Tips for content creation that your customers will like and share
Rise Above the Heavy Volume of Content by Adding Value
My inbox is full, and I’m willing to bet yours is too. For a while now the content marketing floodgates have been open. But customers, prospects, followers, and friends are opening their browsers and emails and realizing they’re done with “more”. We’re swamped. Newsjacking is an accepted practice because marketers are challenged to generate content with reasonable frequency, so customers see the same repurposed content over and over. The challenge to create more content sometimes overshadows the need for valuable content. It comes down to the classic idiom: quality over quantity.
Here’s the fact that should grab you: audiences have figured it out. They know that there’s too much out there, and so the goal of content marketers should be consistently creating valuable content over volumes of content. With so many thought leaders and influencers moving their messages around the network, it’s not hard for prospects to search elsewhere if they can’t find what they’re looking for. And what they’re looking for is quality and information. Content marketers have to write well and say something worth saying — and sharing.
Content Marketing Tips for Creating Valuable Content
- Allow yourself to inject some personality into your content. Don’t repress yourself. Think about that sports column you follow because the journalist is dynamic, giving his or her piece some personality and intrigue. Or that business column or a breaking news journalist you’re loyal to because his or her unexpected perspective makes you think a little differently. You learned, but you were also engaged and entertained. Content marketing is as much about humans and relationships as sales is—if you write for a robot, only robots will read it.
- Don’t give away the market. A content marketer’s job isn’t only to impart information. It’s about brand awareness. Give everything away and you’ll have nothing left to sell. Leave some room for people to read between the lines—come to their own conclusions you’ve hinted at but didn’t reveal entirely. Leave some room for them to comment, ask questions, and add to the conversation. Creating brand awareness with great content can lead into the next stage of marketing: creating brand interest.
- Provide interest and entertainment value. Strive for variety and populate your posts with multimedia like videos and images. Humor, also, can keep your content fresh. Most industries willingly endorse a dose of humor. Do remember, though, there’s a difference between tasteful, dry humor and grating sardonicism. Think of it as the difference between laughing and winking, versus laughing and pointing. Here is a Marketing Profs blog post that offers 6 different ways to use humor in your content.
Don’t Ignore the Search Engines
SEO matters in B2B content marketing. There’s a line between writing and optimizing that content marketers have to walk. Keywords and SEO tactics don’t need to overpower interesting and valuable content. Find a balance. It’s important to know how to optimize without overdoing it.
If our inboxes are going to be full, we want them to be full of valuable content that is engaging and edifying. And so do our customers. Avoid the quantity over quality mentality.
