Whether the end goal is to drive online traffic, improve brand awareness, or generate sales leads, any content marketer will tell you content is “king.” However, that’s not quite right – as an Atlanta SEO company, we can tell you that the key to success is actually high quality, engaging content. Your content strategy falls short if you are unable to connect with your audience. Follow these simple tips to create spectacular content that engages readers and boosts sales.

Write for Humans, Not for Robots

Search engine rankings are incredibly important for driving traffic to your site; but traffic is fruitless if your site’s content doesn’t attract and retain your audience’s attention. Black hat tactics like stuffing pages with links and keyphrases never work, and they often result in de-indexing, penalties, or highly annoyed users.

So while your goal may be to boost search engine rankings, remember that the bigger goal is to actually reach your audience and connect with them. Create relevant and compelling content that your users – not robots – will actually want to read. Well-written, high quality articles will engage readers and naturally gain page views or sales leads.

Give Your Audience What They Want

Content creation is social by nature – the goal is to start a conversation, interact with your audience, and build a relationship with them. Too many businesses today forget this and instead focus only on selling their products or services. When developing content, always keep your customers in mind: what are their interests and needs, and how can your business help them meet their needs?

With the incredible social listening, data and analytics tools available today, we have the unique ability to really connect with users and gauge their interests. By analyzing trends and specifically targeting users’ needs, you can create content that resonates with users and begs to be shared. Engaging users in this way allows you to build relationships as well as boost sales.

Mix Up Your Content Strategy

Between shortened attention spans and millions of users creating content everyday, it is harder than ever to create captivating content. By diversifying the types and lengths of content you post, you can increase the time spent on the page and engage more readers. For example, splitting long articles into blog series helps you retain user attention longer, and integrating visual media has been proven to increase engagement.

Visuals

Adding visuals – images, infographics, gifs or memes – to your content not only grabs users’ attention, but also helps your content leave a lasting impression. When a relevant image is associated with an article or blog post, readers are much more likely to remember your message. In addition to increasing message and brand association, embedding high quality, optimized images can help broaden your company’s reach: visual content receives 94 percent more views than non-visual content, and users are 40 times more likely to share content with visuals.

Video

Integrating video into your content marketing strategy isn’t necessarily a new idea, but it quickly becoming more important than ever. It is expected that around 80 percent of all internet traffic will be video by 2019, and new trends such as live and 360 video offer businesses unique new ways to engage viewers. Including stunning video with product pages, client testimonials, or blogs allows users to interact with your business, which can boost page visit durations and lead to conversions.

Regardless of what your end goal may be, your company’s value lies in its customer base. By producing professionally written articles and brilliant visuals that are specifically tailored to users’ needs, you can significantly improve online engagement and drive sales.

By: Adriana Reynolds