What is Content?

Content can simply be described as the presentation of certain information for the purpose to inform an audience through a channel in various different forms, such as articles, imagery, infographics and videos. Content is important not only for interest and engagement, but also for other aspects of marketing such as SEO strategy, and boosting online presence. It’s important to invest in good quality content, whatever your business's objective is.

SEO-Optimised Content

The path for content marketers is clear. In order to boost SEO rankings, gain traffic and/or leads, they must create great content for their clients blogs or websites. The best types of content can include authoritative blog posts, “How-To”, trending topics, opinion pieces and visually exciting videos and infographics. When creating content, it best performs when it is original and has a different point of view. Search engines will tend to rank this content higher and give it more exposure. Put in another way, search engines such as Google want to reward websites that offer high quality content that is relevant and original. It does not only make sense to create better, more informative content to make a better website, but it also improves your businesses website’s rankings, which can have a very positive impact on your businesses bottom line. 

What Content Should I Post?

Here are our top tips to create the best content:

1. Infographics

Its name pretty much sums it up — info + graphic.  An infographic is the presentation of information or data in a visual way. 

Infographics have a high chance to be shared more, viewed more, and liked more than most other content types. As they are a great way to get your information across in a very easy and visual content form. 

When to use it:

Infographics are best for when trying to communicate data, research, statistics, and findings, but not for topics which require a lot of explaining.

Things to keep in mind about infographics:

• Infographics can be expensive. 
• Infographics used to go viral just by virtue of being an infographic. That doesn’t work anymore. Everyone is making infographics. Today, you have to make it really good to make it shareable.
• Make a gifographic. Gifographics use the infographic model but feature animated gifs instead of the static images of a conventional infographic. 

2. Videos

Videos have the ability to visually engage an audience in an emotion, which can be a very powerful tool. And in a world where pretty much anything is possible with videos, there is a vast variety of how to use this content form best. Whichever type of video content you use - a good video can communicate a message in an effective and memorable way. Done well, a video can be extremely persuasive. 

How to do it:

• Whether you create a video of an office tour, an “How-To” product video, or a music video. You need to ensure to get the script right. A video isn’t only about the moving picture; it’s about the words that you say or display. 
• Put the video on YouTube and Vimeo. Both of these video sharing sites are great ways to improve social signals for SEO and improved results for the video search itself.

Things to keep in mind about videos:

• Making a good video can sometimes  not be cheap. You can start small, of course, but contracting a video specialist or a camera crew can cost quite a lot of money and require a huge budget to achieve the end result you are desiring.
• On social media and websites videos aren’t supposed to be long. 2-5 minutes is a good length.

3. Opinion posts

This style of content is substantially different from your typical blog post, mostly due to the vast difference in tone. You may be used to publishing a careful and researched discussion of a topic. The opinion post, by contrast, may be stronger and more expressive. Generally the more difference in your position, the more it’s going to get read and shared.

How to do it

Occasionally, writing a strong first-person take on a hot topic or big issue, can be great for making your business come across as “real” and also current. It can simply be your opinion on a major industry change within your relevance area of expertise. As your audience will be able to relate to your content and will want to know where you stand on certain topics.

Things to keep in mind to opinion posts:

• This should not be a weekly thing. Someone who is constantly sharing his or her opinions or ranting about a topic can become annoying. Use with caution.
• Be civil. Don’t let your opinions degenerate into people bashing. “Rant” does not equal “angry.”
• Be clear about what you’re doing — that this is your opinion, your take, your position — and be humble about it.

It is absolutely necessary for your businesses content to stand out if you want to be successful online and gain greater SEO results. There are plenty of different content options. The more types of content you use, the more powerful your content marketing efforts will become, as this will offer your audience with a vast variety of content to engage with. Content in whichever form you decide works best for your business, will speak to your audience. Your audience will respond by listening, sharing, learning, and converting others to become followers as well.

There is a vast wealth of potential within content marketing — the kind of potential that your business needs in order to advance to the next level. Now, if you’re ready to send your business skyrocketing, why not get in touch with the best! Firefly is a full service, digital marketing company that specialises in getting our clients ranked on page-one, long-term, driving more sales and customers through an increase in traffic. Websites should be used to generate awareness, leads and new business, and when optimised right, can do exactly that. Employing an agency to do your SEO work for you can be daunting, which is why we’ve made it easy to partner with Firefly to grow your business. Let us cut through the technical jargon that other marketers try and confuse you with, and break it down with simple and easy to follow language. Our results speak for themself and they are even backed with a 90 day SEO guarantee!