What Does It Mean to Create Content for My Web Presence?
If you’re a business owner trying to promote your brand on social media, you’ve probably heard people talk about creating content. But what exactly is behind the concept of content marketing, and why is it important for your web presence?
Reliable and Authoritative Presence
Think about it this way — in many cases, advertising is an interruption to the media we’re trying to consume. You’re watching a great TV show, and then it gets interrupted by commercials. You’re reading a great article in a magazine, but then you have to flip through a few pages of ads. Even your favorite radio programs and podcasts have to take a break to give shameless promos to their sponsors.
But what if what is actually an advertisement was consumable just like the media you’re enjoying? What if it were entertaining and educational, not spammy in a “buy my product or service” kind of way? That’s the idea behind content marketing — you create something that people enjoy, and then they realize it is associated with a brand. This is content that establishes you as a reliable and authoritative presence in your industry, thereby gaining the trust and loyalty of people to your brand. People start to like the content you have to offer, so that must mean your product or service is just as good, right?
While so many aspects of business operations are limited during the coronavirus pandemic, you might find that you have a little more time to dedicate toward creating content — and the payoff could be big.
In fact, that was our approach back in March at the beginning of Maryland’s lockdown. As we detailed in our content marketing case study, after a few months of serious content marketing, putting out a lot of content on social media means that it’s hard for people to miss you.
Among the many statistics we noticed:
Facebook viewership on single videos went up by more than 6,000 views
Tweet impressions went up by 30%
Our website saw more traffic, with unique visitors jumping by 45% and page views increasing by 100%
All this translated to more business, too. We saw four times our monthly goal for new clients!
It’s important to remember that content marketing isn’t an overnight kind of thing. You need to be creating excellent content, and you need to be doing it every day, not just here and there when it’s convenient.
If you’re feeling committed to putting out more content on your social media platforms, here are a few different types you can try tackling:
Blog posts
Got a website? Then you should be blogging! Blogging is an easy way to establish authority for your brand, to increase your SEO keyword use on your site, and to drive traffic from all your social media followers who are going to be clicking the link. The best part is that you can blog about so many different topics.
Need help coming up with your next blog topic? Simply go to Google and type in a few words that are relevant to your industry. Google will try to predict the rest, giving you phrases and questions that are commonly searched for. Use these as a prompt. Another tool is the website Answer The Public. It will give you a list of all of the different questions people are asking online.
Remember that people who are reading online aren’t may not be reading the same way they would if they were going through a textbook. You want to keep your tone light and conversational, and you want to break up the text with bullet points and subheadings where you can.
Videos
Everyone loves watching videos, and all that information you’re divulging with a blog post can be easily delivered by having you speaking on a video. You don’t even need fancy video equipment. Yes, a video camera and microphone will improve the quality, but a smartphone is good enough to meet most of your basic needs.
Don’t let the video be too amateurish, however. Just because you’re sharing it on social media doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have a little bit of professional polish to it. Use a simple editing app like Splice to add fade-ins, fade-outs, transitions, and captions.
Graphics
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but graphics might be even more valuable. Graphics frequently combine illustrations and text, but because the text is designed for visual appeal (it’s larger and bolder, sometimes a different font from typical social media text), it captures your attention to a greater degree. Graphics are a good way of explaining a point about a certain topic. Graphics can be outsourced to a designer, who can create illustrations and graphs with Adobe Illustrator or similar software.
GIFs and Memes
Graphics tend to be informative, whereas GIFs and memes are more for entertainment purposes. That doesn’t mean you should underestimate them — they get great engagement, they’re easy to share, they’re memorable, and they demonstrate a certain relatability. Humor is just another way to leave an impression on customers.
GIFs (short for graphic interchange format) are series of animation or soundless video images that loop on repeat, over and over again. They usually convey some type of emotion or action and are accompanied by a witty caption. GIFs are easy to create either with photoshop or apps like Giphy.
Memes on the other hand are a static picture, usually something recognizable that is pulled from pop culture, and accompanied by text that is superimposed onto the photo itself. Memes, too, can be created with Photoshop or apps like Meme Generator.