What’s the secret sauce for creating good content?

Audiences have become so fragmented that people in the same age bracket – let alone living in the same area – have less and less in common.

As marketers, we’re always on the hunt to find the holy grail, the silver bullet, the secret sauce for what makes good content, while at the same time trying to climb the Google ladder and appease those pesky SEO algorithms.   

Well, maybe we’ve found the answer.   

In our recent podinar (a webinar, but more engaging like a podcast) ‘What does good content actually look like?’, panellists Richard Shotton, Carla Dobson-Elliott, Guy Anker and host, Darren Burroughs tackled this very question.  

Here are my thoughts and takeaways. 

Good content: The secret recipe

1. Get to know and understand your audience. Whether or not we want to accept it, traditional demographics no longer cut it. They lack effectiveness and nuance. Audiences have become so fragmented that people in the same age bracket – let alone living in the same area – have less and less in common. We need to look at drivers that actually spark action. Like the Curious Consumer Cohorts™ led by behavioural and attitudinal indicators. When you understand how to pique audiences’ curiosity, you understand how to communicate, connect and of course, convert. Which is the whole point of content marketing, right?  
2. Stop overcomplicating and keep it simple. Why, as marketers, do we like to be over arduous, shoehorn in complex language and confuse our audiences with jargon? This is an absolute turn-off. Think about when you’ve been prescribed medication and the leaflet in the box has reams of small print (necessary of course). However, most of us don’t read this, we just want to know if there are any side effects and how quickly we’ll get better. So, remove friction and create routes that enable audiences to get straight to the important bits as swiftly as possible. Audiences have limited attention spans, so don’t make it difficult for them to digest your content. 
3. Inject emotion into your story. Whether it’s joy, fear, surprise or relief, evoke an emotion. This builds a connection and draws the audience in. Your audience wants to feel they are understood – not just that you know their pain points, but you do, in fact, ‘get’ them.  Again, understanding their curiosity type will dictate which emotions you should speak to.
4. Pepper is the ultimate flavour. Getting the right balance of relatability, context and authenticity while appeasing algorithms and Google’s latest updates is about how you use your keywords. Keywords need to be led by the audience’s mindset. What stage of the funnel are they at? How do they want to receive information? What piques their curiosity? Pepper long-tail keywords into your content and let it marinate. Please note, that this is not an excuse to drown your content in keywords – that’s just icky.