How to create value in your content marketing

Digital marketers know all too well what search engine giant Google has been preaching for years – Content is King. It’s what drives the Internet and it is the reason for the huge reach the web provides – more than one billion daily users.

These users have traditionally utilised the Internet in order to:

• Get information
• Learn more about a subject
• Get some advice on the best way to handle a situation
• Find out more about a product or, alternatively, a service.

Even social media – which oversubscribed with valueless content – exists to offer users information which interests them. This is even if it’s the most tedious and trivial thing.

The challenge facing content marketing

The problem which faces most content creators (and users as well) is the overwhelming plethora of boring, immaterial, stolen, or just plain bad content which is lying around in cyberspace.

Google does a good job of putting the best as well as most original content at the top of its results by evaluating the value of the content that is produced by the various websites which it finds. They do this in several ways (hundreds of ranking factors, in fact). However your priority – as a content creator – should be to create content that has high value to your users.

So how do we create value? Or – better yet – how do we define value?

In the strictest sense of the word, the term ‘value’ refers to what your content brings to the table (metaphorically speaking). What do your users get out of reading your content? A common misconception is that content needs to be factual and almost academic in nature to have any real value. However, if this were true, the endless list of successful websites that talk ceaselessly about pop culture would almost seem to defy logic.

Here is a list of what you could use in your content to make sure it is adding value to your target audience:

• Blog posts which inform, educate, answer a question, or meet the need of a searcher.
• Newsletters which curate industry information that your customers don’t have time to find.
• Webinars which offer insight into a product, service or – alternatively – a technique or share new research.
• Infographics that illustrate information better than just the written word.
• Videos that are engaging and relevant.
• White papers that offer in-depth research and information.

Attention-grabbing content holds visitors on your website. This means that you need to give it to them by penning stories which make your readers want to return for more.

Incorporate story-telling into your marketing

By including storytelling into your marketing strategy, you break away from traditional “marketing speak” and replace it with narratives which reflect the values of your brand. As visitors return to read new and updated stories on your website, some will begin the journey towards becoming your customer.

Reasons to be using storytelling in your content marketing:

• First of all, stories are interesting

Individuals are curious in nature. In addition, many of them are good listeners. When a narration is truly impressive, they are willing to spend a lot of time delving into these stories. In childhood, we adore listening to fairy tales and when we grow up, we hear the stories that are told by our friends. Captivating stories are interesting for everyone – even asocial individuals!

• Second of all, stories gain trust

Whomever you elect to share your personal stories with, this act makes you closer. The thing is that storytelling is a pretty intimate activity. You don’t tell stories merely to anyone. Exactly the same as in life, publishing an engaging story on your website will assist you with becoming closer to your readers who will return for more stories.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to learn more about content marketing? If you do, then you should really check out our Digital Copywriting and Content Marketing Course. For more information, please follow this link.