc.
• Compelling content needs to be interactive and addressed to the readers in a manner that they find it more personal than advertising-centric.
• Content works more effectively when you give your audience the choice to pick from different formats. This means videos, podcasts, blogs, infographics etc.
• Updated content always gives reflection to activities of importance that have happened for your brand. And is attuned to the current industry trends.

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Why does Content fail to Deliver for Some?

If your brand fails to leverage the potential of content optimally for rich returns, it must be suffering from one or more of the problems outlined below:

• The content might be pushy and/or advertising-centric.
• It might not be working because it offers no real value to readers.
• If the content is outdated, irrelevant and inconsistent with your brand’s vision- it won’t get you any engagement.
• Your content could not be working because it might have plagiarism issues. Such content invites penalties from search engines.
• When content lacks strong and catchy headlines, it fails to catch the reader’s interest. So even if your content is giving really valuable information, it might get skipped because it lacks an engaging structure.
• Content containing spelling and grammatical errors doesn’t work for the audience.
• When statements are not backed by facts, they harm your credibility. To make this work, you should link your content to high-authority and reliable sources.
• When content does not have relevant keywords that would help the search engines categorize it properly, it fails to gain visibility.
• Content that lacks any thought-provoking characteristics is also bound to fail.

Now that you have realized the apparent bottlenecks that are withholding your content from producing that killer’ effect, it is time to give your content strategy the much-deserved facelift. Skip the don’ts and work on the dos to get the most out of your content strategy.

Matthew Booth is the Global Marketing & Operations Director at SMEGoWeb, a global brand which has helped more than a thousand businesses achieve their online goals. With a decade of agency experience, he is now set out to share his marketing knowledge to help companies refine their digital strategies.