Why good content is an essential part of your company’s marketing strategy
In an age of communication that relies heavily on texts, IMs, tweets and posts—in which incomplete sentences, fleeting thoughts and acronyms are the norm—writing content may seem like a lost forgotten art. But, in the words of George Herbert, an English poet noted for the effectiveness of his choice of words, “Good words are worth much, and cost little.”
This is especially true in the world of business. Content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional forms of marketing and delivers big time with three times as many leads!
When it comes to promoting your business, the simple truth is words matter. Consistent, high-quality and engaging content impacts audience decision-making more than any other technique. Content marketing accounts for 26 percent of B2B marketing budgets and is vital because it helps you build trust, develop relationships, improve conversions and generate leads.
Good content is powerful
Just about anyone can write, but a blog post that is truly engaging and piques a reader’s interest to the point that they’ll return for more requires the hand of a skilled professional. High quality content delivers many benefits that can significantly impact your business.
- Build brand awareness by writing about topics your customers are interested in.
- Compel potential customers to come back for more by creating positive experiences for them.
- Gain traction—not just a following—on social media by using content marketing to your advantage.
- Develop relationships and trust by answering questions and interacting with customers.
- Direct visitors to a landing page. The likelihood of a user clicking on a call-to-action that directs to your landing page from your content is greater when provided with useful, free information.
- Influence conversions by giving your audience the information needed to make educated purchases.
When developing content, be sure it resonates with potential customers while demonstrating your industry expertise. This not only increases your chances of building trust, it also helps improve your SEO efforts. If your business is established as a credible place to get information, you’re more likely to rank higher in search engines.
The write stuff
Developing high-quality content is more than just stringing a series of sentences together, although having a solid grasp of grammar and punctuation are certainly important aspects to keep in mind. Good brand content is written by professionals who are passionate about telling your story. They understand what your brand is all about and with a flourish of words can address pain points, offer solutions and identify new opportunities.
Content that is relevant to your readers will generate business for your brand and help move customers down the sales funnel. From an SEO perspective, high-quality content must include calls to action, hyperlinks to reliable sources, and keywords that will help your content get seen more often. That’s a lot of moving parts and to make sure you cover all the bases, it’s best to leave the writing to the professionals.
Content done right will help set your brand apart from the competition and highlight you as an industry expert. It should be consistent across all distribution channels and provide potential clients with the information they need to make a well-informed decision. Choosing to hire an outside professional for content writing should be viewed as an important investment into your brand that will keep on giving.
Is AI right for you?
Have you heard about content being created by artificial intelligence? Sounds pretty cool, right? Yes, AI can be an efficient way to improve the writing process, but it should definitely not replace a human writer altogether.
AI automates the course of content creation and makes it easier to create high-quality content faster, however, you still need to do some of the work. AI writing leverages machine learning and natural language processing technologies. There isn’t an AI writing tool around that automatically understands your business which means you have to train it first.
You have to tell AI what to write about. Then, the AI pulls from several data resources – which you provide – to create content specific to your business.
Is AI-generated content reliable and factually correct? Maybe, maybe not; there are no guarantees. Is it considered plagiarism? Again, no assurances as to originality.
Should you decide to explore the use of AI for content creation, be sure to keep this in mind: YOU are the writer, AI is the helper.
Here, at Marketing Direction, we’re passionate about content. We believe high-quality content should be informative as well as engaging. It should prompt the reader to want to learn more about your product or service, and ultimately, make a purchase. Good content is a critical component to a successful marketing strategy and we’re happy to help.
