Elvis Mang'unyi

The quote “content is king” is originally from an essay Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote in 1996. In it, he describes the future of the Internet as a marketplace for content. And he was right.

Even today, more than 20 years later, content remains in the position of king – the way that a lot of money is made on the internet. Every proper digital marketing strategy has a content creation plan.  The success of websites depends on quality content. A website must offer content that meets the demands of users, This attracts more people and gets them more involved. The content should also be optimized for search engines such as Google and Bing.

The quote “content is king” is very often used in conjunction with content marketing and SEO. It implies that unique, high-quality, interesting and relevant content contributes significantly to the success of companies on the Internet. Companies should, therefore, primarily think of great content before they take further measures in their search engine optimization strategy. In content marketing, the quality of the content offered will decide the level of your success. These days, you don’t skip on creating great content if you wish to be successful in marketing your products or services.

The rise in popularity of content marketing is largely thanks to how much it is about the customer rather than the marketing or the company.

This attracts more people and gets them more involved.

Consistent content gets more people involved and your brand will be seen as one to be respected. Your content’s style, feel and tone is important and has to connect with your audience.

Relevant content reaches your audience on a more personal level and is influenced by their interests, wants and needs. People have to know that your brand is reliable.

Valuable content is determined by the quality of what you offer. You need to give your audience content that speaks to them. Your audience must feel like they learned something, or feel more fulfilled and entertained after seeing your content.

Content Builds Relationships With Customers

When you have created the right content, you will greatly improve your brand’s relationship with its customers.

High-quality content helps to build brand reputation and trust, leading to more customers. Content helps to lure in new customers while also keeping previous customers happy. Repeat customers are the driving force of companies.

In addition, repeat customers are great for boosting brand loyalty and spreading positive reviews – a pleasant side-effect from the ‘content is king’ approach.

It is important for a brand to have customers who can trust and rely on them. When you give them content that they value, their relationship with you improves. You will build loyal brand advocates and encourage sales.

Here are a few examples of the kind of content that could increase your relationships with customers and make sure that your content is king.

• Step-by-step and how-to guides
• Visual content that is informative as well as promotional
• Brand comparisons
• Entertaining blogs with educational value

Creating this kind of content will show you just why content is king.

It will drive people into making decisions to purchase and keep them coming back for more. This is proven by the fact that about 68% of people on the internet are interested in reading about brands that they use and support.

About 20% of the time that people spend online they are reading something. When it comes to finding information about brands, approximately 80% of them find it through their content.

With that said, you have to show off all your brand has to offer with your content to reel in those customers. Give your audience what it wants through relevant content that makes them want to stick around or return.

To make sure your content is king and serves its important purpose, select topics that will interest your audience and create a connection with them. Focus on their interests, pain points and challenges.

If your audience feels like you understand them, they’ll want to support you. Find that one special something that makes your brand stand out amongst the competition.

By creating content, good content, you can establish your brand as one that can be trusted. Your audience will admire and rely on your brand.

In the fast-paced world that we live, that means that word will spread. People will talk and your brand will become more recognisable.

You can effectively woo your target audience with your content. It is possible to get your audience to love you, and this will increase your chances of getting on the first page of Google search results.

So, how do you create content that king at improving brand recognition? This will not happen overnight and calls for dedication and – you guessed it – consistency.

Create Custom Content

Content is king because it helps you give your audience something they haven’t seen before.

Providing them with the same old content that they can get with everyone else won’t serve to your benefit. Give them unique content and you will wow your audience. For this, you have to research and understand your audience.

Don’t ever use automated content creation tools. They are a cheap shortcut that will only result in boring and dry content.

Create Content to Inform And Educate

As we have mentioned already, your content should educate your customers. But not about just anything, about your brand. You need to show and tell your audience why they can trust you and why your brand is simply awesome.

An excellent way to build trust and make your brand stand out is by using custom branded URL’s, a handy tool such as Rebrandly can help you do this for free!

If there are any questions that people could have about your brand, services or products, answer them.

But do so in an entertaining way. Use this opportunity to also convince your audience to become your fans. Let them know why you are better than your competition without playing dirty.

Influencer marketing is an ever-growing content marketing strategy that has become very popular. When you rope in the help of popular influencers on social media to promote your content, you reach a much wider audience.

Also, these influencers and their opinions are trusted so collaborating with them will give your brand’s authority a boost. So, if you want to quickly reach a bigger audience, try working with influencers or even micro-influencers.

Influencers usually have a devoted and loyal following who looks up to them. As a result, if they suggest or promote a product or service, these followers will trust it immediately.

Brands use influencers to get sales in many different ways and have been doing so for years.

Even before social media was a thing, public figures and famous icons were used to promote products and services and boost sales.

One of the most well-known old-school influencers is Santa Claus. How many ads have you seen with this jolly character? He’s the godfather of influencers and with him it was proven that great and original content is king.

Branded mascots have been around for ages as well and will be for years to come.

Influencers are a superb way to introduce your brand to people who would otherwise never hear about. Of course, you have to make sure that the influencer is active in your niche, or there’s no point to the partnership.

The Return On Income that you can expect from roping in an influencer is actually very high. Investing in this marketing strategy pays off, and it doesn’t cost as much as traditional marketing would.

Here are a few ideas on how you can improve your conversions:

1. Give Guarantees

Your potential customers need to know that if they’re going to support you, you will have their back. You need to show that you have confidence in your product or service and that your customers can too.

Offer them a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee for peace of mind. You know your product or service is awesome, so be confident that your customers or clients won’t regret supporting you.

A guarantee will drive conversions because there is a reduced risk in paying for what you offer.

2. Show Off Testimonials

Once you’ve satisfied a handful of customers or clients, show the world how happy and pleased they are.

Potential customers like to see proof that they’ll get their money’s worth from you. Add customer testimonials to your landing pages and your emails.

Let everyone know that they can trust and rely upon you and your product or service. When you do this, you make the most of the reasons why content is king – it puts you closer to your audience.

3. Use The Right Words

Working tangible action verbs into your content will make a bigger difference than you would expect.

Use language that spurs visitors to take action, but don’t be pushy. Bright, flashing words like ‘Act NOW!’ or ‘Don’t Wait’ can be annoying. But if you use words such as ‘grab yours’ or ‘reserve your seat’, you create a subtle sense of urgency.

That urgency will motivate potential clients or customers to act faster and they won’t be annoyed by your tactics. Content is king but that doesn’t give you the right to force your service or products down people’s throats.

4. Conversion Elements

You need to make sure that visitors to your site have easy access to your conversion elements. Keep them in above the fold.

This way, you get the most optimal results. In case you don’t know, ‘the fold’ is the area of a webpage that can be seen without scrolling.

What visitors see when they first open your webpage is important and will impact their experience.

5. Remember the Value of Your Headlines

Often overlooked, the headline is one of the most important elements of your content. You need to dedicate enough time to your headlines and make sure that they’re the best you can come up with.

A good headline will lure in more visitors and great content will make them stay. That’s another reason why content is king and will be on that throne for a long time to come.

6. Add Interesting Videos

People want to know that there are humans behind a brand. To show off your human side, add some interesting video content.

Don’t add silly or funny videos though. The videos you add need to have value and humanise your brand. We will discuss the value of videos and its relevance to how content is king a little later in this guide.

7. Go Into Detail

You should list your product or service’s features, and go into detail about why people need it.

Tell your visitors exactly why they should trust and use your product or service. Lay out the reasons they shouldn’t go and support your competition. But don’t even mention your competition.

Be smart in how you do this and show the rest of the world why content is king and why you’re a rock star content creator.

Content is King in SEO

When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), content is truly king. You cannot optimise your marketing strategy’s search engine ranking without using the right kind of content.

Just what is SEO? It is the process in which the quality of a website’s traffic is improved to be noticed by search engines. When your sites or pages are noticed, they will rank higher in the search results. This means more people will find your website.

Of course, that means improved brand awareness and a boost in sales – proof that content is king.

SEO brings in natural, organic traffic as opposed to paid strategies. This traffic can come from all kinds of internet searches including news, image, video and keyword searches.

That brings us to the value of SEO in content. Basically, without content, your sites or pages cannot rank and be noticed. Naturally, your content needs to be relevant, high-quality and well-created.

Simply put, content is the king when it comes to improving your site’s popularity with search engines such as Google.

Google’s algorithms are always evolving and changing to give users the best possible experience. As long as your content meets the requirements, it will be shown in search results.

The more quality content you have, the more Google will like you.

That is why good SEO is necessary. Your SEO strategy will help ensure that your content gets notices. And your content is the only way you can make proper use of SEO. It’s a combination of two things that should go hand-in-hand.

The SEO value of your content will depend on how informative, engaging, valuable and useful your content is.

You need to always make sure what you create and share with the world is representative of your brand. It is what the world sees when they find your content and what makes sure your content is king.

So, if you’re about SEO, content marketing is the easiest way to get there. If you post constantly, your content will get indexed way more likely – about 430% more likely compared to sites who publish nothing.

You will have to create articles and blogs and even social media content that uses keywords. But you can’t just fill your content with the keywords you think is most relevant to your target audience.

You have to do it in a professional and well-written way. You don’t want to spam people with your SEO content, that will just put them off.

Content marketing can cost up to 62% less than traditional marketing, according to the Content Marketing Institute. This is while it also generates up to 3 times more leads for every dollar spent. With such affordability, it’s not hard to understand why content is king!

Just remember that content marketing takes a lot of time and calls for patience. It won’t start showing success overnight unless you’re very lucky.

However, by spending an average of 6 hours a week on creating social media content, your traffic can be boosted significantly.

To get the max return on your investment you need to have a strategy that is focused on your target audience, not your brand.

You need to offer value, as we have mentioned before. And create content that complements any other marketing methods that you may be making use of.

Stand Out Amongst The Competition

Any content marketing strategy will have one very important goal – stand out from the crowd and your competition. And good content will do that by showing your audience why you’re special.

The ability to make your brand look unique and interesting is something that proves the belief that content is king. With content, you can be as special as you want!

When your audience is looking for a service or product, they’re searching for a solution to their problems or ways to satisfy their needs. With your content, you will address this problem(s) and offer your unique solutions.

You can use brilliant content to set your brand apart from the competition.

The tone, language and feel of your content will come together to create a personality for your brand. Of course, there is a lot that goes into content creation.

We’ve discussed in detail what makes content king but it is really important to know that without context, content will fall flat.

You cannot create awesome content and expect it to magically do things for you. On its own, content will not achieve much.

What is called for is a good and well-thought-out distribution plan. This is what helps your audience actually see your creative and wonderful content.

Just as important as distribution is context. Without the right context, your content has no meaning. And when content has no meaning, no one will bother to look at it.

Content vs Context Comparison

When creating your content, you might get a little confused about what context has to do with it.

Simply put, content is anything you create to share with your audience. This could be videos, blogs, product research or social media posts.

Context is the circumstance in which your audience will see the content – the setting that gives it a meaning. You can have context coming from many sources such as the beginning of an organisation’s year or the time of day.

Context can be nuanced and personal as well as wide-reaching. News, global events and pop culture also provides new context for brands and companies.

You don’t have any control over the unique situations of your audience, but you have control over the context in which your content is received.

This control is gained by establishing the circumstances in which you share your content and that is yet one more reason why content is king.

A really good example of context marketing is GoPro’s Instagram account. The brand uses the experiences of its users to show off its products.

Instead of advertising in traditional ways, GoPro creates context by showing users what their products can do in real life. People are constantly sharing their videos with the brand. This is a brand that knows all too well that content is king.

Effectively Working Context Into Your Content Marketing

As you can see, context is a very important part of marketing planning. You need to approach it with care to ensure you work it into your strategy in the most effective ways.

If you don’t have a good plan, even the most creative content will not have proper context. As a result, your content might not perform as well as it could have.

There are a few ways you can ensure you’re taking the right routes while making sure your own content is king.

Know Your Audience

This is the first thing you need to do and is the cornerstone of any marketing strategy. Oreo and GoPro know their audiences and as a result, they know how to create context for their content.

When you know your audience, you will know in what context they want to see your content.

Establish Customer Obstacles

As part of knowing your audience, you will also identify all the pain points and obstacles they face. You can use this information to create context and really target your audience directly.

By knowing what motivates them to go through with buying a product in your industry, you’ll know how to convince them to buy from you, for example.

Cater Your Content

You’ve identified your audience and their obstacles/struggles. Now, use this opportunity to create supportive content.

Show your audience that you understand their troubles and difficulties. Make it clear that your brand or service can solve all their problems and meet their needs.

It is at this point that you will brainstorm ideas on how to create content and context. How can you show your audience that they can benefit from your product or service?

‘About Us’ videos are a great way to get started on this. Tell your audience what your aim is and how they are better off with your product or service. Content is king but it can’t take that throne if you forget to cater your content to your audience.

Make It Personal

The best kind of marketing is always going to feel personal. With a good combination of content and context, your marketing will feel very personal.

This will take good planning and a keen eye – you need to identify situations and circumstances that will help you reach your audience on a personal level. It is a lot about timing and creativity.

You can also use marketing automation software like Routee. You can personalise your audience’s experience and provide them with a good experience as well.

For example, a retail website can have a chatbot that helps customers to find what they need. Cart abandonment emails sent to users after leaving a site without buying is also a good idea.

You can also use retargeting ads on social media after visits from a prospective client. Surely, it is plain to see why content is king when it allows you to do so much.

The ways that you use to make things feel a bit more personal will be influenced by your brand and what you hope to achieve.

Without good content, your website doesn’t really stand a chance at being unique and reaching your audience. If anyone asks ‘why is content king?’, this is why. It is your virtual door to your audience.

Great content has the ability to speak to the hearts and minds of your audience and customers. As such, it is important that your website has the right kind of content. In the end, it is your content that will convince people to buy your product or use your service.

It may be difficult to believe, but other elements such as design and visuals are secondary. When combined with killer content, it becomes more successful and valuable.

It is highly recommended that you hire someone with good copywriting experience to help you create content. A good writer will be able to take your ideas and transform it into the kind of content you need.

Websites are your way of introducing yourself to your audience. You have to make sure that what people see is high quality and valuable

Digital marketing uses content to promote brands, products and services. Without content, digital marketing would not exist.

Take a moment to imagine social media, or the internet as a whole, without content. It can’t exist without content. There would be nothing to visit because there is nothing to show and share.

The backbone that drives interaction and engagement is good and value-filled content.

Digital marketing isn’t a new concept but it has grown since marketers realised the benefit and effectiveness of this strategy. Since so many people spend time online, you need your brand and/or service to be part of what they encounter.

And the only way to do that is to have content promoting yourself.

Keep Things Interesting

Content is king, that is something that we won’t deny. But you have to work at making sure your content is royalty. It doesn’t just happen.

With so many websites to choose from, the best way to make sure that your audience comes to yours is to be interesting.

You should be adding value to their lives in an interesting way. Answering questions and solving problems isn’t enough – there are many who can do the same thing.

It can take a while for you to know just what kind of content you need to create to be interesting enough for your audience.

Take as much time as you need and use all your audience research to create interesting content that keeps them coming back for more.

Focus on Individual Treatment

One thing that really helps solidify the belief that content is king is the fact that you can make things very personal.

At the core of marketing are the customers or consumers, and you need to show them that they matter.

With great content, you can do just that. You can use your content to gather information about your customers.

This data can be used to make them feel important. Info such as names, birthdates and product preferences can go a long way to achieving individual treatment.

Send personal emails, gift cards, reminders and more when you’ve used your content to gather information.

You can also work Live Chat into your webpages, giving your content an even more personal feel.

Get Your Audience To Act

The best kind of content – the ‘content is king’ kind – will get your audience to act. Of course, this is much easier said than done.

But with proper planning and some creative thinking, you can get your audience to react the way you need them to.

You can do so by using strong call to actions, which could ask visitors to fill in an order form, sign up for special deals or contact you for more info.

However, the key here is to make sure that you impress on your audience the need to act immediately. This has to be done without using annoying words like ‘Call NOW’. Be more subtle but just as striking.

If you want your audience to think of you as an authority in your industry, you’ve got to make them see why. If you want to be taken seriously and admired, give your audience reason to look up to you.

You can use your content to do this. There are some basic ways to ensure that your content is presentable, and it’s a good start.

Have good grammar and spelling and make sure your punctuation is not poorly executed. Use clever language (as in the witty kind) but avoid jargon and overly fancy words.

You want to pull your audience in, not alienate them with words they don’t know.

Make use of attractive visuals, colours and themes in your content. For some advice on this, be sure to check out our colour psychology article on how colour plays a role in your marketing strategy.

Consistency

In the digital marketing world, consistency is key. You need to create a sense of trust and reliability with your audience, and consistent behaviour will help a great deal.

This doesn’t just apply to your content style, communication and the kind of content you share. The frequency with which you do it is important as well.

If your brand only reaches out to customers once a while, or irregularly shares news updates and content on social media, you won’t impress your audience.

However, don’t share content too frequently and don’t harass your poor audience.

There is a balance that must be struck and you’ll need to find that balance or you will lack what it takes to ensure your content is king of your industry. Do a lot of research and build a solid content strategy with this in mind.

Why Creative Content is Important

Even the greatest product or most intriguing service will not sell itself. If you want to entice your audience, you have to catch their attention. You want to sell your product or service as an experience and to do that you need to create creative content.

This, combined with good SEO, will help you make what you have on offer so much more desiring. Content is king, but only when it is done right, and creativity is very important.

One of the best ways to make sure your content is creative is to make use of graphic design. It is the foundation of a brand image that won’t fade away into obscurity.

The graphical elements of your content, your font choices, headers and logo are all very important. It is what your potential customers see and humans are often sold on what they see alone.

Note that great graphic design isn’t just attractive – it is smart. You need to use the right layouts, colours and shapes to create a specific look and feel.

Using cool colours and delicate lines are associated with elegance and luxury. Vibrant and bright colours with bold shapes create a sense of energy and dynamic importance.

VIDEO

Content is king and to make it shine even more, you should something extra to your content – videos.

Video is also an important factor – people just love videos! It is estimated that by 2023, videos will be responsible for more than 80% of the internet’s traffic. If you want to be noticed, you need to have some video content to entice your audience.

However, you should not only have advertisements in video form. Give your audience some entertainment and information as well. Show them how your product or service works or how your brand is part of the community.

Do-It-Yourself and ‘how-to’ videos are a great starting point.

It is recommended that you do a lot of homework on creativity or hire professionals to help out.

Now you too know why content is king, who made the content is king quote so famous and how you can be the king of marketing (or the queen!).

Companies of all sizes can use content to increase their success and your brand is no different. Use content to create relationships with your audience, show them why they should support you and entertain them along the way.

Need help scheduling your content because you don’t have a lot of free time? SocialPlanner.io is just what you need. This social media tool lets you schedule your content easily and fast.

It is easy to use, has a lot of bonus features and will help you find trending content to add to your existing planned content.

Don’t spend your time trying to do several things at once, spend it planning an awesome social media marketing strategy.