6 Reasons Why You Should Be Creating Quality Content

5 minutes read

You’ve probably heard it before in conferences and read it in blogs: create quality content. It gets repeated often enough that some of you’ve probably grown weary of it. But there’s a reason why pundits, speakers, and influencers keep pounding on the same topic time and again.

Quality content creation is not just a buzzword. It’s not just a fad. It’s a means of meeting the needs of people.

When users go online, they are looking for information they can utilise, consume, enjoy, share. Whether they are doing research for a product they plan on buying, checking out tourist attractions for their next vacation, or looking for a car repair service that fits the bill, users are always looking for content.

If you’re running a business in Dubai, it’s in your best interest to meet your target market where their need is – before any of your competition does. Still not convinced it’s worth the time and effort?

Here are 7 reasons why you should be creating content for your business, and why you should’ve started yesterday:

1. Generates Exposure and Leads

In this day and age, if you’re not online, you’re falling behind. Problem is, just being online doesn’t quite cut it anymore. You’ve got to have a presence. You need people’s eyes on your brand and business. And it isn’t easy getting people to pay attention in the digital marketplace.

You’ve got to be creative. Generate hype. Get people buzzing. And you’ve got to do it fast.

Studies have shown that people’s average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds. You have that limited timeframe to catch the attention of the user, make a pitch, and bust out your call to action.

The best way to do that? Create content.

Need proof? Just take a look at the viral marketing campaign that rocketed Old Spice to success. Here’s a simple breakdown by the numbers:

• 364 million+ views, 670,000+ subscribers on Youtube
• 219,000+ Twitter followers
• 220,000 Vine loops
• 107{7763190c2940bc922582f128c4646ce172bb5ab5f2af15fda6a3585effc19535} sales increase roughly a month after the viral marketing campaign

It got people talking about the brand, and sharing their branded content online.

Churning out and sharing engaging content online allows you to capture the attention of online users, turning them into prospects.

The more you put your brand out there – through content that people engage with and share – the better your chances of acquiring more leads.

2. Helps Attract Repeat Business

Discerning customers are often loyal clients. They do their research diligently because they want to make sure they get the best value for their money. It doesn’t matter if there are cheaper alternatives; if you’ve won them over, there’s very little that can change their mind.

To win them over, however, you must prove your business, brand, product, or service is worth their money, and more importantly, their time.

And the best way to do that is by producing valuable, consumer-targeted content. Win their trust by establishing yourself as an authority in your industry or field of expertise. Share your knowledge of your product or service.

Show people your product works, and you won’t even have to sell it.

The more people you win over with trustworthy content, the more you’ll enjoy repeat business from loyal customers. That, in itself, is a win. Why?

Statistics indicate loyal customers are worth up to 10x as their initial purchase, while acquiring new clients can cost 5x more than retaining current customers.

3. Boosts Page Rank/Web Authority

Any business that has a website wants to get on page 1 of search engine results pages (SERP). It’s easy to see why:

• Page 1 of Google’s organic SERP captures 71{7763190c2940bc922582f128c4646ce172bb5ab5f2af15fda6a3585effc19535} of web traffic
• First position on Page 1 gets 1/3 of all clicks
• Google processes 167 billion searches/month
• Google owns more than 70{7763190c2940bc922582f128c4646ce172bb5ab5f2af15fda6a3585effc19535} of the world market share for search

By sheer size alone, it’s easy to see why marketers and business owners cannot afford not to strive for Page 1 results. To get your website there, though, you need to make sure your website is properly optimised for search.

Search Engine Land has a pretty comprehensive guideline on the website factors that affect your SEO.

At the top of the list? Content Quality. If your website features content that users want, use, or enjoy, they will keep coming back. Google will take that as a sign your website has credibility, authority, and reputability, and thus deserves to be the first choice for queries related to what your site offers.

When you get to 1^st page status, people will increasingly trust your site (reasonable, considering Google uses more than 200 quality factors to determine page ranking). The result is more growth and traffic for your website.

4. Empowers Social Media Engagement

Engaging in social media is essential to improving brand awareness. The stats speak for themselves:

• Facebook has around 2.05 billion monthly active users
• Youtube boasts of roughly 1.5 billion users, enjoying a billion hours of video watching every day
• Social media advertising hauled in $31 bn worldwide in 2016, growing double in the past two years
• More than 50 million businesses use Facebook Business Pages
• 2 million businesses advertise on Facebook

With the level of engagement on social media, though, your business needs to find a way to rise above the noise.

The best way to do that is by creating unique, share-worthy content. When you consistently create content that users genuinely want to share to others on social media, you won’t have to spend a dime advertising yourself – people will organically share your content, resulting in increasing brand awareness and exposure!

Generate interest in your product by featuring what makes it so awesome! But more importantly, let people see it in action. A well-made video, a juicy infographic, an awe-inspiring photo, or an informative blog could drum up talk around your brand.

5. Fresh Content Gives Google Something New to Crawl

Search engines are in the business of providing the right answers to people’s questions. In Google’s case, it analyses all the webpages and sites it has cached on a regular basis to make sure it provides the most accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive results to user queries.

According to Amit Singhal, former software engineer and senior VP at Google, the search engine uses a sophisticated algorithm that allows it to analyse and index the entire web for fresh content.

So when you update your site with fresh, unique, valuable content, Google will take that into consideration in determining the “freshness score” of your website – one of the many ranking signals it uses to determine website and content quality.

If your site offers better, more updated content that answers users’ questions, your site will look better in the eyes of Google, giving you a better chance of ranking higher in the SERP.

6. Gives Your Brand A Voice

People have a natural tendency to seek a sense of connection with the things they use, work with, or consume. Brand personality allows you to connect with your target audience, and carve out a niche in your market. It also improves your brand retention.

If you want to appeal to a more youthful audience, you’ll want a brand personality that’s carefree, exciting, fun. On the other hand, if your business is more “power suit and black tie”-oriented, then you want a brand personality that’s serious and direct.

And there’s no better medium to express your brand personality than through your content. How you create, sculpt, and feature your content can largely determine public perception of your brand.

Create content that reflects and amplifies your brand personality, and use that voice in all your marketing efforts. This way, you strengthen your brand’s identity as well as your connection with your target market.

Conclusion

There are plenty more reasons why any business or brand should focus on creating quality content from the get go. But these ones stand as out as some of the most tangibly important.

Create content that’s well-thought, engaging, and valuable, and you’ll have a strong foundation for all your marketing efforts.