Why Is Good Written Content So Important To Modern Marketing?

There are very few aspects of marketing that are not driven by quality content. This has ever been the case – think about the brochures, advertisements, and mailouts of the not so distant past. The written word has been used to create images in people’s minds, with the objective of successfully launching a new product, swaying a consumer’s buying preferences, and to keep current customers and clients engaged.

All of this still applies, but if you are a digital marketer (and if you have a website that is what you are!) another important aim is to attract the attention of search engines, which in turn, draws organic traffic your website. And if you get that element right, the content you publish will be the best tool in your digital marketing arsenal.

Successful businesses understand this, and to help make it happen in a seamless way they often engage talent to create the content they need to help them stand out from their competitors.

So What Forms Does Written Content Take?

Looking back to when I first became a content writer – 11 years ago now – written content was mainly blog posts, webpage content, and ebooks. Now it spans the whole gamut of social media, white papers, sales copy, direct response emails, press releases, case studies, and transcription of videos and podcasts.

Is All Content Created Equal?

The short and only answer is NO.

Now, as in those offline marketing days, the focus of all written content should be the audience. There was a period of around 3 years when creating content for content’s sake took hold, all in the name of search engine optimisation (SEO). Overnight there appeared an incredible number of spinning, distribution, and rewriting services, created with the objective of spewing out as much (often nonsensical let alone poorly written) content as possible. The idea was that if the content, however poor, contained the keywords you were targeting, then Google would be tricked into improving your website page rankings. And it did work for a while….. until Google got smart.

Google and other search engines developed the technology to identify what is original and relevant content and what is written ridiculousness, and the power to both ignore such content (rending it completely useless from an SEO perspective), or in worst case scenario, to block the sites that use these tactics. This had the results of hundreds of thousands of websites losing rankings almost overnight.

So here we are in 2018 and all marketers should know that their content should be audience-focused and if they fail to attract their target audience then they are wasting their time.

How Can You Find Engagement?

We know that you need to speak to your audience, to make an impression on them. You need to answer their questions, ease their pain, or deliver them solutions and information. But to find them in the first place and to nurture them requires more than just writing.  To bring people to your website or social media platform, you will need to implement some SEO strategies (the extent of these will depend on your business, budget, and your willingness to outsource), a touch of creativity, and a whole measure of consistency. Out of sight is out of mind, so be sure to connect with your audience often, and give, give, give: information, advice, short cuts and so on – don’t make every connection a sales pitch.

The writing and publishing of content is in itself a major step for any business, but as your business grows, you will want to distribute this and other content through other channels. Promoting your posts through paid advertising through Google or Facebook, for example, can help expand the reach of your content to very specific audiences.

Once you hit on the right formula for the written content element for your business, you will be on the way to digital marketing nirvana.

If you’d like to discuss how I can help with writing the content needed to engage with your customers, contact me today. I have so many colleagues in the digital marketing world for whom I provide writing services, I am also in a great position to refer you to experts in SEO, paid advertising, and other services.