What Makes Great Content?

Great content is one of the strongest tools in any digital marketer’s arsenal, as it can captivate, inspire and encourage readers to take action. Poor content, however, can bore and turn away potential customers, reducing the likelihood that they’ll ever return to your website or interact with your brand. As the Content Executive at Embryo, I thought I’d share with you what I believe makes content brilliant, so that you can integrate these beliefs into your strategies, and keep your customers coming back for more.

Emotional Impact

Though I believe that an endless number of factors contribute to truly great content, if I had to pick the most important factor, it would be the emotional impact a piece of content has. People are more likely to interact with content that makes them feel something, so making sure that people are invested and care about what you’re putting out there is the best way to make sure your content is actually doing something. Impact on your readers means impact on your business, so it’s vital that your content provokes feeling among your audience.

Hannah, our Content & Marketing Manager, told me about why she thinks emotion in content is so important:

“For me, it’s all about how you leave the reader feeling. Do they feel like you’ve understood them? Do they feel motivated to learn more about the product/service? Great website content needs to get the tone of voice right, and present the company’s messages and values in ways that make the reader want more.”

Content should encourage sharing and interaction, and triggering an emotional response is a huge part of that. If people connect with your content, they want the people they know to see it too. When your followers share content, not only does your reach expand, your bond with those followers becomes stronger. You can also increase the likelihood of other people sharing your content by sharing theirs. This is especially useful for industry-related businesses and improving your reputation. Being creative when you share a piece of content, and not just copying and pasting the first paragraph in your social media posts when sharing content will also encourage your audience to interact with it.

Tailored Content

Tailoring your content to the platform you’re posting it on is also vital to its success. Everyone with an interest in communications knows that “the medium is the message”, and this is especially true when it comes to good content. Your audience on Instagram is different to that on LinkedIn for example. Knowing who is reading your content, and where they’re reading it, is one of the best ways to make sure it is as effective as it can be.

Someone who knows everything there is to know about different online platforms is our Social Media Executive, Ronnie:

“Content should leave the reader feeling a certain emotion after reading it. If it doesn’t do that, it wasn’t worth posting. For me, in my world of social media, content should cause virality, which is impossible without emotion. My day-to-day job is deciding what to do for clients so that their audience thinks ‘I want to share this’. To do this, I have to understand the mind of the user and determine how to tap into it.”

Uniqueness

Content also needs to be unique to be great. The days of copying and pasting as many keywords as you can find into a post are long gone, and Google will now actually penalise your content if it’s plagiarised. Quick, cheap and easy filler content just won’t cut it anymore, and it could be hurting your business. You should also put effort into making original content, and not just re-hash someone else’s content for your own gain. Your page has to have different, suitable content to make sure others will link to it, boosting your content’s performance. Longform, quality original content can do wonders for your search engine rankings, and get you those all-important clicks and conversions.

Usefulness

The usefulness of content is what drives people to become invested in it. Content should have answers to reader’s questions, or provide them with genuine, quality information. When people look for information about a product, if your company can tell them everything they need to be an informed consumer, it will increase conversions and considerably improve your ROI. Useful content will improve the integrity and reliability of your brand in the minds of consumers and competitors and make your company the authority in your field. Using images and infographics to get your points across can also be a fantastic way to provide consumers with information they really need.

SEO Optimisation

In order for content to be successful online, it has to be optimised for SEO. Creating titles and subheadings incorporating keywords you want to rank for is vital, as well as making sure the content is intelligent, natural-sounding and accurate. Longform, thorough content ranks very well on Google’s algorithm, as does easily readable text in short paragraphs. Paying attention to details like alt-text and meta descriptions will also boost your rankings.

Our Director James looks at content from an SEO perspective:

“What makes great content, for me as an SEO, is something that does two things at the same time – is very easy to read and take actions from, for the web visitor – and helps Google to understand exactly what the page is about in no uncertain terms. Only a tiny percentage of web content ever works on both levels.”

With so much to think about, it can seem overwhelming to write good content, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. At Embryo we’re passionate about content, and can work with you and your business to make sure your content is truly great. Contact us on 0161 327 2635 and see how we can help make your content the best it can be.