Content is King!

Content is king! …as the saying goes.

But, what is it?

Content. You know, words and pictures.

Actually it’s a little more than that. We’re talking about high quality, engaging content. After all we’re all online a lot more these days. So this attention warrants some interesting cool stuff to keep us there.

Examples of high quality content can include, videos, infographics, well written articles or blogs, even website functionality to best show a certain piece of content. For example, the about us page on a company website doesn’t just have to be a paragraph of, “We were established in….”, standard text. You might choose to have an engaging, dynamic timeline that focuses on key events in a companies history.

Strangely, content is often overlooked by business owners. Many still have the opinion that a website and its content is like a brochure. Once its done, its done – printed. “That’s one more task out of the way”. A website is never ‘finished’. It should be constantly reviewed and edited to ensure continual engagement with visitors. Furthermore, even when the website itself is being redesigned or refreshed, the content is left till last instead of being considered alongside the design from the outset.

It’s all very well having an amazingly designed website, but what’s actually on it?

Content should be the first thing that is thought about. Then the website can be designed around the content, making for a much more engaging and interesting tool. Lets not forget, one of the aims of a website is to engage users, make them come back for more, bookmark it, tell there friends about it. This is only ever going to be achieved by regularly adding and updating content to feed the appetite of your visitors.

Ideally it’s good to build up a bank of content pieces to be able to seed both on a company website and across social media channels, and even for other websites to use (with your permission!). This will ultimately drive people back to your own website and increase engagement with your company or brand.

The reasons for all this are fairly straightforward.

Firstly, as mentioned above, why wouldn’t you want to provide a decent, interesting, engaging website that has visitors returning for more and sharing it with friends and colleagues? People aren’t stupid, nor are they robots. We all have a natural hunger for knowledge, entertainment and news. In order to truly engage visitors (who are potential/existing customers!) and convert them along the path to purchase, there is a need to satisfy this hunger with regular, fresh, high quality content. Otherwise it’s boring, no?

Secondly, Google. You may have an amazing website but what’s the point if no one can find it? Recent changes in Google’s algorithm (Google Panda and Google Penguin) have meant that, quite rightly, they now favour websites with authoritative, engaging, fresh content. Google analyses numerous onsite metrics that indicate user engagement in your content, so it makes sense that it should compel visitors to spend more time on your site, interact with your content, and return regularly.

Therefore, in order to have a website rank well in search engines and make it appealing to visitors, content is key, content is king.

How do I achieve all this?

Somewhere along the line you most likely need a content strategy. Planning out what you want to achieve, what content are you actually going to produce, where you’re going to put it and how often you might do that.

This all starts to become part of the trio of key digital marketing tools. Social media, website (everything online is a website!), SEO. By adopting a content strategy, or even by focusing more on the content at least, a brand or company can use it to feed this trio, linking them all together to work in harmony, thereby making for a more powerful online presence and increase to the bottom line.

If you would like to know more about how AMA could help your brand to engage potential and existing customers more, click here and send us a message.