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The 5 Fundamentals of Powerful Digital Content

Creating valuable and impactful digital content is an imperative and significant part of any business operating in this modern age. What makes digital content great? In a literal sense, great content is content which is of an extent, amount or intensity considerably above average. Great content will increase your visibility and engagement on the web, build your brand image, increase interest and sales as well as define your business as an industry leader and perhaps carve a niche where one never existed before.

We believe a focused approach to content creation should revolve around five fundamentals:

Originality

Original content will garner more user engagement, improve page rankings in search engine result pages (SERPS) like Google, which exponentially improves your business’s online visibility. Modern search engines understand when content is being regurgitated or copied or when content is “cheating” by using techniques such as keyword stuffing to rank pages higher. Original content is more likely to be shared by credible sites which also increases your pages ranking overtime. Creating original content is the foundation of high-quality content and your business will be rewarded by search engines and potential customers for truly original content.

Quality

With so much content competing for an end user’s attention, from so many channels, creating high quality content is the only way to differentiate and elevate your message above the mass of ordinary content offered by many of your competitors. You often get what you pay for or put into the process of creating meaningful content. Depending on the nature and form of content a team of specialist creators should be involved in the creation and implementation of your content. Your graphic content could have far more impact when accompanied by the perfect piece of written copy. However, a writer would not create your graphic content in the same way a graphic designer or animator is not best suited to writing your copy. Quality content is therefore much more than a single piece of awesome looking (or sounding) content, but an entire strategy developed and implemented by a team of specialists who understand the broader scope of your target audience, unique value proposition and business personality.

Purpose

As the saying goes, less is often so much more. Creating content for content sake is meaningless unless directed toward a specific purpose or objective. What is the overarching purpose of a specific piece of content and how does that content align with the objectives of the entire campaign? Content designed to increase sales should centre around taking action, creating impulse, generating desire or solving problems whilst content designed to improve engagement should provoke discussion or reaction. Both these objectives can of course run simultaneously but the major objective should be clearly established to avoid ambiguity or confusion when bringing about the desired result.

Messaging

The nature of your content should be informed by the audience and the customers you are targeting. Building and developing comprehensive customer personas is an integral part of creating great content. Remember, content is ultimately subjective. What one user defines as useful, informative or entertaining might seem irrelevant or even annoying to another group of users. These fictional profiles represent groups of similar real people that make up a business’s target audience. You need to be specific and look at every aspect of a potential customers personality traits and unique behaviours. Start by studying your existing customers to identify key trends. Evaluate their needs, challenges, goals, demographics desires and develop content to satisfy your intended customers.

Form & Channels

Messaging and form are intrinsically linked to one another. Just as your messaging needs to be targeted to an audience so does the form of the content. Whether the form be video, copy, imagery or sound (or a combination of these forms) you need to understand how your audience prefers to receive and digest their content. The form of content should also be informed by the chosen channel by which your audience is receiving the content. For example, longer form captions are generally less effective when used in an Instagram post and should rather be used on Facebook which is more information biased and less reliant on imagery. Never underestimate the power of the written word. Although flashy imagery and video is awesome, quality written content is highly valued by both search engines and users alike.