You’ve all heard it said, read it… perhaps even repeated it yourself. Content is King. Bill Gates is credited with first writing what has become the immutable axiom of inbound marketing, back in 1996.
But why is it true and what makes content “good”? The reason that content is king is that content is what people who are looking for products and services consume. The more content you have the more informed a prospect can become about that which your business sells. Good content is by definition content that prospective buyers consume more of and the way they consume it is by finding it and sharing it using search engines and social media. So clearly, knowing your audience is the starting point for creating good content. If you don’t and your content is “flat”, then it is not retweeted to the nines or shared on Google+. So yes, creating good content counts. Four Qualities of Good Content:
But why is it true and what makes content “good”? The reason that content is king is that content is what people who are looking for products and services consume. The more content you have the more informed a prospect can become about that which your business sells. Good content is by definition content that prospective buyers consume more of and the way they consume it is by finding it and sharing it using search engines and social media. So clearly, knowing your audience is the starting point for creating good content. If you don’t and your content is “flat”, then it is not retweeted to the nines or shared on Google+. So yes, creating good content counts. Four Qualities of Good Content:
- Provokes thought Remember a prospect is always asking What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)? Wiffem. Content that provokes thought and answers this all important question ranges from how your product/service will add value to a prospect’s life, providing different insight that makes readers wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that,” or “Hmm, never thought of it quite that way.”
- Entertains This is not necessarily to say your goal should be to write comedy, but more content that engages readers to read on and also come back for more. Entertaining goes further than the blog post, what is your business personna on the social media platforms?
- Educates Education is not just a classroom activity. Blogs and websites are great sources of education where readers explore answers from a variety of perspectives. Each post we write educates or resonates to a greater or lesser degree with a reader based on their own circumstance. When our content resonates it causes people to think. and that thinking puts them into the narrative, making our offer their own.
- Informs Breaking news, updates to past posts as well as new product information. We know that when something new comes out we flock to learn more and as we learn, why not write about what we have learned? Good content is not always the big words or the buzz – but those topics certainly can make great content. Simple information can have a shelf life much greater than buzz, so informing has a lot more power than we realize.