Creating effective content when the reader is in control

AS the sheer amount of content online leads to increasing overwhelm, and we realise that we don’t have a limitless capacity to take in more and more information, we have to get better to breakthrough to our readers. Creating effective content becomes critical to your success.

In order to get and to maintain attention, it is not enough to give away the same content as everyone else, but faced with the triple challenges of attention span, time and in-house skills, what more do you need?

1. Focus on what you and your business do best

Create content to an overall plan, slotting individual pieces in to your timeline – you should be taking your readership through a journey that will end in an action, moving them on to the next stage of your attraction or sales cycle. If you are targeted enough, then each piece of effective content you share will be a working part of these processes.

2. Ensure that all of your content reinforces your brand

While your reader is in control, you also need to ensure your effective content stays on brand and represents you and your product or services as they are. If you can do this, and prompt your readers to action, you are making progress.

3. Make sure that content is what your audience wants and or needs

Make sure that you know what you are talking about, but more importantly, that what you are talking about is interesting, relevant and useful to your reader, or they will leave quickly. Use simple language which is easily scannable and include strong calls to action at key points.

4. Set an objective for each item or type of content

By setting an objective for your content before you create it, you can stay focused and attuned to what your content can do for your audience. If you are pleasing your reader, you should also be generating traffic, leads or sales, or meeting whatever other objective you have set yourself. If you aren’t seeing results, you need to think again.

5. Work with your audience response

Identify where your audience spend time online, and target your messages to each place accordingly – if your audience are on Twitter you may have one message for their purpose, while if they are on Facebook you may have different effective content that will support their needs on that platform. Encourage interaction, foster expanding your audience by recommendations and referrals specific to each platform you are working with. Learn from and respond to what your audience is looking for, and amend your branded messages accordingly.

6. What do you have that is unique to you? Start sharing effective content now

People do business with people they like a and trust. If they see the best version of yourself and your business online, they will be more likely to take in your information and enjoy being moved from reader to prospect to customer.

If you are a small company, or don’t have the necessary time or skills in-house, you may need external support to plan and write your content. You can repurpose content and use variations across different channels, but you need core quality content to begin with.

If you are lacking the time or skills to create fresh content yourself, marketingondemand can help you with planning and creating effective content to support your marketing goals – get in touch with us today for more information.