The importance of creating informative, eye-catching content

Content marketing is a challenging field in which to work. Anyone who has done it for a while knows that there are certain targets that need to be hit, and points that need to be included. Writing for a purpose always places a certain amount of pressure on the writer, because they know that as well as writing to be read, they are there to meet the above requirements. This is why you can frequently tell that something has been written for a marketing purpose - that flow that is there when something is written “from the heart” is often missing. 

What’s often lost on people is that, among all of the targets a piece of content needs to hit, the most important is that it is readable or watchable. Statistics show that only 2.2% of content generates links from multiple websites. People won’t share something if they aren’t engaged by it themselves. If people aren’t sharing it, then the content might as well simply be an internal business communication - except it usually won’t even have that benefit, because people within the business already know the information within - they’re trying to get it out.

There’s no doubt that it is a challenge to create content that is genuinely informative and eye-catching for an audience, but there are some useful elements that it is worth remembering when you are looking to create something useful and powerful. Try to ensure your content is doing the following:

Be timely

Ask yourself if you would share a piece of content that could have been made at any time in the last 20 years. For most people, topical relevance is the major hook that gets them to read on - if you can write or film something that has a slant that fits into current conversations, then you’re off to a good start.

Make the content match the title

The rule of clickbait is to come up with a title that will get people clicking, but if you’ve ever read the articles that follow a clickbait title, they’re almost invariably recycled filler. So, yes, you should be looking for a title that will catch people’s attention, but make sure that it’s followed by content that matches it. When people click on something that’s titled “30 Hollywood Secrets You Never Knew”, and #2 is “Brad Pitt’s actual first name is William”, they’ll read no further, and probably never visit the site again. Deliver what you promise.

Mix it up

Anyone who recognises the term “pivot to video” will know what happened to the companies that did pivot to video. They almost all suffered huge losses and needed to make significant redundancies. It turns out that people do like video content, but they also like listicles, deep dives, and quizzes, and infographics. Create a mix of content, and you’ll always have a fresh way to communicate a message - and more importantly, an audience to communicate it to.