- By admin
- February 16, 2015
- Digital Marketing
In September of last year at the Content Marketing World expo, Kevin Spacey of Academy Award winning fame, was invited up onto the stage to give a brief chat about the art of storytelling. Although this may seem like an odd fusion of different genres of media, Kevin’s speech provided a great insight into the potential for great storytelling towards potential clients and customers.
Focusing on the necessity of interaction with his audience, Kevin touched on some of the key tools that he has used throughout his life to get his story across to others. Kevin explained that through the addition of a humanised, personal story, your content can reach an unlimited amount of people. In summarising, he finished with: “When you strip everything away, we are all striving toward the same goal, and that is connecting with our audiences”.
Supporting this notion, renowned and award winning content marketing specialist Pam Didner, discussed some amazing facts regarding how, when and where people digest content in her brilliant book, Global Content Marketing. She explained how important it was to write content that was as engaging as possible, pointing to the diversity of different circumstances and scenarios of how and where people were digesting content. Some of the amazing facts that she noted were:
Over 75% of people take their phones to the bathroom
44% of people will have their phone, tablet and laptop located conveniently next to them whilst sleeping
The average person will check their phone around 110 times per day
The average person will read 285 pieces of different content
The average person will read over 1,000 clickable hyperlinks
In each of these points, you will notice that there is an absence of no-go zones, as people are engaging with content on a constant basis, anywhere and everywhere. There is also the amount of content read to be considered. Your content has to be just as, or ideally, more interesting than the other 284 pieces of content that the person will read in that day!
This can seem like quite a daunting task at first, but the procedure for good content that tells a story isn’t exactly rocket science. When you think about what you would like to see when you want to engage with something, those ideas that you’re thinking of are the same for everyone else. Nonetheless, there a few things you can do to ensure that your content is engaging and interesting:
Lay Down the Groundwork First
Research and goal setting are two of the most important cornerstones for quality content. There are many targets and key performance indicators that you can use to measure how successful your content marketing is. Knowing what you want to achieve through your content marketing, such as more page views or more shares, is an important step in being able to thoroughly analyse it later.
Humanise your Story
It’s a well worn phrase, but putting a face to a name is arguably the most important thing you can do to engage and interact with your audience. Authenticity in your content will go a long way to creating this atmosphere. Speak of your business or yourself, not as a faceless company, but as a close friend that is willing to extend a wealth of information to them.
Conflict Resolution Example
A common fault with many content marketers is talking about the company being the best in its field or industry, but not discussing why that is so. Provide as many examples as you can (individual occurrences are even better) of a problem that your readers may experience, and then tell them how you can provide them with a solution.
Interact with your Audience
Blog comment sections are interesting places, and can often aid your content by adding to it, or talking about how your solution worked for them. Engage with these commenters by thanking them for their input, and even reference them in your next article. By doing this, you’re not only helping to address the above second point, but you’re also making them feel wanted, helping to forge direct links between them and yourself.
By adding a distinctive human element to your content, you’re not only engaging with your audience, but also opening up your content to others through interesting content. You will have noticed that in the last few weeks, we have gone to great lengths in addressing the concept of there being no substitute for good content.
It’s worth keeping in mind, too, that Google’s search algorithms were designed to mimic the human mind, through key search terms and what we want to see. Content with a distinctive, human touch will feed well into all of the algorithms. This will benefit not only your SERP (search engine results page) ranking, but also your standing as an interesting website that offers great solutions to common problems.
ITCC’s professional content producers know how to write a good story. Through the proper implementation of tried and trusted content strategies, we are best placed to ensure that your website gets the positive exposure it needs to thrive in the competitive market. Contact us today on 1300 770 119, and see how we can benefit you going forward.
