In the world of digital marketing, there are many practices and strategies that can be used to reach new customers. Many of these time-honored strategies produce real results if they are employed correctly. Perhaps you have heard the phrase “content is king”; in online marketing, this phrase is based on a strategy that has the potential to produce incredible results. Great content is the cornerstone of online marketing, but the content itself is only part of the puzzle. The key here is engagement, or the ability of your content to resonate with viewers. In other words, a piece of online content is useless unless it addresses the reader’s specific interests or needs. Let’s explore some of the ways you can build engagement through the use of quality content.
Quality Online Content: The Basics
Before delving into customer engagement, it can be useful to review what constitutes “great content” and what that means for your online marketing initiatives. While there is no one “recipe” for content, quality content exhibits several key characteristics, including:
- Thorough coverage of a given topic
- Readability
- Free of grammatical and punctuation errors
- Authoritative; written by an expert on the topic
- Appropriate length; not too short to miss important points, and not too long to bore a reader
- Text broken into paragraphs with headers and subheaders as appropriate
Quality content not only satisfies the information needs of readers, but it is also viewed favorably by search engine algorithms. Content that is authoritative and well-written tends to rank higher in search results than substandard content, and this factor alone can improve your online visibility.
Building Engagement with Quality Content
Now that we have a basic understanding of what quality content should have in terms of characteristics, we can turn our attention to building engagement. What does reader engagement really mean? Engagement in this case simply means the ability of a piece of online content to satisfy a need in a way that resonates with the reader. Engagement with content is more than just conveying information; it gives your business a way to share its story, its mission, and its core values with readers.
To build engagement with your content, consider these tips:
Grab readers’ attention right from the beginning. There are many possibilities here, including the use of humor, unique attributes, or other ways to help your brand stand out in a competitive marketplace. Content that gets attention at the start is more likely to resonate with readers.
Stay relevant. When developing quality content for your online presence, it is critical that you understand the potential information needs of your readers. When you know what site visitors may be looking for, it is easier to write content that is relevant to their interests and desires. Filling a page with words that don’t remain relevant to the topic at hand or the readers’ interests is a recipe for failure.
Directly engage with readers. This factor is related to the need for a thorough understanding of your readers and their needs. Focus on what your product or service can do to improve lives or fill a missing aspect of the reader’s daily needs. It is crucial that you make your reader feel special, understood, and important. Quality content gives you that ability – providing entertainment and information while building a relationship with the reader. It is also important not to alienate potential customers by focusing on politics or controversial subjects. Ideally, your products, services, and company are accepting of anyone, regardless of who they are.
Content marketing remains one of the most relevant and productive ways of reaching new audiences. Content is still king, but readers demand more with their time. It is imperative that your content embodies quality in how it is written and what it provides in terms of information. More importantly, you can begin to build trust and loyalty by focusing on what is most important to you and your company – new customers and their specific needs.
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