It’s inevitable. Every day, consumers everywhere are bombarded by content. Television commercials, blog posts, billboards, pay-per-click advertisements, social media posts, white papers, e-books – there is seemingly no end to the type of content a person might be exposed to on any given day.
With so much content available every day, consumers quite literally have the luxury of picking and choosing the content they want to consume. How can you make sure they choose to consume what you compose? By creating high-quality content, of course.
What Exactly Is High-Quality Content?
The definition of high-quality content is in constant flux because search algorithms are continuously changing. A few years ago, you may have heard that high-quality content was material that included as many keywords as possible. While that’s not quite the antithesis of the current definition, it’s not too far off.
Today, many digital marketers may tell you that high-quality content is material that exceeds 1,000 words in length. With Google preferring long-form content of 1,000 words or more, it’s easy to understand how the explanation just provided is often cited as a contemporary working definition of high-quality content.
Practically speaking, the definition of high-quality content needs to be more broad-based than a minimum number of words. High-quality content needs to be defined by descriptors such as “meaningful” and “relevant” because your content must be both of those things in order to be high quality as it relates to your target market.
In addition, your content must achieve a certain goal for it to be considered high quality. Every piece of material a digital marketer composes is meant to achieve an objective. If the content fails to accomplish its intended goal, it isn’t high quality.
Find Compelling Content Ideas
Now that you have a more detailed understanding of what high-quality content is, it’s time to learn how to create it. Your quest to compose quality content should begin with finding compelling content ideas people will want more information about.
How can you find content ideas that are relevant and meaningful to users? You can review your earlier content and find the pieces that performed the best as they relate to their respective goals or the content that simply earned the most views. Review the subjects those pieces discuss and create sub-topics or research topics related to those subjects.
You can also look at your competitors’ content to find ideas that may resonate with your visitors. If you have a list of keywords, you can visit AnswerthePublic.com, enter a keyword and wait for the website to generate content ideas for you. BuzzSumo is another online source that can help you come up with some content ideas.
Consumers are an oft-overlooked source for content ideas. If consumers are asking questions about your products, services, organization or industry, why not use their inquiries as the basis for various pieces of content?
You can learn some of the questions people are asking by checking social media and the comments sections on your website and blog feed. You can also talk to your sales team and customer service representatives. Depending on your phone system, you may be able to mine your recorded calls for questions revolving around certain keywords as well.
Research Your Topic Exhaustively
It doesn’t matter what kind of fact-based subject you’re going to write about. It’s imperative for you to research the subject you’re going to discuss exhaustively. You want to be perceived as an expert regarding the topics your content covers and research is the only way you can achieve that.
The key to researching a topic is to do so with the goal of improving upon the information that’s already available on the subject. You don’t want to just reiterate the content you read or viewed during your research, after all. You want to offer a unique point of view or bring new information to light. To make your content even more credible, consider citing recent studies or data that support your viewpoint.
Use an Assortment of Media
When it comes to creating high-quality content for the purposes of content marketing, many people instantly think of well-written material like blog posts, landing pages, ebooks, articles, and whitepapers. While having expertly written material is important, it’s not the only kind of content you should prepare.
You should use an assortment of media to share content. You can also prepare videos, pictures, slideshows, playlists, podcasts, screenshots, charts, infographics and more, for example. To choose the right format for your material, it’s vital for you to research your target market and identify how its members prefer to consume content online. If your target market prefers videos, you may want to concentrate your efforts on that format and less on the other options.
Review Your Content Before Publishing It
Even if you’re confident your material is ready to be published, you need to review it at least one more time before you publish it. Too many marketers publish content before they look it over because they’re eager to meet a pressing deadline on their editorial calendar. While meeting deadlines is important, it’s no less critical for you to only publish content that is error-free.
Remember – you want your material to establish you as an expert. If your content is riddled with mistakes, particularly careless ones, you will come across as many things, but an expert won’t be one of them.
Track Your Content’s Performance
The only way you can truly tell if your content is high quality is to measure its performance. Review the goals you set for your content and measure its performance in relation to them. If your material achieved your goals, it’s high quality and you should strive to produce similar material as you move forward.
Work with a Proven Content Marketing Agency
If you want to learn more about creating high-quality content, we encourage you to sign up for one of our training programs. If you lack the internal resources to produce quality content on your own, you should choose a proven content marketing agency to create high-quality material for you.
Musselwhite Marketing has the demonstrated ability to create high-quality content for businesses competing in many industries. Using our content marketing and content writing services, you can bring your content to the next level of quality and beyond. Contact Musselwhite Marketing to schedule a discovery session now.
