In January of 1996, Bill Gates wrote the famous statement ‘Content is King’ in an essay. The idea remains as accurate today as it was almost three decades ago. Whether you write quality content or hire a freelance content specialist, this will make or break your online presence.
The mention of some of the iconic names in the technology business may make you think that the discussion is about objects in space. However, the truth is that every word on your website, social media, or any other brand platform counts as content.
The definition of content has also grown as businesses and professionals find new ways to engage with the target market. Content today is more than text: the videos, infographics, and images also count as added costs. Moreover, the latest entrant into the content basket is live stream videos.
Nevertheless, the definition keeps changing as brands and professionals find new ways to reach their customers. As such, content can be defined as anything on the internet representing your brand meant to engage potential customers.
What Do You Define as Quality Content?
If you want to understand what quality content means, you must look at what people do when they like an article, video, image, or social media post, among other contents. They share, comment, like, save, and quote.
The benefits go beyond the specific article.
People begin to follow a particular website, turning them into return traffic. If you understand digital marketing, you know what this traffic means for an SEO campaign. The return traffic reduces your marketing budget because you already have people waiting to visit your website immediately you upload content.
Return traffic is just the beginning of an avalanche, a positive one at that.
Good content goes viral. People share on different platforms, directing more people to your website. Therefore, the result is increased publicity at zero cost.
So, what is this thread that causes frenzy around great content? Well, it is what defines excellent content.
1. Adherence to the Rules
Content follows two types of rules. Grammar is what most people know and attempt to follow. Grammar is crucial because it makes your ideas easy to follow. Remember, an article with grammatical errors will be an eyesore to read. The errors result in the misrepresentation of views.
As a client, you must hire a professional who understands grammar and how to apply the rules in writing. Such consideration can make your content enjoyable and easy to follow. This rule applies even on video scripts or when hosting an anchor for your live stream. Once you break language rules, the vital points you are trying to put across are lost.
There is another set of rules defined by individual clients based on the target market. Take, for example, an article explaining the Covid-19 vaccine. The simplicity of language, choice of words, and depth of explanation will differ based on whether the paper targets medical professionals or laypeople.
If you are writing for medical professionals, you need a technical writer who will go to the depths of medical terms. When writing to a layperson, the language is simplified such that the most complex ideas will be easier to understand.
Note that writing rules go beyond grammar. Quality hinges on the ability of a writer to deliver the message in a way that the reader can understand and appreciate. These additional rules touch on the length, simplicity of language, size of sentences, and other factors that make an article readable.
The next point also discusses the rules and how they help you capture the audience’s attention, especially keeping them engaged with your content.
2. Relevance to Your Audience
Relevance is the simplest thread when you talk about quality content. Here is the point.
Visitors coming to your website or blog are looking for something. Your blog’s title caught their attention or could be ardent followers who return to your blog regularly. Hence, your responsibility, in this case, is to satisfy their expectations. That is RELEVANCE.
If you run a website with a medical title, your audience expects health-related content. If a visitor clicks on the website and finds the best comedy or an article about solar panels, such content, however well it is written, is irrelevant, and therefore, of low quality.
Notice that relevance has nothing to do with grammar. It has everything to do with expectations. It resonates with the thirst for information by your target audience.
3. Fresh
The smell of freshly brewed coffee or tea in the morning will instantly wake up your senses. Fresh content has the same effect. Reading through a new article or watching a video feels like exploring a place you have never been. It is exuberating and eye-opening too.
It is not only the reader who yearns for fresh content. Even the search engine spiders that determine your ranking on SEO appreciate new content by ranking it to the top. It explains why digital marketing experts insist on fresh articles once in a while.
For a reader, fresh content is the reason to return to a website. Why would a reader take on the same article or video a second time? However hilarious or expertly crafted it might be, it is never worth a second bite.
4. SEO Friendly
The content you create is not meant for readers only. Your eyes must be on search engines in an attempt to capture organic search traffic. This is why you must produce SEO-friendly content.
SEO-friendly content includes specific keywords, is fresh, has optimized titles and subtitles, has links, among other elements. Understand the language of search engines and align your content to meet their requirements.
Search engines modify algorithms from time to time. Actively follow the changes to make your content more appealing to the search spiders. The decent ranking will result in invaluable exposure that is easy to convert into sales.
In summary, quality content can be defined by a few attributes. It is readable, useful, shareable, actionable, quotable, findable, and memorable. Great content meets the needs of the reader and those of search engine spiders.
Why is Quality Content so Important?
The search for quality content might appear intimidating and technical. However, when you understand why you should pursue quality content, the effort will be worthwhile.
So, why do you need quality content for your website?
a) Capture Your Target Audience
The first and most important content for any website comes from a ‘search.’ The idea is that if a person is searching, he or she is interested. If your content is of good quality, as discussed above, you have already captured the attention of your target audience.
The sole aim of having a website is to sell. Once you capture the audience, you have a market to sell your products. Great content, therefore, becomes a magnet to capture potential customers.
b) Sustain Quality Traffic
Any branding professional will tell you that marketing is expensive. If you have to convince readers or viewers every time you upload new content, you cannot break even. You need to gradually build on a foundation so that your campaigns are not too expensive. This is why brands start with internal marketing tools before spending any dollar on external channels.
Great content keeps fans returning to your website or channel. Even without spending, you are sure that 10k, 50k, or 100k people will be waiting for your content. It builds loyalty and guarantees that regardless of your budget or marketing cycle, your website has traffic.
c) Sell
Great content translates into an opportunity to sell. If you write the best product review, people will want to buy. A video of an exclusive holiday destination on another day attracts high potential customers. Potential customers believe in your brand and are ready to spend. Simply put, the quality of your content signals the quality of the products you are offering.
d) Boost SEO Ranking
Search engines might not be people, but they do prefer quality content. The machines have their standards in terms of keywords and content dates. They also consider the behavior of readers, like the frequency of sharing, time spent on content, and the level of engagement.
Once you produce excellent content, you are on your way to top-ranking.
How Do You Get Quality Content?
It is now clear that the quality of content determines digital marketing success. The challenge, therefore, is to find this great content.
The simplest way is to create it. Remember, you are the best-suited person to create content for your brand because you understand your product and your clients better than anyone else. You can make excellent videos, videos, and infographics about different aspects of the business you would like to promote.
However, not everyone is a good writer or content creator.
How then do you get this great content for your brand?
Here are a few tips.
i. Define Your Great Quality Content
Each brand serves a specific clientele. Your target could be male, female, young adults, college students, families, engineers, kids, and other groups. Nevertheless, great content means something different for each group.
Unless you understand your target group’s wants, you can never deliver the quality of content they desire. Thus, define your content by knowing the length, type, technical level, and perfect timing for providing the content.
It gives the requirements that guide a writer or graphics designer when you assign them different projects as freelancers.
ii. Hire a Professional Content Creator
Creating content is a tedious process and may require skills that you do not possess. Hence, look for a content creator who can understand your requirements and meet the expected standards. Look for freelancers or hire an in-house content creator.
Consider the expertise of the content creator before hiring. An experienced and highly skilled creator will deliver quality content without a tussle. A specialist in a particular type of content is best suited to provide.
iii. Continually Evaluate your content needs
Content requirements change with time. Keywords change from one season to the other. Search engines also alter algorithms, meaning that old techniques will no longer work. Evaluate your strategy from time to time so that the instructions you issue to your content creator result in great content.
Every brand must invest in quality content creation. The journey begins by understanding what great content will mean for you, finding this content, and how much it will cost.
Obtaining great content is a journey that requires constant evaluation. Once you have great content, you are halfway into winning your market.
Leave it to Us
Do you want to rank top whenever the world searches for goods or services in your industry? Bunny Studio is the place to be for top-quality content. Therefore, talk to our content experts and see your website at the top.
Submit a project and receive the best quality ever!