If you listened to marketing conferences from all over the world, you would notice that most firms and brands face similar challenges. For example, one of the most severe content production and marketing issues is a lack of interaction. Brands spend a lot of time, work, and money generating the content, yet it appears to fall on deaf ears.
While a lack of content marketing outcomes can be attributed to various factors, it is frequently based on a lack of authenticity. As a result, you may alter your marketing strategy and increase engagement and traction with your target demographic by tackling this issue head-on.
What exactly is original content?
Original content is any form of brand-generated content that aims to provide actual value and service to the reader without deception or manipulation. The fundamental objective of authentic content is first to offer value and then sell. The notion is that if you start with value and give out your most excellent content for free, you'll never have problems monetizing readers in the long term.
Original content that offers benefit to consumers has several advantages, including:
It increases reader engagement. Readers are typically put to sleep by generic and sales material. Original content, on the other hand, provides genuine value to your target audience. This, of course, leads to increased engagement—your content marketing transitions from a one-way street to a two-way street with healthy back-and-forth.
Better SEO. Google appreciates genuine content with better domain authority and search rankings. Your dedication to authenticity will enhance your visibility in search engines over time.
Increased transparency. Finally, original content provides your consumers with a far better picture of your brand's fundamental identity. Clients learn who you are, what you stand for, and what they can expect from you. As a positive effect, there is little to no ambiguity regarding your brand.
The good news is that generating actual content isn't any more complicated than what you're already doing. It only takes a little forethought.
Follow the following in mind as you contemplate particular methods to generate real content that can move the needle for your company:
Understand Who You Are.
The first step is to define your brand's identity. A thorough grasp of your brand's fundamental identity is required. It is hard to deliver a genuine message representing your identity if you do not know your brand.
The greatest thing you can do is see your brand as a person with distinct characteristics, skills, flaws, and experiences. Then, based on this data, you construct a type of persona that may be humanized and defined for your target audience.
Understand Who Your Clients Are.
The next action is to conclude who your target audience is. Again, the more specific you are, the better. There are several methods for analyzing and segmenting your audience, such as:
- Sociological factors include age, status, ethnicity, gender, occupation, marital status, etc.
- Country, area, state, city, zip code, neighborhood, and so on.
- Habits, passions, social position, activities, and so on comprise one's lifestyle.
- Social factors: purchasing habits, technological use, and so forth.
- Beliefs, interests, attitudes, views, perceptions, needs, and preferences are all examples of attitudes.
A lot of this information may be gleaned through website statistics and analytics. However, other information must be obtained from more subjective sources and/or extrapolated based on what you know through customer service and sales encounters.
Create a Brand Policy.
Connecting the links between who you are (as a brand) and who your consumers are is the key to excellent brand authenticity. Creating brand standards is one approach to make sense of all of this.
Brand guidelines are essentially written rules and concepts that consistently govern your voice. This contains information about your style choices, the issues you cover and do not discuss keywords, and word choice.
Make Yourself Unique.
Most brands communicate in broad strokes and clichés. The finer the granularity, the better. This appears to be done through authentic research, actual data, accurate quotes, high-value case studies, and social evidence. When you can back up your information with specifics, the audience engages on a much deeper level.
Exploit User-Generated Content.
Using user-generated content is one of the most accepted ways to increase your credibility. When your audience consumes content created by their peers, your brand appears more relatable and in sync with what's happening in the market.
Social media is an excellent platform for gathering and disseminating user-generated material. Consider developing a unique hashtag for your business to help you locate and distribute great information regularly.
Monitoring Your Outcomes.
One of the most often questioned topics among marketers is, "How can we know whether our original content is striking a chord with our audience?" It's an excellent question that may be answered in a variety of ways. However, here are three particular measures that may help you stay on top of things:
- Statistics should be embraced. The initial step is to examine content-specific metrics. Examine data such as the bounce rate, click-through rate, average time on page, and conversion objectives. Positive statistics show that people enjoy what you're creating.
- Feedback. Tracking blog comments is one of the most excellent methods to see if you're hitting a nerve with your readership. If you receive a large number of blog comments – good or bad – it indicates that people are giving consideration and care enough to answer.
- Social sharing tracking. What happens when you post a piece of material on social media? Is it received with crickets, or is it met with individuals sharing your material as a helpful resource for their followers? Social sharing is the easiest and most effective approach to find out if your authentic content is being shared.
If both objective and subjective statistics show that your audience is engaged, this is typically a strong indication that you're on the correct route. Conversely, if you're experiencing a drop in engagement, it might be a sign that you need to change your policy to consider more authenticity and more carefully targeted content.
