Quick tips on how to create successful content

Creating successful content isn't that easy! It takes a lot of time and effort to put in 'unique' strategies in place. As we all know producing content is vital for SEO and marketing, let's look at some of the ways to create meaningful and engaging content.

There is a huge gap between doing effective keyword research and providing words or a video on a page that can add value enabling people to share content on various channels. On a daily basis, we do see a lot of bad content on the Internet and that's exactly not what we want to create or see. All we want is spreading shareable content on multiple platforms and spreading marketing message of your brand.

We create a lot of content and based on research, we can also identify what makes content successful. Let's have a look at some of the characteristics.

Emotional Connect

Despite the fact that overall content marketing adoption, production and budget has been a significant improvement, relatively little progress has been made in terms of quality. Marketers are facing a tough time to produce the type of content that is engaging and connect to customers emotionally. Creating emotional content is vital as it implies that when your visitor lands on a page there is some emotional connection to the content they are reading.

Website Content 

We have also found that positive emotions get shared more quickly than negative emotions. If you are talking something good, if you have content that enables people, or it shows you all the riches of the world and fulfils your life, you're more likely to be successful.

Serving Purpose

Creating useful content with speed, and without compromising on quality and volume is sure to get a lot of mileage. Brands need to understand the difference between content marketing and advertising. Content marketing is about being helpful and providing resources to customers by giving them what they are looking at every stage of their buying journey. We like content that adds value and helps you solve some of your business problems. The content should be such that it enables you and others to do useful things, and hence you feel it is worth sharing.

Perceived Value

Content is king! It is important that the content is good, but we can make it seem better and get the most mileage (value) out of it. It is an ongoing process and maintaining the quality is very much needed. With all this, social proofing is required. When you land on a particular page and you see those great social shares, tweets, Facebook likes, it seems more valuable than something that has no social proofing. And hence it's much more likely to be shared and spread among the community than content without shares.

Visibility

We have seen many marketers creating excellent content, but not giving it enough visibility. It is simple! Make sure the content is at the top of your page or putting it on your homepage. It is necessary to highlight your best content on your sidebar and then putting in place marketing tactics like social outreach/networking, asking your contacts to share your content, and much more.

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How Visual Content can Increase Conversion Rates

The wrong visual content can sometimes kill conversions much quickly the same way as the right visual content can increase them. Many brands make use of custom visual content and hence their chances of conversion are much higher than those that don't. There are many ways through which visual content can increase conversion rates and since they are so sharable, you can effectively use them on social platforms to explain your product's benefits and features. You can showcase your offers, functional content with better images. It is not strange that the right visual content can increase conversions, but only when used in the right direction. Let's talk about unique ways to use visual content to increase conversion rates.

1) Experimenting with video

Product videos can play a huge role to improve conversion rates as consumers are more likely to purchase a product or service after watching a video that gives them a heads up. With faster internet speed, loading these videos is no more a pain. Videos are gaining momentum and quickly becoming the favourite way to get information. Having said that, it may sound simple, "Video = Conversions." It can work wonders only with the right placement, such as the hottest area of your product page, such as next to product images or call to action tab. If given prominent positions, visitors can stay longer, engage more, and buy more.

Coming to the next question, what should these videos be about? Examine what your customers like and dislike. Mostly they don't want to spend time reading a lengthy product description. Based on the research, most of the web visitors only read 25% of text. So it's wise to show how the product works and how effective it can be for you and your business. It should be realistic and accurate leading to more realistic expectations.

2) Brief people how to use your product or service

Today there are multiple ways to show how a product works, even in the absence of video. For instance, virtual product tours can immensely help if done correctly. Product tours are mostly available after a product has been purchased but pre-purchase product tours can act as powerful conversion platform.

3) Pinterest 

If your large clientele is female, Pinterest can show powerful results but it may not work for everybody. You don't need a visually appealing product to get attention on Pinterest. All you need is just visually appealing and genuine marketing. Pinterest could be a game changer for your conversion depending on your product and audience. Almost 19% of active users say they make a Pinterest-inspired purchase every month.

4) Integrate social with the rest of the content 

Try curating social proof with Twitter and Instagram, it helps! It can be very persuasive in terms of making a purchase decision. Many say they've made a purchase because of a tweet from an influencer talking a product or a service. The trick is to curate the tweets about your brand.

So how does social proof work? It is a general tendency of consumers to believe the reports of other consumers, like themselves, instead of depending on marketers. Seeing other people report behaving favorably for a product, removes fears and doubts, and that leads to more conversions.

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Content targeting: 5 tips you need to know

Content Marketing 

The perception of digital marketing has seen a sea change in the last one decade. Few years back, digital content was perceived to be anyone's game. You wrote something and published letting the Internet decide if it was worthwhile. If you hit the quality benchmark of good content, the ranking will automatically rise to the top.

But in current times, the digital marketing space is too crowded with too many players competing against each other. Every form of content is battling for grabbing viewer's attention (which is too short lived). The old forms of building a set of clientele (by creating relationships with other sites, syndicating, link sharing and using cost-effective social media promotion) may not prove helpful now. Say if you have identified a topic which has been largely covered, such as finance, beauty, and so on, you have a rough road ahead.

So does that imply there's no point in even giving it a shot and companies can pack up their content departments in the fear of facing defeat? Not really!

The need of the hour is to act smart about a concept that's gaining a lot of momentum: amplification.
It is one way of getting content within eyeball range of your desired audience. The new generation of amplification is all about using better tools that can dig deep into solving the two most complex questions for success with content marketing:

1) Who is the audience I am targeting with this post
AND
2) How do I connect with them? 

Lets have a look at the types of targeting at your disposal.

Till recently Facebook and LinkedIn both used to offer substantial organic reach, but now these social networks charge brands and users for organic reach while ramping up their content targeting offerings.

Paid distribution is arguably the most effective way to use both social networks.

The targeting ranges in price and it depend on information that users provide in their profiles. It is advisable to figure out where to allocate your amplification dollars and do some thorough analysis. For instance, if you are looking to connect with CMOs, then LinkedIn is probably the best choice.

Retargeting
This focuses on targeting those people who've already visited your website and/or interacted with your content in the past. It keeps their identity, then segments them by demographic info (such as household income, and so on) and targets them with a sequence of additional information.

The idea is to keep people inside the orbit who have already expressed interest. Here the limitation is that you're only targeting a selected group and not masses.

Going deeper
To get a deeper penetration, tools such as Storylift (http://www.storylift.com/), can craft surveys to your demographic target that point to whether or not A or B person will be more likely to use your services. After you have narrowed down those people, and targeted your content to them (usually through a Facebook post) your cost per lead drops dramatically.

So are you prepared to spend on these tools? Cost for each tool varies depending on volume, targeting level, and many such factors. Picking the right tool that will give you exactly what you are looking for and keep your cost-per-lead optimized. So how do you pick? Coordinating and working with a skilled content strategy team will help you figure out which tools are worth your time and money.

Global Data Brokers is into making business processes smooth and easy. We believe keeping the sales, marketing and client services teams in sync is what makes a business smooth. Our excellent Marketing Database provides services that support customers and businesses and help them keep their organizations in sync.

Looking to assemble a Content Team? Watch out some ‘must’ have personalities

Today’s marketers are struggling of not having enough of the right set of people in their content team. Based on the statistics, almost 40% of B2B marketers feel that HR is accountable for delayed success in content marketing, and 22% blame lack of education and training.

Planning, developing, executing, and measuring a content marketing plan can prove to be difficult even under the best of circumstances, particularly when you don’t have the capacity of adequately staffed team. In a situation like this, even the most well-conceived content marketing plan can struggle.

Content team

Hence it is not just important but absolutely necessary to have the right roles defined and fulfilled by the people who can execute them the best. Based on the requirements, we’ve identified eight personalities that can strengthen your content team. You will notice that the skill sets we are talking about are possessed by many with the same qualifications, namely an ability to meet deadlines, task-specific marketing knowledge and good communication skills.
Get more detailed outlook about these personalities below as they will help bring your content strategy to fruition.

1) The Overseer
The taskmaster or overseer is your project manager, the one who is responsible for the successful execution of your projects and campaigns. The taskmaster should be proactive, creative and prompt. This person has the onus of getting stuff done.

2) The Thinker
Writing well is definitely important but this person should also be agile enough to put the opinion in different voices and tones, based on your content requirements. This person should bring your ideas to life through language. Being the content head, the person is expected to deliver compelling work quickly. Like rest of the team, he too should be assigned a deadline to keep deliverables on track.

3) The Moving Webster
While the wordsmith/ the thinker add zeal to the content, the grammar geek is a sound editor who makes your brand stand out. The person is responsible for consistency and quality across all channels.

The role becomes even more important because anyone browsing your content will be distracted if you are publishing content that contains grammatical errors. There are high chances of losing sales and business. For some businesses, a single typo was speculated to result in almost 80% drop in sales.

4) The Artist
One of the strongest qualities that is expected from any content developer is someone who can turns ideas and raw data into beautiful visuals. Infographics, logos, and collaterals – both online and print must adhere to brand style guidelines.

5) The Social Bug
In today’s world of social networking, it is absolutely important to be active on social channels. The person is in charge of content distribution, promotion, and amplification on various platforms. They must possess the affinity for social media and branding and enjoy interacting with people online. You know never they can be leads.