Many businesses have taken themselves and their marketing online these days.
However, the key to good marketing is always good content.
Many business owners who run their own websites and social media accounts don’t know where to get started when it comes to creating good content.
Whether it’s short posts or blog articles, they’ve got to achieve one thing; drive traffic and interest to the business. Studies have shown that attractive content can actually attract an additional 125% more traffic to a website, compared to businesses without much content.
For content to work well, there are many factors to cover.
One of which is SEO optimized content.
SEO content creation is the practice of inserting key search terms into content to increase their chances of being found when a user searches for that term using a search engine like Google.
If you’re a business owner or content creator for a business site, there are several things you might be worried about.
The first is how to determine what SEO content strategy you need. Different online platforms use SEO differently.
Therefore, you’ll have to be careful to employ a strategy that fits that platform the best.
Read also: Beginner’s Guide to SEO
The next concern you may have is who your target audience will be.
This can be determined easily enough once you do your own observations and research for your business.
The final concern you might have is how you can draw them in. How can you attract them with your content and guide them to your products or services?
This is the very issue we’ll try to address in this article.
Why Do You Need Attractive Content?
It all boils down to two words: traffic conversion. Basically, these terms mean that your content needs to draw in consumers (traffic) who will then consider your products and be converted into customers if they’re convinced. Attractive content needs to achieve this in order to be considered effective.
Additionally, engaging content can benefit your business in the following ways:
1. Increase Brand Awareness
If you want your brand to enter the consciousness of the general public, you’d have to make content that’s eye-catching and attention grabbing.
This can be done with a few words or visuals.
The more people know your brand, the more potential there is for you to convert them to customers.
The best way to do this is actually through SEO content to make your brand name appear more frequently when people search for products or services.
2. Helps Build Trust and Credibility
Building customer trust in your brand is incredibly important, especially if you’re a start-up or SME.
Since you don’t have a long established history, it’s the way you present yourself that will help you gain a loyal following.
Therefore, the more quality content you put out, the more professional you look.
Potential customers can tell that you’re putting an effort into establishing your brand, and will respect you more for it.
3. Build a Following
As a business, you’ll benefit from a loyal following or fan base.
Having more followers on your page means that you have more chances for your content to be shared too.
The more circles your content reaches, the better it is for business.
If handled ethically and well, your following can only grow over time.
4. Make Your Marketing Costs Worth It
Marketing does require some level of investment, especially in terms of budget.
In order to make your marketing efforts pay off, you have to ensure that your content is of the best quality.
It has to stand out from the competition and achieve its marketing goals effectively.
That way, your marketing expenditures are not wasted and you obtain the sales you need to re-invest into another round of marketing campaigns.
10 Ways to Put the Bang in Your Blog Content
There isn’t exactly a magical formula to create the most attractive content.
Often, you get better with experience.
Trying out different strategies, or a combination of strategies, will give you a better idea of what works too.
Also, if something works, don’t fall into the trap of recycling it until it gets stale. Vary your content as much as possible for the best outcome.
Here are some strategies that can help you improve your content:
#1 Be Clear About Your Target Audience
Determining who you’re speaking to is the basis of good content. It is one of the first questions you must ask yourself.
It will determine many aspects of your content, such as tone of voice, topics, length and more.
For example, if you own a café, your target audiences would include mostly educated, working young adults.
Therefore, you may want to go for casual and short write-ups, with a touch of class.
If you run a business that offers health screening packages, you would most probably be targeting older consumers above the age of 50.
They have more time on their hands, and can afford to read longer articles. As such, you may want to include lengthier informational blog posts featuring somewhat formal language.
A short market survey would help you determine who to best target.
Of course, you shouldn’t expect all your potential consumers to come from a narrow demographic.
Rather, determining who your target market is will help you focus your content’s direction and strategy.
Determining who your target market will be also depends largely on your product or services.
It is much more productive in the long run to focus your resources on a target group you know will be more interested, than trying your luck blindly and trying to reach everyone.
#2. Give Them What They Want
A piece of content, whether it’s a post, a blog, a video or a visual, needs to fulfill a certain need.
The more you fill that need for your audience, the more they will be engaged.
To do this, you yourself need to be connected. You need to be relevant and one way to do this is to be active on social media. You’ll have to know the latest news, trends, and what people are talking about.
For example, if you sell sports gears for cyclists, you need to know what’s trending in that community.
You can join forums or FB groups for cyclists. You might even want to put forward your question in public spaces like Reddit or Quora on what type of information they’re interested in.
There’s a few ways you can use this contentedness.
The first is to offer evergreen advice that’s good for all circumstances. If we use the example of you being a cycling gear merchant, you might want to offer an article on how to fix folding bicycles at home.
Secondly, you can offer articles in response to current affairs. For example, if many cyclists in the forum are complaining that many of them are experiencing bike thefts, you can offer an article on the latest bike security tools.
#3. Determine the Best Format
Content can take on several forms. You can have Listicles, How To’s, Educational posts, vlogs, documentary videos, corporate videos and more.
Not every format is suitable for your business.
While businesses in the health sector, for example, can get away with more technical content, it’s probably not necessary if you’re a baker or soap maker.
For visually appealing businesses, like those in F&B or beauty and fashion, videos and pictures would function better as the main core of your content.
In order to determine which formats suit you best, you can study the strategy of other businesses in the same field.
These will help you see which ones work best, and for which demographic.
Sometimes, new formats will emerge and you should be willing to try them too.
One example is live streaming that many businesses are adopting to connect with consumers.
#4. Keep It Short and Sweet
Any content you put out needs to be simple and easily understandable, by everyone.
Therefore, it is best to keep your content as direct and straight to the point as possible.
This actually sounds easier than it looks. It’s not easy to keep the fluff out of your content and keep it compact.
This is sometimes compounded by the fact that getting ‘to the point’ means different things to different people, it can get really subjective.
Therefore, the tip is to use your own experiences.
While providing content, it helps to ask yourself what you want to know and hear.
Putting yourself in your audience’s shoes is the simplest but among the most effective strategies to keep your content as packed with useful information as possible.
Eliminating fluff from your content means eliminating repetitions.
One content strategy you can employ is K.I.S.S or Keep it Short and Sweet.
As far as possible, name the main point, have one or two sentences explaining it, and then leave with an example.
#5. Pull off a Strategic Mix and Match
Sometimes, you don’t have to keep producing new content.
You can update old posts with newer information and it would work just as well.
For example, if you wrote a list of the 10 Best Washing Machines to buy in 2021, you can now write another list of the best ones to buy for 2021.
Another idea you can consider is to do a summary or compilation article.
Refer to other content that have been done before and then summarize them or compile them.
For example, you may be seeing funny cat videos on YouTube all year.
Now, you can write an article about the 10 best cat videos on YouTube. This would make a great article if you’re running a pet related business.
Another way is to repurpose other content to make it your own.
This has to be done correctly, meaning that you should credit other content when necessary, and give your own take on the same content. For example, you can make a video of yourself reacting to someone performing TikTok stunts.
These types of content repurposing is perfectly acceptable, as long as you don’t pass them off as your own.
#6. Provide Your Audience With Value Added Content
Content that’s good is content that is valuable.
This means that you should try and answer a question that your readers or viewers have to the best of your ability.
If possible, you should provide at least some answers that are new and unique. The more unique and valuable content you offer, the more people will be interested.
Although repurposing or compiling content is acceptable, you also want to offer content that is uniquely your own.
This value-added content will be instrumental in enhancing your readers’ experience beyond what they expect. It would be the signature by which they remember you for.
As such, it is important to ask, ‘What makes my content valuable?’
Creating valuable content that is dense and unique can be a challenge, especially if you have to do it on a regular basis.
Try to aim for at least one or two value-added content for your sites per month.
These should be well researched, unique content that’s not found anywhere else.
#7. Make A Boring Topic Shine
There are actually no such things as boring topics. Somewhere in the world, someone finds this topic highly interesting.
You may not be interested in the different types of bees in your garden, or the components of an air fryer, but there’s definitely someone out there for which this is a hobby. Surprise, surprise!
No matter what topics you choose to cover, presentation is important.
In order to have a clear and interesting presentation, you have to understand the topic thoroughly yourself.
Once you understand a topic thoroughly, it’s easier to make it relevant, funny, and engaging.
Keep your paragraphs short, and include lots of videos and images to break the monotony of the texts.
One website in Malaysia that does this very well is Cilisos.
The site presents articles on history, current news and Malaysian politics, using humor and trendy expressions to make it relevant for young people.
Although they present rather dry topics, they’ve attracted up to 100k readers per article at their peak.
#8. Head Turning Titles Are A Game Changer
The first few seconds after a visitor spots your content will determine whether or not they read it or engage with it.
What are the main factors that will determine if they stay?
The first is your title, and the second would be an interesting visual or video thumbnail.
Creating an engaging title can be tricky.
You don’t want to generate clickbait as this can lead to misunderstandings.
Clickbait titles are exaggerated titles that border on scandalous, and don’t really reflect the content.
This should be avoided as it can cause you to be flagged by social media platforms, readers might also lose trust in your content.
There are many ways to make a title more attractive.
The first is to use simple words, and avoid jargon.
The second is to keep the title short and below 20 words.
The third is to localize it as much as possible, such as with slang words Malaysians understand.
#9. For Blogs: Sharing is Caring
Good content can only be effective if they reach more viewers.
Therefore, the effectiveness of your content depends on whether they’re being shared widely.
The more shares your content gets, the higher the chances for engagement. You should therefore make it easier for your readers to share your content.
The first thing you should do is place an easy ‘share’ button on each of your blog posts.
These can be placed at the top or at the bottom once people have finished reading. They can also be placed on your article thumbnail.
Another thing you can do, is of course to put a call to action into your content.
This CTA should encourage readers to share and recommend your article to friends if they enjoyed it.
Similarly, you can also encourage them to engage with you in different ways, like subscribing to your YouTube channel, like you on Facebook and the like.
#10. One word: SEO
We cannot stress the importance of SEO Malaysia enough.
Search engine optimization will increase the visibility of your content, by driving those who search a particular term.
Unlike those who find your articles by chance on social media accounts, the traffic driven by SEO is one that’s searching for answers to a particular question.
Therefore, while it is important to create content for SEO, it is equally important to have a strategy for SEO content.
This means that your content cannot be lacking in quality.
Once somebody has found your site through SEO, you want to gain their trust and keep them coming back.
Therefore, whatever type of SEO content you’re creating, whether a blog, product review, guides, lists or others, you have to make sure it’s a real article.
This means it shouldn’t be just chock full of keywords and be otherwise meaningless.
Where Do I Even Start?
Once you have the basic questions answered, like who your target audience are and what topics you want to cover. There are several ways to go about this. To be fair, there isn’t a one shot, quick formula to these things.
You’d have to be willing to try out various strategies to see which ones work best for your site and content. Additionally, you’ll also have to be very patient and ensure that you don’t give up if your content doesn’t explode overnight. Here are some things you can do to get started:
- List down your topics from scratch
Put whatever ideas you have down on a notepad, whether it’s a real or virtual one. Once you dump all your ideas in one place, you can start organizing them and deciding which is the most relevant and start eliminating overlaps.
- Have a brainstorming session with your team
Compare notes with your team members and receive feedback. As the saying goes, more heads are better than one. This way, you can decide on the best topics and themes you need to drive attention to your brand.
- Search up the keywords
The main strategy you can employ to make your content more visible, is by using SEO. This method requires you to come up with a list of words related to your content.
- Decide your format
Different types of businesses or organizations will benefit from different formats. Lifestyle blogs will usually produce lists, while more technical sites like financial guidance blogs tend to do comparison articles more.
- Seek the marketing help you need
Not everyone gets it right, so you’ll definitely need some help to get started. Online marketing agencies, like One Search Pro is here to help you with the experience and guidance you need to make your content work.
Creative Content: It’s Time To Bring It On
As more and more businesses come online, it’s up to you to stand out.
Understanding the basic rules of content creation will be an invaluable tool to help you in the long term.
Good content takes effort, but it will pay off handsomely in the end.
To assist you in your journey of creating good online content, One Search Pro is tapping into our vast experience.
We can provide you with the support you need to be current, relevant and most of all, prominent.
Come and talk to us to start your journey into awesome content creation today!
