Your website is often the first point of contact with potential clients, but keeping it refreshed with good content that will entice readers can be a chore.
Whether you're going at content creation alone or hiring professional marketers to produce your content, take your content to the next level by practicing the following three important guidelines.
Stay on Trend
When creating engaging content for your blog, staying on trend is the name of the game. You may need to do some research to keep your website content fresh, but you should already be up-to-date on the relevant developments in your field. Social media is not only a great tool for marketing your business, but it's also a place to do your own market research.
Staying on trend requires constant attention to the social media landscape of your field. Follow influencers on social media. Frequently browse the hashtags and geotags relevant to your business industry. Browse a geotag to find out about an event that could be worth attending. Find out what your clients are loving or hating about your product through a little hashtag research. The more you interact, the more you will learn about your previous and potential clients.
Beyond social media, read relevant trade magazines, blogs, news stories and newsletters. Websites such as BuzzSumo enable marketers to identify trending topics. Such websites can help you comprehend what topics are getting the best response and interaction from readers.
Staying up-to-date also requires being proactive. For example, if you deal in real estate, you want to know what the average home value is in your area, but you also need to stay current on the constantly fluctuating market. If you write an article about the value of homes throughout your region, the piece will have a shelf life. As soon as another site produces content with more current home value trends, your content could lose its usefulness. What do you do? Create a new piece of content with the most current pricing info.
Stay on Brand
Staying on trend comes with a caveat: You must stay on brand. You run the risk of betraying your brand identity if you appear too desperate to produce relevant content and keep up with trends. Usually, content creators make mistakes when they confuse staying on trend with being trendy. We're not talking about only using goofy slang words or referencing pop culture - we're talking about not pandering or producing "on-trend" content that betrays your brand identity.
Many websites run the risk of getting off track when they produce content that is irrelevant to their field and incongruous with their identity. For example, if you regularly post articles that have a conversational tone, a super-serious article with corporate wording will confuse regular readers. Similarly, if your website sells organic foods and you normally post healthy recipes, an article about a new bacon burger is going to confuse and frustrate loyal readers who may not stay loyal to you.
Hire Designated Content Creators
We can't really have a comprehensive conversation about website content without discussing the benefits of hiring designated content creators. A third-party content marketing firm allows you to focus on what you do best. If you're not a writer, why try to be one now? You still have ultimate control over the content that external creators produce for you.
You still order the content, control the subject, edit copy and have final say on what content is ultimately accepted and posted. Hire designated creators so you can control your content without worrying about doing spell checks, perfecting grammar, citing sources and posting content on a strict schedule.
After all, many business owners would rather focus on their businesses instead of producing content that will bring Web traffic to their websites. Home painting companies would rather be painting houses, and a director of photography for a professional photography services company would rather be directing photo shoots. Hiring professional content creators is a no-brainer for those who can afford this service - and it's quite affordable thanks to freelancers and the marketplaces they often source work from.
About the Author
Jeremy Lang is a freelance business and technology
writer for Business Town.