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Content marketing ie. content marketing: 100000 ways to destroy the competition!

The content represents the essence, it is you represented by words, recordings, pictures. Sajjaj represents what they will see you as.

What used to be?

Once upon a time, you paid someone to build a website for you and provided content for them to insert. Thus, most sites contained menus: About us, Products, Price list, Contact. You usually had one text for each of the menus. The site served as long as you have it and write its address on the business card. Even today, someone offers this kind of service on the website of a company that sells healthy food.

Hello websites

A section on the website of a company that sells healthy food.

At that time, business in Serbia was conducted exclusively through acquaintances and meetings, advertisements in newspapers, sticking advertising messages on poles, inserting flyers into mailboxes. Some of the ways of advertising have survived to this day, however, it should not be ignored that in Serbia at the moment there are over 2.5 million Internet users and over 3 million open Facebook accounts.

We weren't even good guerrillas.

We weren’t even good guerrillas.

What is searched for on the Internet?

Mainly for cheap entertainment and content. The fact is that domestic websites are not excessively rich in content and that there is an open space for competition in content marketing , because content is something that Internet users always need and that is why they are there. The number of resources available to them in this area of ​​ours is very limited, and new quality content is always welcome.

 

What has changed ?

It is no longer enough to have a website without content. Now, in order to survive in business and to properly present yourself to Internet users, you need to be in the role of a publisher, ie. you should be a source of content and not just any content but quality and useful content. Easier said than done. First you need to define the target group. The way you address someone, as well as the content you will offer, depends on the level of education, socioeconomic status, gender, place of living and other characteristics. Imagine reading the best material in the field of nuclear physics, but you are not a nuclear physicist. Do you believe you would understand anything? That’s the point. You create content for your target group. Write in simple language. You can’t look at visitors solely through their demographic characteristics, but as living and real human beings because that’s what they are. Let the words be drinkable and impressive for the reader. We do not claim that this text is also ideal for you who are reading it, nor that it will represent the ultimate experience and revelation for you, but we believe that you will understand it and that it is useful. What makes it useful is the information it contains. That’s enough for a start.

Adapt the story to the person you are talking to

Adapt the story to its intended audience

 

How can you check the quality of the content?

Every content is an investment. It allows you to present yourself to clients in the right way. Search engines also index the content from your site and thus allow potential clients to find you faster. For example, you want people to find you on Google for the keywords “custom furniture.” You achieve this, among other things, when you often mention that phrase in your texts. Google indexes your texts and since it finds this phrase in several places, it considers that your site is relevant for searches with these keywords and positions you better in its results.

If you have a site rich in content, the chance that someone will find your site also increases. “long tail” keywords, such as “making american bedroom closets”. The more content you have, the greater the chance that someone will find your site and your offer on search engines. Once they land on your site, potential clients need to stay there and take a close look and seriously consider your offer. If the content is not of high quality, they will leave the page very quickly, without reading even half of the article, without looking at the offer.

How can you check if your content is of high quality and if your investment in it has paid off? You can check whether there has been an increase in the sales of those products or services for which quality content has been created compared to those for which this has not been done.

Through Google Analytics, you can monitor the time that users spend on different pages of the site. Based on this, you can determine whether visitors like to read some content or not. What is good, you will keep, what is bad you will change or throw out. In this way, you can permanently monitor the success of the created content and improve it.

Google Analytics

Display of time spent on the site in Google Analytics

What can be the goal of creating quality content?

Maybe you want to increase people’s awareness of your brand, become an authority source of information in your field, increase sales, create a mailing list with active subscribers. An active and involved subscriber is also a potential customer. All this is not at all easy to do. Content creation must be planned. There are even certain techniques that can be used in the process of creation itself. One of the basic techniques is telling stories, ie. “Storytelling”.

Storytelling

We all talk and exchange information, but we are simply programmed to like hearing a good story. Think about whether you liked to listen to the stories and fairy tales of your parents or grandparents when you were little? Do you like to read a good novel or watch a movie today? They are all stories.

grandma

It is known that good speakers are those people who know how to tell a story beautifully. A story breathes life into the driest matter. Therefore, use a storytelling strategy in your content creation because your readers will be enthralled.

Even as a student, I loved doing research. I was very interested in what kind of results I would get when I gave people different types of instruments such as surveys, questionnaires and tests. In short, the whole procedure goes something like this. Come up with a research question, choose a sample, give people e.g. fill in the questionnaires, process the results in a statistical program and finally write a paper in which you answer the research question and present it at a conference.

We’ve been doing some research on dual-tasking. You know how women can do several jobs at the same time, and men can only do one. The presentation of the results at the conference goes something like this: “To compare the mean values ​​of the groups on the Dual Processing Test, we used the T test of independent samples.” We obtained a statistically significant difference between men (AS=13.5) and women (AS=16.8) at the level of p< 0.005″. And so each presenter with his topic until the whole hall falls asleep.

speaker-is-boring1

 

At that time, I was reading something about storytelling and found the strength to try it at that conference. I said:

“Good day. I am glad to be with you here today. Don’t ask anything, my day started terribly, I thought I wouldn’t come. I had a fight with a girl this morning. She came to me and saw that I hadn’t had time to wash the dishes. I told her that I was preparing a presentation for today. Well, at the same time I’m cooking lunch and typing the seminar paper, and you can’t wash the dishes for 3 days. You are very slow, my dear brother.’

At that moment, the whole hall wakes up from the lethargy they fell into a few hours ago due to the enormous amount of dry steam exposure. Everyone is looking at me and I have their full attention. At that moment, many people don’t understand why I’m wasting time describing an argument with a girl. From the description of the dispute, I gently introduce them into the research without excessive presentation of figures and percentages. I conclude that my girlfriend had no right to be angry with me because it’s normal that I can’t do two things at the same time because I’m male and that was confirmed by the results of my research. To this day, people remember my presentation at that conference. They don’t even remember the topic of the research, the title, they remember me and the story of the fight I told them about. The story wasn’t even innovative or overly interesting, but people remember it. This is precisely the transformation that storytelling can make of some content, regardless of its form (text, video, infographic…).

What can happen when you don’t tell your story at all?

P&G logo

Sometime in 2010. In 2010, Procter & Gamble (P&G) wanted to market a new diaper that they internally called the “Baby iPod.” The diapers were 20% thinner and retained much more liquid. People from P&G decided not to change the packaging of the product, but to put a new product in the old packaging and test it on the “test market” without any announcement.

What happened then? The product hit the market and it wasn’t long before news of it spread across the internet. Dozens of groups were created, including a Facebook group, calling for the old product to be returned. An entire network of blogs owned by mothers protested the product. P&G had two options before launching the product. The first was to create their own story related to the product, and the second was exactly what they did. What they didn’t understand is that if they don’t create their own story, their customers will do it for them. That’s exactly what they got. A story without an initiated beginning, without a real conclusion that could have cost them a lot.

Story structure: The writer’s path

It is believed that when creating content that contains storytelling, there is a structure that gives good results. Christopher Vogler , in his book “Writer’s Way” describes this structure, and this book has become indispensable literature in scenography schools around the world and is used in the practice of creating Hollywood films.

When you start your story, you first talk about the ordinary world, in which the main character lives. Then, in the opening part of the story, there is a call for adventure. In marketing terms, you will first describe a current situation or problem, after which you create an invitation to solve it yourself.

Then comes the rejection of the invitation to adventure. This is a very important part where the main character overcomes his fear of going into the unknown. Potential problem and fear of failure are considered. Usually then he meets a mentor or comes across some new knowledge, some new truth that will lead him into the unknown.

When one sets off into the unknown, friends and enemies begin to be recognized and difficulties along the way are resolved.

The protagonist then approaches the center of the unknown. In this part, the hero prepares to meet the center of the unknown. When we talk about storytelling in marketing, it is an approach to problem solving.

Then comes the overcoming of challenges and finally the rewards.

After that comes the return home. This is a crucial moment because the main character returns to the ordinary world which he now sees with different eyes because he has come all the way and finally got the reward. It’s a matter of transformation. Show people through a story how buying your product will transform them.

So, the first thing you need to do is to imagine your “heroes”, ie. ideal users, and then you will structure the content on the site in such a way that you “walk” them through the entire journey. So the invitation to the adventure is giving the basic information that you are there and that you offer some services. Then you have fear of the unknown. In that part, you provide the customer with additional content that aims to educate them. People are afraid of what they don’t know, so introduce them to what you have to offer. Take them in depth, item by item, until they reach the center of the unknown, that is. they don’t try what you offer. However, it does not end there either. We will talk more about this in one of the following posts.

How to get authority?

Achieving authority in an area is a very powerful sales tool. Content marketing is the right choice of strategy. If you get people to trust you, but with good reason, you can always recommend them to buy a quality product or service from a domain for which you are an authority.

Reading Copyblogger we came across an example of what authority can do to the human mind. A survey of clients of a bank was conducted. Namely, on the ATM in front of the bank there was a sign with the text:

“The ATM is not working. Give the deposits to the guard on duty.”

A TV reporter dressed in a guard’s uniform was standing next to him. People approached him and he asked them if they wanted to make a deposit or withdraw money. The whole situation is absurd, but nine out of ten people gave their deposit to the guard.

Why ? Banks never operate in this way, but because of the authority reflected in the sign on the ATM, uniforms and badges, people agree.

Neuroscience has confirmed that people are subject to authority and that it influences their behavior and decisions.

Where does authority come from? Authorities somehow make other people’s lives better. It originates from the audience. The audience consists of those people whom you have helped in some way. You told them how to solve a problem. It doesn’t matter if they contacted you personally or read some of your text in a newspaper or on the Internet or watched a video file. It is important that you helped them to find a solution to a problem. From that day on, you are an authority in that area for them.

Authority also comes from yourself. Take what you know best and share it with others while believing in yourself and being confident. People like it much more when you demonstrate authority than when you claim to have it.

How is authority formed by content marketing on the Internet through content creation? The idea on which Google is based is that not all created pages are worth the same. Some are worth less and some are worth more. The initial idea started from the fact that the more links to your page, the more valuable it is because other pages refer to it and cite it more. Pages that had more value, in this way, Google placed closer to the top of the search, compared to those that had fewer links or no links leading to it. This is the basis. Over time, Google’s algorithms have improved more and more in order to better measure the authority of a page.

Just like in real life, if you have helped many people they will reciprocate by recommending and referring to you.

Observing the initial logic of the Google search engine, some people figured out that if they create a huge amount of content and artificially create links to their pages, a better ranking in Google search is inevitable. Programs have even been developed that automatically create links to a page on other sites. Imagine a program in which you insert a list of web addresses that it should visit. The program is e.g. I am able to create comments on texts on those sites that will contain a link to your site. The result is that within half an hour you have thousands of links leading to a page of your site. After that, Google places your page at the top of the search. In order to prevent this and similar abuses, Google improved its algorithm, and it now evaluates the quality of content to a certain extent. Whenever Google improves the algorithm, the search results also change, so those pages that “cheated” fall in the search results.

In order to build authority with content marketing, you can’t go wrong if you consistently write quality content that is useful to people and shows them how to solve a problem. The quality of the content is more important than the quantity. The difference between quantity and quality of content is the same as between a Dostoyevsky novel and a bunch of old tabloids. Quality content can also have a timeless value.

If you create content marketing content about things that change quickly, refresh it with new information. One of our clients is an accounting agency. In cooperation with them, we published content on how to calculate wages for employees. Whenever the law changes or the calculation method changes, we try to update the article with new information as soon as possible. When the changes are made, the number of organic visits (not through paid promotion, but free) to the site increases over time. The increased number of site visitors who are satisfied with the information they received often become new clients.

Authority is the centerpiece of any content marketing strategy. Content is a key element of authority formation and a key element of sales itself. For this reason, he is the center of our strategy. If you really become an authority in a field through your content, Google will consider you an authority.

Authority is not built by shortcuts and lies. Tweaked titles are currently in effect. Basically there are tons and tons of literature out there on how to change your headline to have a certain effect on the potential visitor and ultimately increase the number of visits through content marketing. What happens in practice? We almost came across a foreign site title that read something like this:

“You can’t miss the delight of little ones in Africa when they drink clean water for the first time”.

I click on the link, play the video. They are talking about a project in Africa in which several millionaires participated who ensured that a certain amount of water arrived every day for children in a certain part of Africa. At no point in the video file do you see children encountering clean water for the first time, nor is a single child seen drinking water. It can only be seen that the water arrived in closed canisters and that’s where the video ends and they explain how the project succeeded and how the daily flow of water is stable.

They lied to me, they made me go to the site, they didn’t give me the promised content. Such an approach does not inspire confidence. You must always give people what you promised, because that’s how you build initial trust. That is the beginning of creating authority. Sometimes it’s good to design headlines with the aim of arousing curiosity or emotions and thus gain sensationalism, but you shouldn’t promise what is impossible to fulfill.

We did not learn this from the article. There was no text, but only two pictures of Karleuša in fur.

We did not learn this from the article. There was no text, but only two pictures of Karleuša in fur.

The whole process of creating content for content marketing needs is a matter of learning, persistence and invested time. We have explained some of the ways and you should try it yourself. If you have any comments on this text, feel free to send them. I always like to hear both negative and positive reviews because it helps us create better quality content. Until you read.