Category Archives: Content Strategy

When creating content, focus on value and not the length

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In a suggestion made in this Marketing Sharepa blog post titled Content Marketing: Focus on value, not length, the author says that it doesn’t matter how long your content is as long as it delivers value.

I believe this focus on content length is archaic…a vestigial reminder of media buys…essentially, the appendix of digital marketing…

And yet, people writing for your blogs and creating your content marketing may not be content experts. They may not be professional writers. Many are likely subject matter experts asked to pitch in and creating content is not a process they are comfortable with, so they want some guidance.

Now, I’m not saying quantity or length doesn’t matter; I mean it really doesn’t make sense to write just a simple sentence as a complete blog post even if that single sentence conveys the entire essence of your message. Nonetheless, you don’t need to go on and on just to create 400 or 500 words. A few years ago Matt Cutts  of Google advised that your blog post or webpage content must be around 400 words in order to make it search engine friendly and my personal experience has echoed this estimate. But what if your webpage requires just a single paragraph?

For a person providing content writing services and charging by pages and words this might pose a problem but only when you are working with clients who are not farsighted. When you’re creating content and when you’re concerned about your search engine rankings it is not a matter of individual pages, it is a matter of collective content on your website and blog. Although while quoting I always say (300-500 words) but once the initial communication is over I make it clear to the client that it isn’t necessary that I’m going to stick with this upper and lower limit. I might write 200-250 words for a document if that’s what it needs. Having said that, I also convey that I don’t bother if sometimes the number of words go beyond 500 words, say 600 words or even 700 words. I flow with the requirement and don’t constrain myself with exactly how many words must be written.

As rightly pointed out by the author in the above-mentioned blog post, ultimately it is the value of your content that matters, not its length. Interestingly, if your content delivers real value  it automatically gets good search engine rankings irrespective of how long or short your individual pages are.

Creating content for Twitter and Facebook

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Creating content for Twitter and Facebook is all about targeting and engagement (I know, clichéd expressions, but they are relevant). Remember that people interested in Twitter and Facebook marketing aren’t interested in the billions of members, they are interested in vertical niches, even if it means interacting with merely 100 individuals.

You need to create content in such a manner that it creates a platform for your target audience/customers/clients to interact with you. You become easily reachable to them. The content must be generated according to people who will likely follow you on Twitter and Facebook. And they shouldn’t just follow you, they should also respond to your content and share it, among their own friends and followers.

Even among Twitter and Facebook, the formats are quite different. You post content on Twitter mostly

  • To forward relevant news and updates about your business, about your product or service, or about any event affecting your customers and clients
  • To share interesting information on your own website/blog or from somewhere else
  • To share interesting thoughts and anecdotes
  • To interact with people who want to interact with you or with whom you want to interact
  • To post answers to queries made by your customers and clients regarding your products and services
  • To carry out awareness and PR campaigns

Facebook on the other hand is more informal and flexible simply because you can post more than 140 characters (a limitation in Twitter). Compared to Twitter, it is easier to post videos, images and links on Facebook, although you can easily share links to videos and images on Twitter too. Before deciding on what sort of content you want to produce, you have to figure out where your audience hangs out; is it Facebook, Twitter or both? If it isn’t both, you shouldn’t waste your time creating content for both.

For Twitter, as already mentioned above, you create content to share information, internal and external links, reply to questions from customers and other people and to create general awareness. Visibility is very crucial on Twitter. People’s timelines are extremely fast and within a couple of minutes your updates are going to scroll down out of their sight. It doesn’t mean that you constantly post, but be as regular as you can. On Twitter, you are known by the tweets you post. So be very careful what causes you associate with and what ideas you promote. Your messages become your brand on Twitter, no matter what your profile says. Twitter is also used for curating… more on that later on.

Facebook is being used by many individuals and companies as a full-fledged content publishing platform. People are posting long updates in the blog format and they seem to be working quite well. Facebook is more transparent in the sense that people can immediately see which users are responding to your content in various manners (replying, commenting, sharing and liking). You can also create your company’s Facebook fan page and initiate a dialogue with your customers and clients through it. Most of the mainstream companies these days have a vibrant Facebook fan page (it is another matter how they manage it).

No matter what platform you choose, the basic idea of having a Twitter or Facebook profile is to facilitate real-time two-way communication between you and your audience. It is well and good that people should appreciate your content over there and your content should go viral and lots of people should share it. But all this means is, you get more people to talk to and exchange ideas with. That’s the fundamental purpose of creating content for Twitter and Facebook: expanding your circle of influence.

Researching the right keywords for your content

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Right keywords for contentIf a big chunk of your content marketing effort involves getting qualified traffic from search engines then it’s very important that you research the right keywords for your content. Generating content requires lots of effort and if you’re not careful about choice of keywords and key phrases you might end up generating tons of content, and consequently, tons of such engine traffic for all the wrong keywords.

How to decide what are the right keywords for your content

The best way of finding out what are the right keywords for your content is by talking to your prospective and present customers and clients. What sort of language do they use when they try to find something what you have to offer? For instance, I offer content writing services but people might not necessarily be searching for “content writing services”.  They might be searching for “business content writer” or “SEO writer” or maybe “website content writer” or thousands of other combinations. You have to create a comprehensive list of keywords and key phrases people might use in order to find your service or product.

You can ask people around through your Twitter or Facebook profiles or even through your blog. Normally people don’t respond unless you have established a significant presence for yourself so you might have to practice a little patience. There are many online forums where you can get some help regarding this.

If instead of people you want to use technology then there are many free and commercial tools available on the Internet that can help you create a massive list of keywords and key phrases associated with your niche. One of the most prominent tools is Google AdWords Keywords Tool. You can enter a particular keyword or key phrase and it presents to you a list of matching keywords that you can use within your content. You can also enter the URL of your website and it will go through your content and accordingly present to you a list of targeted keywords and key phrases.

How to use less competitive keywords for your content

When you’re just starting out in a highly competitive market it makes no sense to aim for high competition keywords. In every niche there are high-competition and low-competition keywords and you can always start with low-competition keywords so that you can first gain traction among those keywords and then gradually move towards high-competition keywords. Take for instance, “content writing services”; this is certainly a high-competition key phrase and optimizing for this key phrase will take lots of content and time. So comparatively “website content writing services” or “business website content writing services” are low-competition keywords. You can find similar low-competition keywords in your niche.

The importance of finding the right keywords before you start creating your content’

As I mentioned above, you will end up saving lots of time if you research your keywords and key phrases before embarking upon your content writing expedition because then you will be generating all the content around your appropriately targeted keywords instead of using the guesswork. If I know that “content writer” and “content writing services” are important key phrases for me I won’t waste my time creating content for keywords that are not used by people.

How much content does your customer need to read before doing business with you

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This question was asked on Quora.com and I wrote a small answer over there, but then I decided to do a bigger post here on my blog. So how much content does your customer need to read before he or she  decides to do business with you? First of all, do you really believe that your content can make a difference? I think for the sake of this blog post, and for that matter, even for the sake of future blog posts, I am going to assume that you take your website content really seriously and consider it to be an inveterate part of your marketing strategy.

With that out of the way, how much content is needed before the actual business happens? It depends on what niche you are dealing with and what product or service you are trying to sell/promote. Websites representing well-known brands might not need as much content as a lesser-known brand might require. For instance, Forbes.com might need less content to promote their business content section compared to, say, credible-content.com. Nonetheless, you will find tons of content on Forbes.com. Why?

The primary reasons why a well-known company like Forbes.com needs as much content as any other website are:

  • The Internet creates a level playing field for bigger and smaller players so it doesn’t really matter whether you are Forbes.com or credible-content.com when it comes to optimized content and better search engine rankings
  • People can access your content from all over the world and it isn’t necessary that in your part of the world Forbes.com is as well-known as in the USA or even in India

These are the reasons why Forbes.com requires massive amount of content just like any other website – it needs to convince its visitors into doing business with it and for that they have to visit the website again and again.

Doing business on the Internet is all about credibility and trust and these two traits can only be developed with lots of quality content.

It’s not just a brand that decides how much content is going to be read before people decide to do business with you. It also depends on the requirement. Here I will refer to the example I used at Quora.com

If you want to purchase an iPhone you are going to purchase it and for you the only difference is from where you are going to purchase. If price is not an issue you might straightaway purchase it from the vendor’s website or one of the major gadget e-commerce websites. If it is an issue, you might explore around websites like ebay.com or buy.com.

But what if you are not brand conscious and you just want a phone that runs the android operating system? There might be 100s of smart phones running on android and if you don’t have a preference you might have to read a lot before you eventually decide what make you are going to go for.

So in order to decide how much content your visitors need before purchasing your product or service you need to figure out

  • What drives your visitors to purchase the product or the service you are offering
  • How much information they need in order to make up their minds
  • How familiar they are with your product or service
  • How often they visit your website
  • How much trust and loyalty you enjoy among your audience

Once you have figured out these things you can easily make out after how much content or how many visits they will be ready to do business with you.

How to know if your content writer is effective for your business

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Let’s suppose you have hired a “rock star” content writer for your business website or your blog and you are really excited about your future prospects. You realize content matters and you take your content marketing efforts darn seriously. But you’re either not confident about your written skills, or you cannot persistently generate quality content for your website or your blog. So understandably, after lots of scrutiny you have decided to work with the content writer who sounds really promising and can actually deliver the message you want to deliver.

But how do you know if your content writer is really effective and helping you take your business forward and ultimately improving your bottom line? Frankly, gauging the efforts of a content writer is not as easy and tangible as evaluating your SEO efforts or click-through performances. Content writing is a process and it gradually takes effect and sometimes there aren’t even direct effects. You just know that something good is happening but you cannot really pinpoint what is the cause and since you recently hired a content writer so he or she must be the cause. Could be.

Gauging the effectiveness of your content writer

It is same as evaluating the performance of any other marketing and promotional activity. Before starting working with your content writer study your analytics. Take note of how your particular keywords and key expressions are performing and what is your conversion rate presently. Google Analytics allows you to study individual pages contentwise, hitwise and even conversionwise. Here are a few improvements you should notice if you have an effective and competent content writer working for you:

  • Your search engine traffic increases after a couple of weeks of regular content posting
  • Search engine traffic on important keywords and search expressions increases compared to the period prior to hiring the content writer
  • In case of a blog there is increased engagement: people respond to your blog posts and express themselves
  • Your content begins to go viral on content sharing websites
  • In 3-4 months people begin regularly sharing your content through their social media profiles
  • Your customers and clients are well-informed even before approaching you
  • More people are doing business with you

These are some good benchmarks to know whether your content writer is effective for your business or not. This exercise may become difficult if you are running multiple promotional activities at the same time, but even then you can define parameters to track individual activities.