Marketing continues to change at a rapid pace. Content marketing is changing right before our eyes.
Over the past few years I have been a big support of content marketing. I have seen the value in creating quality content on blog sites as well as continually updating content on company websites.
Today – I believe we are going through another transition with respect to content marketing.
Content in the past was about telling stories, being knowledge experts, curating information. Today, content takes on even more and it will continue to move in a new direction. In the future, content will take on the following:
- Provide “quick” direction to people seeking information – Direct links to specific information
- Need to be better organized on websites. (Content Navigation)
- Need to be updated and look more like news releases, simple, to the point
- Will need to be backed up with media: audio, video, image
- Need to be validated with the author’s name and dated for more reliability
- Need to be written and organized to show value or next steps.
Why is this so important to understand?
The internet is still in its infancy. We are just beginning to scrape the surface of its potential. The mobile experience is showing us that time is of the essence and that people are becoming less patient. They are wanting more of a “now” experience. Who has time to read pages and pages of information when you can ultimately search for a particular piece of information and find it with a few clicks.
Who does it affect?
We are all affected in some way.
Clients have to be the focus here. If a company cannot provide information in the form of results or answers to questions in a timely manner, clients will quickly figure this out and move on to another option.
Client service is a premium. Our service staff need access to information to quickly provide to clients seeking the information. Our systems need to be built with a goal for more real-time experience. It is a constant state of re-engineering processes to make them better an more efficient.
What can be done?
Examine where people are going the most for information on your site. (This can be done with programs like Google Analytics) Look for ways to make this information more easily available to clients. .
Look at incorporating more media into your content.
Focus on issues and topics that are pertinent to our clients. Stop wasting people’s time with jokes or information that is not related to your company.
Finally…
I am really looking at this topic from a number of different perspectives and it really is the key to getting things right going forward. There is a huge movement away from company websites to social media sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and others. People want information quickly and when they go to your site, they need to be able to navigate your site to be able to find this information quickly. Content is good if it is organized in a simple manner and it is easy to access.
I used to believe that content needed to be fresh every day to make a difference. Now, I believe content needs to not only be fresh but organized much better if we hope to bring clients back to our websites. I really think sites like Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram are competitors. It is up to us as marketers to communicate our message on these sites and do a much better job of bringing people to our websites and provide them with an experience that they will want to come back to.
Content marketing is alive and well. It is a matter of refocusing more on the right content to bring people back.
Picture Source: Pixabay
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Content Marketing Transition
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