According to Edelman Insights, around 90% of fans want brands and companies to share compelling content. 10% of those customers think the brands they’re following are actually doing it well. Only 31% of fans actually believe what advertisers they follow say about their products or services. It’s now more important than ever to truly engage your audience and not just sell to them. This article breaks down the basics when communicating via your website to ensure you’re not just scaring your customers away with sales fluff.
Communicating Value in Your Content Creation
You don’t have a lot of time to make your value pitch for your product or service. The probability of your fans or customers leaving is very high within the first few seconds of them landing on your page. People realize that most webpages are useless and they typically expect to waste time on pages that bring no value to them. If you want to gain your readers valuable attention with effective content creation, you must clearly communicate the value of your content within the first ten seconds (or the first 20% of the text) of them landing on your page or article.
Is Anyone Even Reading Your Current Content?
Your content or pitch probably isn’t being read completely anyways. On an average web page visit, users read less than half of the content on pages with less than 111 words. With full content, say the average page within 590 words, users have time to read roughly 28% of the words contained on the page if they strictly dedicate that time to reading the content. Before users even start reading your content, they are already judging you and making up their own opinion based on what they interpret from the start. Your first impression is made within 50 milliseconds of your users landing on your page, regardless of what the content is about or how well it is written.
Making Your Content Personal
Content marketing should be viewed like a person-to-person conversation. It should be personal, friendly and should speak to your readers. Such online ranking factors like page load speeds, page clutter and ease of reading, points to the trend of easy information digestion. In the past (and still today) companies tend to write for computers and search engines, but rarely write content for the thing that matters most – for people. Content engagement is like a conversation. Personality is the clincher. People want to build relationships because that is human. If people are landing on your page, but the content is salesy or fluff, they won’t read the entire article.
Content Creation Automation Isn’t The Answer
Build a system of providing relevant, helpful and beneficial content. Content automation can’t work like a silver bullet if the bullet is fired in the wrong direction. Understand the motivation of the content approach over demographics. Focus on where your context overlaps to enable true authenticity in your content marketing efforts. You have to focus on thoughtful, sustainable content approaches. What is the reader truly looking for and what information do they truly desire? Why are they on your page in the first place?
Don’t be afraid to curate content from elsewhere. Supplement your content with what you know works. You can create relevance and trust from readers and turn those cautious readers into loyal customers once you’ve earned their trust and they realize that you’re speaking to them.
Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. – Theodore Roosevelt
Thrive Does Content Right
A professional Internet marketing agency can put you ahead of your competitors and help you get your content under control. Contact us today or call (817) 642-9686 to learn more about what it means to have a professional Internet marketing agency on your team.
