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Create the Most Valuable Content for Your Audience

When was the last time you contacted a company to request more information about their goods or services (by phone, email, or scheduling a demo)?

If you’re anything like me, it was months ago (if ever).

How should I proceed instead?

Easy. I look up information online and read articles that address my queries.

They probably read brand-provided material from time to time, content that responds to their inquiries, addresses their concerns, keeps them informed about their sector, and engages them with amusing tales and relatable anecdotes.

The material must be dependable and valuable in order for those consumers to find it interesting and trustworthy. How do you go about that? Explore now.

1.Display authority

No, giving your material more authority doesn’t entail acting like the middle school principal addressing a bunch of rowdy kids.

Knowing what you’re talking about and demonstrating it are two characteristics of authoritative content. According to Google’s EAT standards—expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness—it has authority.

In case you weren’t aware, Google uses human raters to assess the reliability and validity of search results. To help these raters, Google has produced guidelines that provide a wealth of information about how Google assesses search rankings. The degree of experience, authority, The trustworthiness contained in the material is one of the key characteristics that distinguishes a high-quality search result from a low-quality one.

In order to establish your know-how, authority, and reliability, you should:

Take advantage of what you already know by using examples that highlight the ideas and concepts you’re attempting to convey.
Display your work. Mention any pertinent articles you’ve written on subjects that go beyond the scope of this post.
Use research – Incorporate numbers and figures from your reading and research. Ensure that the material is current and includes native source links.
Update the author bios on your website. The authors’ experience, how they obtained it, and credentials should all be mentioned in the bios. List each and every piece of content they’ve produced, if any.

2.Be thorough and educational

It’s likely that readers are searching for answers when they access your information. Make sure to offer solutions.

It’s true that saying rather than doing, no doubt. Here are some pointers to assist:

Investigate the queries your readers are posing. In this case, topic, audience, and keyword research are quite helpful. They aid in your comprehension of your readers’ primary concerns and search terms. After that, you may concentrate on producing content that responds to those queries.
Maintain your focus on one subject – Limit the scope of your material. Investigate a few significant facets of a single broad subject or issue. By doing so, you can go into greater detail and offer insightful information rather than simply summarising what your readers already know.
Create a purpose statement for each item of material you produce. Determine what that content piece will accomplish for your audience before you start drafting. How will it benefit them? Once you’ve done that, make sure the material serves that aim. Make the reader feel as though they learned something new or had their problem solved.
Naturally, shorter content pieces won’t be as educational as longer information (generally, anything over 1,500 words is considered long form). Because of this, a lot of marketers and SEO specialists support longer blog posts and articles. Furthermore, studies have shown that long-form content produces more backlinks, including one from Backlinko.

3.Easily readable

Even though the third method is straightforward, many people misunderstand it. It all comes down to readability. That goes beyond just using proper grammar and spelling. It also concerns:

Writing to the comprehension of your readers
writing in the format that will be used to display your words (that means electronic screens both big and small)
Writing with meaning and clarity
utilising readability concepts like hierarchy, white space, contrast, and consistency to format the text logically and clearly.

4.Express an opinion

Does worthwhile information resemble other relevant articles in terms of appearance, style, and feel? No.

Your content will just contribute to the noise if it offers nothing original, offers the same solutions that your colleagues in the field do, and sounds identical to them.

Instead, make your content stand out. Your CDF, or “content differentiation factor,” is what I refer to as.

Give your readers a new perspective on a stale subject. Consider the competition and make an effort to improve or differ from it.
Give it your personal twist, viewpoint, or perspective that only you can offer.
Add individuality to your material – Some people find it simple to do this through writing. Others like audio or video, and some believe an interview with another writer brings out their personalities more effectively. Think outside the box or devise a strategy to go past it.

5.Provide gratification

In the end, enjoyable content is valuable content. Confusion is replaced by new information. The readers are satisfied.

All of the previously mentioned recommendations are combined into satisfying material. For instance, if your goal is to introduce your novice readers to a complex subject, you should use comprehensible vocabulary, define unfamiliar terms, and stay away from introducing advanced subjects. In order to examine the solutions and determine how you may improve on them, you must analyze high-ranking content if the goal is to differentiate your content.

But satisfaction also incorporates two other suggestions:

Don’t forget any important details; go through the subject thoroughly. If you write about creating apple pie, you must discuss both the filling and the crust. The on-page and off-page elements that affect rankings must be covered in SEO writing.

Don’t leave the reader hanging; provide closure. Your piece should be finished with a succinct conclusion that restates the key idea (or points). If at all possible, include a closing statement that succinctly summarises what the reader has learned.

Important content is more important than ever.

You must give value wherever you can if you want readers to care about both your content and your brand.

The best way to gain respect and attention is by producing useful information.

Ads are irritating. Sales spells seem slick.

Contrarily, are you content? Content has the ability to provide the millions of information seekers online with a breath of fresh air. As opposed to noise and false information, it offers value.

How to Use Video for Website Optimization

The benefit of a video-first marketing strategy is becoming more and more clear as video steadily gains ground in the field of content marketing. No matter where it is used in the sales funnel, the media has the capacity to enhance the audience experience, as seen by the never-ending flood of jaw-dropping figures.

Material marketers may use an asset-conversion process to convert text- and static-based content into videos in order to make video the mainstay of their strategy.

1.User and client/customer feedback

Platforms for analytics provide a wealth of information on how people arrived at your site and what they did while they were there, but in order to go further, it’s critical to understand what matters to visitors on a more personal level. In this aspect, survey tools like SurveyMonkey and others are quite helpful, but, like other text-based communication tools, they lack the ability to foster trust that comes from face-to-face engagement.

The benefit of the new video-based feedback tools becomes clear in this situation. Business representatives may create customised video messages using Typeform’s new VideoAsk platform, for instance, to get audience input on blog pieces, webinars, and events and to answer customer care inquiries.

Audience members can react using their own films, audio, text, or multiple-choice answer lists with this asynchronous communication tool. Customer feedback films are a visual feedback medium that also allows marketing teams to gain crucial qualitative information from customers’ body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions beyond simple data analysis.

2.Team biographies

The team bios on your website should be converted or supplemented since this is one of the best ways to humanise your business and increase trust. This should be at the top of your list for video optimization. What better way to reveal the faces behind your brand? What better way than to showcase brief, straightforward films of your team members discussing themselves and their responsibilities from within your office?

You may approach this type of material in a variety of ways, from simple smartphone and webcam movies to elegant, professional productions with illustrative b-roll of your team members at work.

3.FAQs

Businesses are constantly seeking methods to enhance customer service and lower the number of support tickets they receive. In fact, industry experts today believe that in the digital era, customer experience quality is a more significant brand differentiation than even pricing.

The importance of a solid FAQ page on this front cannot be overemphasised. In addition to giving potential consumers the knowledge they need to make a purchase choice, FAQs also save your staff time by avoiding the need to answer routine inquiries, and they may even help you rank better in search results.

According to studies, the majority of people prefer video to text when interacting with brands. Information delivered via video is also more likely to be remembered than information delivered via text. You may outperform your text-only rivals by converting or complementing your FAQ responses with quick, informative videos.

To achieve the best results, keep each video brief and focused on a single response (or topic). You can convey your message using a spokesperson style, motion-graphic text, or educational skits.

4.Live chat

Live chat has become a well-liked and successful digital marketing medium, much like video.

Talking directly to potential customers via live chat while using video is a fantastic way to increase customer trust by further humanising service encounters. This strategy may be especially helpful for businesses that want to provide customers with a more direct, personalized demo experience for tangible items or for service providers wishing to give customers in-person consultations.

5.Thank-you letters

Thank you pages are a crucial touchpoint for nurturing leads by enhancing the user experience and developing brand loyalty—another commonly underutilised website feature. The thank you page is what Neil Patel may refer to as a FITD opportunity. People who take one action, such as signing up for a newsletter, purchasing something, or participating in a lead-magnet offer, are more likely to do similar follow-up activities when prompted.

Utilize the FITD opportunity on your thank you pages to invite visitors to take an additional action, such as completing a survey, joining your social media channels, or using a discount coupon.

Improve video conversions

Adding or converting to video provides your business with genuine life and offers a useful face-to-face chance for contact, regardless of whether it’s your thank you page messaging, FAQs, team bios, live chats, or another technique.

To Image optimization for SEO

Images are crucial for SEO as well as increasing the usability, appeal, and engagement of your content for consumers.

Your content has the best chance of succeeding with SEO, if you comprehend the fundamentals of image optimization.

How does image optimization work?

In order to improve user engagement, photos must be produced and delivered in the best possible format, size, and resolution. In order for search engine crawlers to read photos and grasp page context, it also entails appropriately identifying them with metadata.

The user experience and website load times both increase when you can minimise the size of photos without sacrificing quality. This may help increase search engine rankings, which in turn raises consumer engagement, conversions, and retention rates.

1.Image resizing

File size is not the same as image size. Image dimensions are referred to as image size (e.g., 1024 pixels by 680 pixels). File size is the amount of storage (e.g., 350 kilobytes).

Higher resolution and larger sized images will significantly slow down the loading of your page. They should be scaled down and sized for the web even though they are effective for printed products.

Save in the proper format.

Each of PNG, JPEG, and GIF has advantages. For photographs with a lot of colour, I advise using JPEG, and for straightforward images, PNG.

Select the appropriate compression ratio

Both file size and picture quality are influenced by how effectively an image is compressed; the smaller the file, the worse the image quality.

To determine which compression rate and file format is optimum for each image, experiment. A save-for-the-web option is available in several image editing programs, including Adobe Photoshop, that automatically reduces the file size while enhancing image quality.

These programs and plug-ins can be useful even if you don’t use Photoshop:

Tools for improving images

Affinity Photo
ImageOptim (Mac only)
JPEG Mini
Pixlr (JPEG optimization)
OptiPNG

WordPress image-optimization plugins

ImageRecycle
Optimus Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimizer
ShortPixel
TinyPNG
WP Smush
Yoast SEO

Speed test

How can you determine whether the page load speeds for your website are rapid enough after you’ve optimised your images? Test the speed of your website with one of these tools:

GTmetrix
Pingdom
Google PageSpeed Insights
WebPageTest
WebWait

2.Improve file names for images

To maximise SEO potential, give the file a name that contains pertinent, elaborative keywords. Include the target keywords at the start, and use hyphens to separate them. Avoid using underscores because they prevent search engines from “seeing” the words independently.

Both people and search engines should be able to understand the file names. Rename images with descriptive titles, such as lady-having-a-haircut-in-a-salon.jpg, if the original name for a picture of a woman at a hair salon is salon234.jpg.

3.Employ alt tags

While viewers could comprehend the visual, search engine spiders want hints. Search engines can’t correctly index your image content without replacement text.

An effective alt tag offers context and benefits people who are blind. The fact that search engines can read the alternative text to determine the page’s ranking is particularly beneficial when a bug stops an image from loading. The alt tag should provide more information than the file name. Aim for 10 to 15 to adequately describe the image.

4.Create mobile-friendly pictures

Crawlers primarily examine a site’s mobile version since Google’s algorithm utilises mobile-first indexing. As a result, your photographs ought to be compatible with mobile devices. How? The quickest response is to make sure your website’s pictures and layout are mobile-responsive.

Although some website builders and layouts automatically scale photos, you may customize an image’s size based on the width of a device. Add some custom CSS code to your website to do this. For more information on how to make your photos responsive, see this short guide.

5.Improve the picture’s title

WordPress typically uses the file name to determine the image’s title. To edit it with the required keywords in the same way as file names, if you don’t use WordPress or the title doesn’t describe the image, do so.

Although they are less significant for SEO, image names can help the alt text by adding more information. Consider using a quick call to action like “purchase now” or “download now” in the image title to increase user interaction.

6.Add captions

Image captions, or the text immediately below photos, could not have an immediate influence on SEO. However, captions are visible and can enhance the website experience in contrast to file names and alt text. Enhancing user experience and engagement metrics can indirectly improve SEO with the addition of captions.

7.Use original photos

Using stock photographs is acceptable, but because many other websites probably do the same, they won’t necessarily improve your search rankings. Similar to how original textual material is better for SEO, it makes sense to post original photos.

8.Make sure the text matches the photos.

If your language doesn’t provide enough details to describe a picture, increase the description to help search engines identify the relevance of your photographs.

9.Include organised image data

Search engines will present your photographs as rich results when you include structured data on your pages. For product photos, videos, and recipe images, Google Images offers structured data. For instance, it adds a badge to an image if it recognises that it is accompanied with text, such as a recipe.

To learn how to add structured data to your sites while staying within search engine criteria, see Google’s general principles for structured data.

10.Make use of site maps

In order to inform Google and other search engines about how your site’s material is organised, Google defines a site map as “a file where you may list the web pages of your site.” In other words, it’s a file that includes a map of the material on your website.

Site maps are a crucial component of SEO since they inform search engines about the pages and organizational structure of your website. Include them in your sitemap to make sure that memes, pictures, video thumbnails, and other types of images are seen by search engine crawlers.

Include the title, description, URL, caption, and licensing details for each image entry. Include the title, description, location URL, thumbnail URL, and URL to the raw video file for video entries.

You may use ingilizce Yoast SEO, which automatically adds visual material to a site map if your website is hosted on WordPress.

maximise your image resources

Before you post any images, keep these tactics in mind if you’re having trouble getting your work seen. By using these picture optimization tactics, you can make your material more appealing to both search engines and human readers.

Make a content marketing plan.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to begin your content marketing campaign confident that it would achieve its goals? How gratifying would it be to know that it combines the insights, thoughts, and concentration necessary to develop tales that enthral your audience and win them over as devoted customers?

While we are unable to provide a secret formula that ensures success, we can pinpoint the essential strategy used by the most successful content marketers: A content marketing plan is documented.

Why? The simple response is that developing strategies appears challenging. Plotting all the intricacies requires time, thinking, and study. You cannot just adopt a tactic and use it throughout your company.

This procedure will assist you in developing a content marketing plan that will direct your efforts and offer important benefits at every level of your programme. A strategy essentially consists of three decisions:

Why: For commercial and marketing purposes

Who – audience demands

How: distinctive brand narrative

1.Describe your company’s mission.

intends and objectives

Identify the business problems and objectives that content marketing will try to solve. In other words, decide why you’re producing content and how it will benefit your company.

Despite the fact that your content marketing programme may aid in addressing various marketing difficulties, the discipline functions best when concentrated on a specific, top priority objective. A simple approach to help with this is to find the areas in your funnel where the team is having the greatest difficulty achieving the goals.

In order to focus on the content marketing objective, respond to questions like these:

What business requirements are we now attempting to address through marketing efforts? If lead or demand creation is the problem, for instance, the objective can be to increase brand authority in the industry or quicken the website’s conversion rate.
How much of a necessity is it? How much will addressing it advance our objectives? Compare the business value from each target market if you’re unsure. It probably makes sense to focus your content on the demands of that market if one generates more money or requires higher conversion expenses.
What sets you apart from the competition? Why should we spend more time and money on content marketing than we do on other aspects of our marketing?
What do we want to achieve with this process? What impact will success have on our company?

Advantages and hazards for our company

Examine your content goals from an organizational perspective, even if it’s not crucial to the process of developing a plan. This aids in strategically positioning your content marketing effort to obtain the funding and assistance needed to achieve long-term success.

Here are some topics to think about and some resources to further your research:

Which business strategy works the best?
How can we win over the stakeholders?
What if we create errors or the application doesn’t work?

2.Establish who you are

audience profiles

Understanding who you will target with your content and what value it will offer them is crucial since content marketing is all about assisting members of your audience in achieving their goals. For your plan, create personalities for your audience.

Personas give you a useful overview of the distinguishing characteristics of your target audience, including their demographics, informational requirements, desired outcomes, and preferences for engaging with your content.

Additionally, they must take into consideration the context:How do their actions and preferences change as they progress through the marketing funnel? Who else could weigh in on the choice-making process? How could their emotional requirements and individual circumstances affect the purchases they make?

Even though creating a thorough buyer persona for each target group might be challenging, you can start by writing down your responses to the following queries based on the data you’ve gathered:

Who are the viewers? What are its defining qualities and distinctive features?
What functions do its members perform? What does a regular day for them look like?
What must they accomplish? What knowledge gaps prevent us from achieving those objectives?
In what part of our funnel are they? What information will best benefit them in moving on to the next phase?
Why should people care about our business as a provider of goods or services or as a symbol of the things we value?

Just like explaining your why, concentrating on a particular target persona might be useful at first. Choose between a high-value target that your organisation has had trouble gaining traction with in the past and the group that your content can assist the most.

3.Determine the way

Identifying the tales your brand is best positioned to tell and the value they offer the audience is the final and possibly most crucial piece of the strategy creation jigsaw.

Make a mission statement for your content to achieve this. The guiding principles for the content experience are provided, and it sets your brand’s narrative efforts apart from everything else vying for your consumers’ attention.

Identifying your distinctive narrative

Your brand’s distinct understanding of the importance of content, the target demographic it will cater to, and the objectives and values it will support should all be included in your content mission statement. Additionally, it can offer more specific information on the creative side, such as the types of stories you plan to tell (for example, the subjects you’ll concentrate on), how those stories will take shape (for example, your primary content formats and platforms), and how your content assets will work together to create a comprehensive brand experience.

further assistance in developing your strategic foundation

A solid strategic foundation combines your goals, your audiences, and your brand story to bring all of your projects into greater perspective. This is valid whether you’re launching a content marketing campaign, changing your company strategy, or adding new marketing priorities or consumer concerns. Your content marketing programme will be well-positioned for success if you include these elements.

How to Ace the Individual Interview

I was informed that I had an unusual voice from an early age. I tended to whisper a lot since it was a bit too low for a girl. My large, echoic childhood home is to blame for the whispering. You had to whisper if you didn’t want mom to overhear you chatting about trivial stuff on the phone.

Before doing interviews for market research and editorial purposes, I was unaware of the value of my whisper-like speech. People found it easy to confide in me because of my calm voice, which I believe somehow inspires trust in others. I was subsequently requested to participate in further interviews, and the process was repeated until I discovered that I loved it. And with time, I improved at it.

Interviewing for content marketing purposes

I’ve learned a lot via hundreds of interviews, including how to manage conflict, maintain a lively dialogue, and craft insightful questions. And conducting interviews is a crucial skill for content marketers.

One of the uses is

Editorial – Interviews are a great way to gather unique insights for your blog, podcast, vlog, book, or other media.

Research: My favourite projects at my firm, Mantis Research, combine quantitative surveys with a few one-on-one interviews that add richness to the narrative that companies are attempting to convey.

Customers: Do you need some fresh content ideas? Customer interviews can provide fascinating material. How to achieve this is covered in a fantastic piece by Stephen Dupont in CCO magazine.

1.Align the interviewer and the subject

Similarly, if you’re doing an interview with a CEO for a survey, make sure the interviewer comes across as informed and credible. No, you won’t locate another CEO to interview the CEO, but you should pick an interviewer who is knowledgeable enough to help the CEO relax and provide thoughtful answers.

2.Be careful while selecting your recording and transcription technique.

Every interviewer dreads misplacing a tape and having to start again. I’ve only experienced that once, and fortunately I was also transcribing in real time—which, as I’ll explain later, is generally not a good idea. I normally use a different device for live interviews (and for high-value interviews, I set my iPhone app to record in parallel). I use the Voice Memos app on my iPhone for phone interviews (or via Skype, where I rely on Call Recorder, a Skype plug-in).

3.Conduct further research.

Do your studies in advance of the interview. It’s important to research the background, field of study, publications, and accomplishments of your topic. I even search online for interview records to watch how others act. I was happy that I had listened to several of Fran Lebowitz’s prior interviews before I spoke with her a year ago.

4.Consider your path of inquiry.

I usually prepare some questions for my interview subjects, but I try not to prepare too much. When you over prepare, you often lose focus and become oblivious to potential questions that may be asked during the interview. The majority of my questions (sometimes more) may not match my plan, but in general, I provide an overview of the topics I want to learn about as well as suggestions for ways to pick up on things that we may touch on.

5.Avoid sharing questions beforehand

If someone asks for my questions, I will just provide the bare minimum because I absolutely dislike releasing them in advance. First off, if you share questions, your interviewee can over prepare and come out as stiff in the process. Additionally, it places the locus of control in the interviewee’s hands, making it less likely for them to divulge unanticipated or private information. Finally, making your strategy public makes it more challenging to veer from it.

The interview

1.Avoid fawning

It’s easy to fall into the “I’m such a big fan” inclination during celebrity interviews. Don’t. It’s uncomfortable to hear this all day long from famous individuals. Don’t mention anything about your celebrity infatuation until you have something important to say about them, like how a movie they made altered your life. Think of them like you would any other professional.

2.Give background

Inquire your subjects if they have any queries regarding the target audience or the intended usage of the interview. It serves as an icebreaker, and the audience’s knowledge is frequently helpful in shaping the replies.

3.Request consent before recording

Ask for permission to record the interview if you plan to do so, and be sure to make it clear that you will only be using the tape for transcription. And never give anyone else access to the transcription other than your transcriber.

4.Ask the opening query.

Your first query ought to be a bit of a softball; it should have a straightforward resolution and avoid touchy topics. Before asking the challenging questions, you should get to know the candidate, just as you wouldn’t ask a personal question on a first date.

How to begin a stride

1.Be aware of your pace

Successful interviews frequently have a pleasant pace. The art of digging deeper and gaining confidence requires practice. Building rapport and learning additional information may be achieved by structuring your inquiries in a progression from simple and informal to probing and genuine.

2.Veer off the course

Be willing to go off course throughout the interview. Likewise, go back to your initial inquiries if one detour doesn’t yield any results. Another good reason to always utilise a recording device is that you can simply make mid-interview course changes if you’re not transcribing or taking notes.

3.Take into account strange inquiries that probe

Over the years, I’ve developed a few questions that I think are both bizarre and beautiful since they are unexpected and fantastic because, occasionally, my topic exposes a lot in response.

We’ve all heard of the classic motif known as the hero’s journey, in which the protagonist sets out to track down and slay a monster. That monster can occasionally take the form of a real-world person or problem, or it can occasionally exist in a psychic or spiritual dimension. What monster do you have?

Although the query led to some difficult situations, it also elicited some really moving and intimate replies.

4.Understand the value of silence.

The interviewer’s armoury includes the potent weapon of silence. Do not be uncomfortable with the stillness. Sit it down. Sometimes the person you’re interviewing is coming up with a response and needs some time to let it solidify. Sometimes the subject is debating whether or not to reveal the truth. The likelihood that you’ll hear something intriguing improves if you wait patiently through stillness.

5.Avoid profiting from suffering

If you foster enough warmth and camaraderie, an interviewee could occasionally divulge something really intimate and even upsetting. I never utilise information. That someone gives me, that is extremely personal without their express consent. One famous person I spoke with revealed something so intimate and moving that I wondered if he would ever want to share it. He did give us the go-ahead to print those remarks, but I wanted to make sure he was at ease. It involves treating your topic like a person.

6.Avoid bringing attention to oneself

I’ve seen conversations when the interviewer starts out by sharing his or her opinions on the subject in an attempt to establish oneself as a peer. Avoid doing this. You are allowed to introduce a thought or statement to start the conversation or guide the flow, but you must do it in a supportive capacity.

7.Describe the post-interview procedure clearly.

Finish your interview by describing the following stages in detail, including if they will evaluate the final interview and/or layout and the anticipated launch date. Prior to pressing “publish,” be sure to ping them so they may share the interview with their networks.

Learn about interviews.

If you do interviews frequently, learn the interviewing process. There is much to be learned from other fields, such as literature on public speaking, negotiating, and even mindfulness. I’d be interested in hearing about the tools that you as an interviewer find most helpful, as well as tales of your best or most disastrous interviews.