Online Content Development
To develop online content it’s crucial to remember that your customers/audience should be at the heart of all content you create and share. Content is a great way to get customers considering your brand or services and to keep your company at the forefront of their mind.
By writing original content search engines will help your website get more exposure. Google, for instance, does not like duplicated content and will reward websites that have high quality original content by placing them high on google searches.
- When looking to create good content – ensure that it is original.
- Focus on creating strong headlines that grab attention and spark interest. Statistics have shown that 80 per cent of people will read your headlines, but only 20 per cent of those people will read the rest of your content.
- Make your content actionable. Automotive businesses are in a fantastic position of having knowledgeable professionals on hand and this knowledge should absolutely be used when developing content. The best content gives users a sense of how to apply the information. For example, writing advice articles on things like ‘how to check your tyre pressure’ is helpful to your customers and will bring you traffic.
The content you make is created for the benefit of the customer, so it’s important to ensure your content is attracting users and positions the brand in a positive way for users.
To do this successfully, consider implementing and developing the following techniques which will boost your content and assist it in getting to your audience.
- Keyword research: This involves identifying appropriate keywords for us to use correctly in our content to organically improve our SEO positioning. This is imperative for every content strategy if you want users to find you on search engines.
- Content calendar: A content calendar is key for ensuring your strategy makes sense. It provides value; it lets you think long-term and optimize your resources, help create ideas, and more. In a content calendar, you should include the date of publication, author, post topic, keyword, the tags to use/take into consideration, and so on.
- Social posting: Writing an article and not promoting it on social media is a mistake. It’s not spamming but instead planning out what you are going to publish and when on every social media platform with the copies best suited for each one, all while having the ideal number of characters, links, hashtags, and more.
You should also consider:
- What your audience is like.
- What topics you’re going to talk about.
- What tone you’re going to use.
- How frequently you’re going to publish.
Ideas for generating content:
- ‘How to’ articles/content that guide customers through a problem
- Create a list style article (Top five reasons my steering wheel is shaking)
- Profile a staff member
- Show what’s happening behind the scenes
- Do a Q&A style with a customer/staff member
- Conduct a survey and share the results
- Share interesting statistics
- Create a ‘day in the life’
- Run a competition
- Apply for and share awards your business has won
- Profile ‘on this day’ occasions. Highlight how your business/industry has changed.
- Provide a guide to industry resources
- Review a relevant product
Essentially, your content needs to be valuable, interesting and shareable. The components that make up this content are:
How to make quality content
Storytelling
Storytelling is what makes your content engaging and relatable, however the story must have a purpose. Work out how you can relate your messaging to your business and core message using images, video and audio.
Images
Most people are visual learners and therefore process visual content more quickly than words. This means if you have a image you can use to accompany your text/story people are more likely to take notice and remember.
In addition to this, posts with images are more likely to be ‘shared’ and ‘liked’.
Ideally, you should use your own images from your business such as shots from a workshop, and avoid stock images that are seen everywhere. If you are not using your own images do not use an image from google images. People have and will be fined for this.
If you include any images of people on your website or social media, make sure you have permission to share the image publicly. If the person is a minor, you will need parental permission.
Visual aids like images don’t always need to be just an image either. Infographics, drawings and cartoons are all something you can consider using and there are great smartphone apps for image creation/alteration.
Video
Customers will now rather watch an explanation than read it and video is an excellent way to build trust as it is a great way to show authenticity.
Audio
Podcasting has grown significantly over the last 4 years and more and more businesses are discovering it’s potential.
Today, podcasting and audio is a fantastic tool for consumers. As the population becomes even more time poor, audio allows businesses to reach customers while they are doing other things.
Re-purposing content
Good content is something that can be used on multiple occasions. If you have just written an article/blog and posted it on your website, you can re-purpose it in the following ways:
- Post it on Facebook and link it back to the original article
- Do a short tweet about it and link it back to the original article
- Share it via your newsletter
- Turn it into a podcast episode
- Share it on your personal LinkedIn page
- Talk about it Instagram stories
- Do a Q&A on the subject and expand on the content
For more information on digital resources, visit the Small Business Digital Champions Project webpage.
