How can you create high-quality content to hold onto your customers?

Reminder: What is ‘content’? In digital marketing content is simply a piece of information that is available electronically. It is the text (keywords), images and their descriptions or even the page title.

Is the saying “Content is King“ constantly on your mind and keeping you awake at night? Read the following advice to improve your content and put an end to those night terrors:

1. Create digestible information
No one understands gobbledygook!

…No not in the edible sense, but producing information in a variety of forms; article, blog post, video, image or even memes. High-quality content should be original, rich and effective. Use words that your visitors can understand instead of using complicated jargon where users spend most of their time using a dictionary than actually digesting your information. Say goodbye to Jean-Claude Van Damme and his “Air is beautiful, yet you cannot see it. It's soft, yet you cannot touch it. Air is a little like my brain“.
Don’t just create content to say you have content, show-off your page to your visitors in an original and impressive way.

REMEMBER

• Use different forms of content: articles, videos, images, memes
• Use understandable words

2. Showcase your keywords
Your mission if you choose to accept it: IMPRESS

Remember that user’s don’t read everything…we’re all guilty of this… a quick skim read and we think we've got all the information. So think about putting words in bold and placing the important keywords in optimal places. For example, if a visitor arrives to one of your pages and isn’t ‘wow’ed’ in the first 5 seconds then they won’t stick around to understand what’s going on. They will go in search for a simpler solution. Make sure the information you want your users to see first is clear and visible. Their eyes need to be drawn to the targeted content straightaway.
Here's where you can place your keywords:

• Page Title
• URL
• Breadcrumbs (this is a simple menu at the top of the page to indicate the user’s current position on a site)
• Headings
• Main Content

REMEMBER

• Use bold font for your important keywords
• Position your keywords in a strategically way

3. Use high-quality multimedia
The horn of abundance of online content.

With only five seconds to win-over visitors, high-quality multimedia is a must. Use specific and attractive images for each aspect of your content rather than a general image or video. Visitors are more likely to stay on your page if there are visual aids to help them digest the information. Yes, text is important to give users information, but it’s also a good idea to relate the textual content with visual content as well whether that’s incorporating an image, a video or a meme. However make sure you have optimized your multimedia; there’s nothing worse than landing on a site and only half the images have loaded. www.compressor.io is a good website for reducing the weight of images and therefore increasing the loading speed.

REMEMBER

• Use visual aids to compliment the textual content
• Optimize your multimedia to decrease the loading speed

4. Produce engaging content
The “Stranger Things“ effect.

Your content needs to be that book that no one wants to put down or that series you just have to finish in one weekend…it was ‘Stranger Things’ for me…The content needs to trigger a measurable response i.e. impact users in a meaningful way. Whether this be through the use of humor or the use of informative facts, it needs to make users react. A CTA (a button such as “click-here“) is also a way of engaging with your users whether that be encouraging them to share your blog articles on their social media accounts or inviting them to share their opinions in the comments section.

REMEMBER

• Make your content impressionable
• Use a CTA (call-to-action)

5. Quality vs. Quantity
Haste makes waste.

Users will not automatically stick with you after reading your content the first time round. They will need to be convinced that your content is worth sticking around for. Once you’ve got their attention that’s when you need to focus on keeping them interested. Over time you’ll build a solid relationship and get to understand them. Nowadays producing quality content regularly reassures users that they can put their trust into your company. This also includes how you present your content; spelling mistakes and a poor layout won’t convince users of your site’s authority.

REMEMBER

• Produce quality content that will win your reader’s authority
• Check everything twice to avoid spelling mistakes or other careless mistakes

6. Use the rule of three
It’s easy as A, B, C.

Like I mentioned above, the first 5 seconds when the user lands on your page are the most important. Keeping the attention of the user then becomes the trickier part but I have a tip for you: the famous rule of three can persuade users to stay with you. As humans the number three is the smallest number of elements required to make a pattern. Think about following these three steps to give your content a greater sense of wholeness:

1. A catchy title which will tease the user into scrolling down to find out more,
2. Key points explaining the bulk of the content,
3. Complement 1 and 2 with engaging content (multimedia, text in bold and a CTA).

REMEMBER

• The user makes their decision to stay or not on your page at the first 5 seconds
• The rule of 3 = attractive title + key points + visual content

Conclusion

User retention, loyalty and confidence…Quality content will help achieve all that!
Jazz-up your content with engaging multimedia and the success is guaranteed !
Become that story that everyone talks about!