Marketing content – create, review, revise
Great content makes a great website – of course there is a lot to be said for design, navigability and the information architecture, but without excellent and useful content underpinning that it is all style and no substance.Your customers are interested in your products and services and also in related topics and news that may impact a particular sector, and if you are offering this information on your website, blog or social media pages then your customers will keep coming back for information. Building this relationship between your company and your customers is very important for brand loyalty and customer retention and it also improves the image of your company when people recommend you by word of mouth to their colleagues and friends.
To create great content we need to know your target demographic and their behaviours in order to deliver what they're interested in.We also need to understand whether these customers are interested for business or leisure purposes as this will inform tone of voice and also the focus on certain topics. Once we know what sort of content your customers want we can create new content and also, perhaps more crucially, start reviewing and culling bad content from your website.
Most companies use Meta tags or visible tags to organise their content and make it searchable, and these tags are not just for the benefit of customers – they can be used to pull out every piece of content on a particular topic for review.There may be articles and products on your website that are now obsolete or that have been surpassed by new developments, and it is really important that anything that is now irrelevant is taken down. Tags can also be added to older pieces that may not have been linked to a new topic or theme; otherwise this content could effectively be hidden to users searching your site.
Keeping up out of date content can make a bad impression, and at worst could lead to customers making decisions based on your out-dated content, leading to them becoming a customer of your competition instead. A great example of this is the BBC weather news page – they have featured weather forecast videos that are months out of date on the main weather page, which has led to some confusion about cancelling plans due to snow in May.Not all businesses will be as constricted by time, but it is a good example of how old content can be misleading and undermine customer confidence.
Assessing the tone of voice and the consistency of this is very important if you have guest writers, or more than one person writing content.All old content should be reviewed and adapted to conform to a consistent tone and message.When new content creators come on board they should always try to keep to the brand style so that customers get an even experience of your site.
Finally, your website analytics system can provide some useful input into this process.If your business has any seasonal changes it is important to assess what your customers are looking at during certain periods and using this to inform a content calendar for the coming year.If your business is steadier throughout the year then looking at seasonal trends is less important for reviewing your most popular content.By looking at the top performing pages you can see what your customers are most interested in, and this may come as a surprise if this is not an exercise you have done before.The information gathered from this process should be used to lead the way on content, themes and types of content (i.e. video, text, photographic or infographic) that are most popular and that your customers want to see more of.
Now you have the tools to start a content review and to carry on providing great content that your customers actually want.This process is worth doing at least once a year, to ensure you are on the right track and that your demographic has not changed their demands or preferences.At Parua we can help you do that, and also provide web content that is created within the guidelines identified from the review and revision process.
