Why Is Content Marketing Becoming More Important
The main advantage of content marketing is that it is enduring.
Unlike a PPC campaign, which stops when you stop paying, content can endure for many years. The cost of hosting content is almost zero, so there is little reason to delete it once created.
Evergreen content which means content that will always be relevant – can draw visitors many years after publication. For example, the activity “hanging wallpaper” doesn’t really change much, so if you wrote a definitive article and made a video on how to hang wallpaper, it will stay relevant over time. Contrast this with news, which has a short shelf life i.e. is useful only so long as it is new, before it’s replaced by more recent news.
Your content should also be engaging. The internet is changing rapidly from a top-down publishing medium to a relationship medium. You could just publish, and the reader could passively consume your content, however content can be made a lot more engaging if the reader can interact with it. Given the opportunity, they may comment on it. They may share it with their friends via social networks. They may write about it on their blogs. They may repurpose it and make something else out of it, and redistribute it again. This activity can make your content more usable and extend your reach. Viral marketing is based on this idea i.e. where one person takes a message and then spreads it, and then ten more people spread it, and so on.
Your content should also be engaging. The internet is changing rapidly from a top-down publishing medium to a relationship medium. You could just publish, and the reader could passively consume your content, however content can be made a lot more engaging if the reader can interact with it. Given the opportunity, they may comment on it. They may share it with their friends via social networks. They may write about it on their blogs. They may repurpose it and make something else out of it, and redistribute it again. This activity can make your content more usable and extend your reach. Viral marketing is based on this idea i.e. where one person takes a message and then spreads it, and then ten more people spread it, and so on.
What Does Quality Mean?
It’s ephemeral, but most of us know it when we see it. Quality content is typically “better” when compared to what is available elsewhere. It has more depth, more insight, more relevance.Content must, above all, be relevant. To be sure we’re providing relevant content, we should test. We can look at engagement and performance metrics to see what content our audience likes the most and produce more of the same. We should produce less of the content they don’t engage with. In the end, quality, for our purposes, comes down to what the audience thinks is most relevant to them. It’s the content they engage with.
Imagine if our wallpaper company produced high quality content, most of the time, but also produced some low quality content of dubious value. This could undermine the brand they have worked so hard to create. In this scenario, it would be better to cut or improve the poor quality content rather than risk the trust relationship they’re trying to establish.
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