Do you know what “good” content is? Does your website and/or social network’s content engage your consumers or increase your online awareness? If you’re not sure, you may want to take a good hard look. Content plays a vital role in marketing – it gets attention, increases search ranking, keeps people coming back to your website, etc. As Lee Odden described it on TopRank, “If Social Media and SEO fit together like peanut butter and jelly, then content is the bread that holds them together.”

Odden continues, explaining, “Consumers expect content from brands. They expect ease of discovery (via search or social), the ability to interact with and socially share content and to interact with others with similar interests (social networking). These aren’t ‘nice to haves’ anymore, they’re expected… Content fuels customer engagement at all stages of the customer life cycle.” By creating content, either on a website, blog, or social media page, a company becomes a publisher of unique content. As web strategist Paul Boag recently wrote, “You’re a publisher, start acting like it.”

So, how do you become a good “publisher?” How do you create “good” content? Creating content isn’t merely the act of publishing it – content is developed through strategy. Some companies publish too much content, with no added value. Others publish only occasionally and briefly, simply to satisfy the need to “do it” and “get it out of the way.” In both scenarios, the content is ineffective.

For good (successful, effective) content, David Callan of AKA Marketing says, “Generally, the more useful and interesting content a website has the more successful it will be… the first trick to creating good content for your website is to be sure that your content will have specific appeal to your target audience.” Social media strategist Kyle Lacy also has some suggestions regarding “creating meaningful and thought provoking content,” including “tell a story” and “be human.”

Ultimately, your content will be influenced by your company, your brand, and your consumer. Regardless, most marketers and strategists would agree that putting time and effort into creating appropriate, relevant, and engaging content is worth it.

Tags: blogging, digital marketing, marketing, search engine optimization, social networking, technology, web development

This entry was posted on Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 9:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.