Content, as they say, is king and your content can only as good as the effort and psychology techniques woven into it. So if you want to achieve a successful online marketing campaign, dedication to effective and educative content is essential.

Just providing a fantastic product or service simply doesn’t cut it anymore, effective content speaks to the online community and instantly connects with them.

Good contents prime your readers to see you as an authority, it also shows your prospective customers that you’re not solely focused on revenue. In this post, we discuss the 5 key factors you need to consider in order for your content to be successful.

Powerful content can bolster your online marketing by generating leads, as well as facilitating SEO.

With this in mind, let’s look at five key factors for successful content.

1.    Quality

“Quality content” is so much more than a catchy buzzword for marketers. It’s one of the factors that search engines use to determine your rankings, so it’s imperative that your content is up to scratch. Spelling mistakes, typos, and broken links are not acceptable in the digital age.

Introducing an auditing process for your content is a great way of ensuring that your message remains consistent, keywords and key themes are targeted and quality is maintained. For content to be certified as being of quality, it would have to have a pass mark in the subheadings below;

Useful and informative: Your content has to be useful and relevant to the niche you are servicing. If for instance, you are running a blog on the relationship niche, your content has to be something around relationships, affections, feelings, relating with people etc.

Or take for instance you’re launching a site for a restaurant, you can include the location, hours of operation, contact information, menu and a blog to share upcoming events.

Credible: Show your site’s credibility by using original research, citations, links, reviews, and testimonials. An author biography or testimonials from real customers can help boost your site’s trustworthiness and reputation.

High-quality: Your site’s content should be unique, specific and high-quality. It should not be mass-produced or outsourced on a large number of other sites. Keep in mind that your content should be created primarily to give visitors a good user experience, not to rank well in search engines.

Engaging: Bring color and life to your site by adding images of your products, your team or yourself. Make sure visitors are not distracted by spelling, stylistic and factual errors. An excessive number of ads can also be distracting for visitors. Engage visitors by interacting with them through regular updates, comment boxes or social media widgets.

Sites with irrelevant, low-quality content will suffer the consequences of the algorithmic shift. The update aims to eradicate thin and duplicated content, both internally and externally.

2. Powerful Headings And Sub Headings

At the ideation phase, it’s important to establish your predominant target audience and research what your competitors are producing. This way, you can create content on topics that will resonate with the right people.

Once you’ve got your ideas, you also need to make your headings targeted and as engaging as possible. If you’re uninspired when writing a title, how do you think your audience is going to feel? Optimize your content by ensuring that you always include relevant keywords and phrases in your titles and within the copy.

3. Creativity

Let’s be honest: no one likes to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, we like to be educated and entertained through quality, creative and inspiring content.

So get creative. Don’t rely on your tried-and-tested method. Just because that’s the way you’ve always done things doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right approach.

Make the most of relevant, upcoming events and breaking news stories to make your copy instantly connect with your audience.

If you create content for the sake of it, your audience will be able to tell and over-optimized content screams “sell, sell, sell”. So explain what’s in it for the reader and why they should continue to read on. Remember we’re all guilty of skimming online copy when it’s in front of us, so get to the point straight away.

Provide creative content, not a pitch.

4. Useful Content

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What do they want to see? Get to know them and you will soon discover what content appeals to them the most. You can then create tailored and targeted online campaigns for your desired audience from the off.

There isn’t a secret formula for making your content shareable, but a great place to start is to make it useful and value packed. Content that benefits the end user stands a better chance of being shared online and acquiring quality likes too.

Examples of useful content include:

• Infographics
• Videos
• Interactive content like quizzes, polls, surveys, and questionnaires
• User guides
• List format posts

However, this will ultimately depend on your target audience, so remember that it’s important to do your research first before you start creating your content.

5. Frequency

With 3.17 billion Internet users browsing the web every day, it’s never been more important to keep active online on different channels, whether that’s social media, webinars or blogging. This will help increase brand awareness and traffic and will also improve your rankings and conversions in the long run.

So how often should you post on social media for example? Well, it’s all about balance. Too little and you might as well not bother, too much and it becomes spammy. The key is to predict, measure and then repeat.

Below is a brief guide to get you started:

• Twitter: 3 per day
• Facebook: 2 per day
• Google+: 3 per day
• Pinterest: 3 per day
• LinkedIn: 1 per day

A comprehensive content marketing plan can help you target the key areas that you’ve identified and scheduled in promotional activity to share your content.

That said, bear in mind that you don’t always have to stick to your original plan. If you find that a marketing method or content type is performing better than others, it may be time to reassess your approach. Your plan needs to be fluid so that you’re able to adapt to new content ideas.

Let me know your thoughts on the factors for successful content. Do you have any good examples to share? If so, leave a comment below.