Peo­ple want con­tent. Con­sumers want con­tent. They’re more than will­ing to read brand­ed con­tent and inter­act with brands that pub­lish and share con­tent which is mean­ing­ful to them. The trick for brands is find­ing out what kind of con­tent their tar­get audi­ences want. It takes time to research your tar­get audi­ence and to effec­tive­ly seg­ment them based on their buy­er per­sonas and their posi­tion in the mar­ket­ing fun­nel. These days we have more access than ever to the data and con­ver­sa­tions we need in order to iden­ti­fy what our tar­get­ed audi­ences want.

Content is a Catalyst for Conversation

As social search nips at the heels of search engines, as a lead­ing source for dri­ving vis­i­tors to web­sites, the val­ue of qual­i­ty con­tent has increased expo­nen­tial­ly. Tried-and-true SEO tech­niques no longer work, and busi­ness­es, pub­lish­ers, and brands are scram­bling to recov­er after Google’s most recent algo­rithm changes. Today, great con­tent is the cat­a­lyst for the most pow­er­ful and far-reach­ing form of word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing. Use­ful, cred­i­ble, and mean­ing­ful con­tent has the poten­tial to get more expo­sure for a brand than a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar adver­tis­ing cam­paign.

Back to Marketing Basics

Remem­ber the fun­da­men­tals of mar­ket­ing. Con­sumers don’t care about you or your brand. They care about how you and their brand can help solve their prob­lems or make their lives bet­ter or eas­i­er. Your con­tent needs to do the same thing. Con­tent is the cat­a­lyst to con­ver­sa­tion that dri­ves word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing, brand aware­ness, and pur­chas­es. A weak cat­a­lyst won’t dri­ve the con­ver­sa­tions that leads to sales. Instead, devel­op a strong con­tent cat­a­lyst, and you’ll see your con­tent mar­ket­ing results improve.

Great con­tent cre­ates long-term, organ­ic, and sus­tain­able growth for your brand and busi­ness. An effec­tive mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy focus­es on cre­at­ing, pub­lish­ing, and shar­ing con­tent (both online and offline) that con­sis­tent­ly and per­sis­tent­ly accom­plish­es three core goals:

1. Mas­sages con­sumers’ per­cep­tions of your brand.
2. Sets con­sumers’ expec­ta­tions for your brand.
3. Cre­ates brand expe­ri­ences so con­sumers can self- select how they want to inter­act with your brand.

Savvy marketers understand why great content matters

Which would you rather do—continually chase Google (SEO-focus) and try to catch light­ning in a bot­tle (viral-focus) or pub­lish con­tent that enables your brand to sur­vive through any micro- or macro-envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenge? Savvy mar­keters under­stand that SEO, viral­i­ty, and con­tent should co-exist and com­ple­ment each oth­er because great con­tent is a cat­a­lyst to both SEO and viral­i­ty.

Now, ask your­self a sec­ond ques­tion. Would you rather have 10,000 Twit­ter fol­low­ers who click the Fol­low but­ton and nev­er return, or would you pre­fer to have 1,000 Twit­ter fol­low­ers who active­ly engage with you, share your con­tent, and talk about you and your brand? Again, mar­keters who under­stand why great con­tent mat­ters also under­stand that the pow­er of hav­ing 1,000 qual­i­ty Twit­ter fol­low­ers is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more effec­tive in build­ing your brand and busi­ness than hav­ing 10,000 Twit­ter fol­low­ers who nev­er engage with you.

What makes content great?

Audi­ences have more access to infor­ma­tion today than ever before, and it takes mere sec­onds for them to eval­u­ate the val­ue of a piece of con­tent. If they can’t decide if a piece of con­tent is wor­thy of their pre­cious time, they’ll click away and find anoth­er piece of con­tent that meets their needs. If nec­es­sary, they can instant­ly ask hun­dreds, thou­sands, even mil­lions of peo­ple their opin­ions about that piece of con­tent and its source through social media.

Audi­ences have more access to infor­ma­tion today than ever before, and it takes mere sec­onds for them to eval­u­ate the val­ue of a piece of con­tent. If they can’t decide if a piece of con­tent is wor­thy of their pre­cious time, they’ll click away and find anoth­er piece of con­tent that meets their needs. If nec­es­sary, they can instant­ly ask hun­dreds, thou­sands, even mil­lions of peo­ple their opin­ions about that piece of con­tent and its source through social media.

Low qual­i­ty con­tent gets lost in the online clut­ter very quick­ly. If you want to stay rel­e­vant, you need to cre­ate great con­tent that is share­wor­thy. This is the type of con­tent peo­ple want to con­sume and share with their own audi­ences.

To cre­ate your own great con­tent, make sure it includes one or more share­wor­thy ele­ments (the more share­wor­thy ele­ments a piece of con­tent includes, the bet­ter):

1 - Great con­tent tells a sto­ry

The best con­tent is made up of brand sto­ries. Whether you cre­ate orig­i­nal char­ac­ters for your sto­ries or use buy­er per­sonas as your char­ac­ters, you should give the audi­ence char­ac­ters they can relate to and want to cheer for. Cre­ate a sto­ry arc that can be resolved in a sin­gle piece of con­tent or across mul­ti­ple pieces of con­tent, and allow the audi­ence to become con­nect­ed to the char­ac­ters, to the sto­ry, and ulti­mate­ly, to your brand.

2 — Great con­tent evokes emo­tions

Emo­tion­al brand­ing is extreme­ly pow­er­ful. Every piece of con­tent you pub­lish should have a real or per­ceived emo­tion­al com­po­nent. What emo­tion­al trig­gers can you call upon in your con­tent to emo­tion­al­ly con­nect your tar­get audi­ence to your brand? Do some test­ing to learn which emo­tions dri­ve the results you want and need.

3 — Great con­tent is use­ful

Great con­tent is tru­ly use­ful to the tar­get audi­ence. Keep in mind, use­ful­ness can come in many shapes and sizes. Before you cre­ate a piece of con­tent, ask your­self why you’re cre­at­ing it and if the end prod­uct will be use­ful to your tar­get audi­ence. If it isn’t use­ful, you need to retool it or aban­don it.

4 — Great con­tent is mean­ing­ful

Great con­tent mat­ters to your tar­get audi­ence. It holds some type of mean­ing for them in the util­i­ty or enter­tain­ment val­ue it pro­vides. Why does your con­tent mat­ter to your con­sumers? Be care­ful not to rate your content’s mean­ing based on your wants and needs. Con­sumers build brands, not com­pa­nies, and what you think about your brand is irrel­e­vant. All that mat­ters is what your tar­get audi­ence believes is impor­tant and mean­ing­ful to them.

5- Great con­tent is not self-pro­mo­tion­al

If your con­tent is self-pro­mo­tion­al, the qual­i­ty suf­fers. It becomes less share­wor­thy (unless it’s pub­lished for direct pro­mo­tion­al pur­pos­es such as com­mu­ni­cat­ing a spe­cial offer), and typ­i­cal­ly, it los­es the major­i­ty of its val­ue to your tar­get audi­ence and to your brand. Con­tent mar­ket­ing isn’t about sell­ing and adver­tis­ing. It’s about build­ing rela­tion­ships and trust with con­sumers and influ­encers as well as extend­ing your brand to wider audi­ences. Fol­low the 80–20 rule where 80% or more of your con­tent is not self-pro­mo­tion­al and 20% or less is self-pro­mo­tion­al. This is a safe bal­ance that your audi­ence is like­ly to accept.

360° content marketing

In sim­plest terms, con­tent mar­ket­ing is about organ­i­cal­ly dri­ving sus­tain­able word- of-mouth mar­ket­ing and sales that will last for many years to come.

Now, we’ve come full cir­cle, and you under­stand why cre­at­ing great con­tent should be a strate­gic imper­a­tive for any brand, busi­ness, or orga­ni­za­tion. Nev­er under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of con­tent as a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing cat­a­lyst. Instead, sur­round con­sumers with your share­wor­thy con­tent and let it spread, evolve, and dri­ve results.

This arti­cle first appeared on the ‘ReThink Your Con­tent Mar­ket­ing’ eBook.