Content marketing. How to be more attractive and useful online

Everyone talks about content marketing and it’s so awesome, isn’t it? And then the popular trend begins! Do you agree? All the writings that come out on this topic arise some positive feelings. Okay, let's do a brief analysis of this serious part of web marketing. Before the beginning, we need to define the semantic meaning of "content" we will work on together with you. If we try a simple experiment and ask some of our acquaintances, colleagues or friends about their definition of content, it is almost certain that you will receive a number of completely different interpretations and opinions on this issue. Interestingly, besides just expressed views, there are quite vicious practice that you can easily track in the internet.

There are many sites in our Internet space that make the users confused by writing for marketing of content and applying techniques and practices from the field of content marketing. But this is just the beginning ..... some sites even claimed that perform services for content marketing, and also write and use the term "content marketing".

Although our great respect to the colleagues in this area, we will allow to say - dear colleagues, shake off and fix yourself, stop confusing your audience ...... and you probably lose customers with this huge inaccuracy. Therefore, we would like to offer the definition and framework SeoSlav works with in terms of digital content:

The main parameters of Digital Content are:

 Man-made or software-generated algorithm informational message.

 Interacting with the user through a visual, auditory or tactile channel.

 Recorded / saved or distributed by the user via web sites, social networks, email, chat or direct verbal communication.

Unfortunately we have noticed over the years that there has been an insufficiently accurate trend in which content marketing is being associated with the text of it. However, the emphasis on textual form distorts and vitiates the very idea of the process. In addition to the impact of the text, it is important to think about the other forms that interact with user and bring more information. For example animations, videos, pictures or graphics, shapes, sounds.... merged into various structures such as articles, infographics, trailers, video lectures, sound backgrounds, and so on. Each of the listed elements finds its place in the puzzle that makes up the content.

We hope the following lines will bring clarity and light to many of the types of elements, structure and techniques used in the field of content marketing. Namely:

Text form and elements

We are going to reveal how text can be optimized to deliver a predetermined sense or emotion fulfilling the purpose of our content; how to impose rhythm on increasing the accuracy in the perception of our articles. We will also introduce you to the processes that occur in the human brain (at neural and behavioral level) when working with text. Meanwhile you will see how to manage and optimize the users’ reading speed when they interact with your content – it’s a very important factor because of the fact that nowadays information noise has extremely high levels. We'll make sure you learn how a text can be directed and worked with user’s attention; how to make part of the text an attraction for users and ... of course, plenty of other information that can be found in free form very rarely or even it’s not possible to be found without doing paid researches and clinical studies.

Images, graphics and video clips

All this is strongly related to user’s behavioral dependencies during the visual processing of static images (photos, graphics) and video that have been an integral part of the modern web content for a long time.

Did you know that:

- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
- The brain processes the visual information 60000 times faster than plain text.
- 40% of people respond better to an image than 1000 words.
- 46% reveal that the website design is the number one criteria for brand recognition and as a trust factor.
- Publications that use infographics grow their traffic an average of 12 % over those that don’t.
- 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter every minute.
- Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined.
- Photo in a Facebook post collects more interaction than text, video or links.
- Visitors spend 100% more time on pages with video clips.
- Users are 85% more likely to purchase after watching a product videos
Data source: tax.thomsonreuters.com

Did we succeed in convincing you of the importance of visual content?

Sound in Content Marketing

You know Mr Proper's melody, right? It’s very entertaining and memorable. Maybe you will buy exactly this detergent just because of it... Sound has a strong influence on the momentary / impulse response and the user’s behavior. The familiar melody approves the brand and helps in the purchase realization.

Shapes and objects

People who are professionally engaged in content marketing and informational architects handle and design other elements, in addition to text images, graphics, video and sound, that unfortunately are not attributed to content by mass audience. And these are the objects and shapes - essential elements of the overall content architecture.

Content marketing works extremely well when there is a basis for work strategy and tools development. There is an important moment that is not frequently discussed, but professionally it puts a spoke in the wheel all the time. What is that moment? ...... Let's call it a problem. And the problem is:

Environment for content marketing performance

The vast majority of less experienced people / colleagues leave the whole design of the information they aim to provide their users / consumers or customers in the hands of ready content management systems (CMS). It’s more accurate to say that the content design is left to systems that perform one universal / general function.

However, it IS NOT, and THERE IS NO WAY to be optimized according to your brand / product and content requirements.

If you allow us to play a little game, we would like to suggest the following:

Imagine, one ... crying two-year- old child. Associate this child with information and manifest transmitted by content you offer a product, service, brand, etc. So visualize your picture of this child being in a hospital. For a greater detail, let's assume that the crying child is in the corridor of a hospital.

In the vast majority of cases, if you see a similar picture, you will assume that this child is sick, has lost a parent or he/she is feeling some pain right now. In a large number of cases the feeling will turn around such associations. And this is normal ... as human beings we have common patterns of associations and behavior and we are predictable irrational to a large extent.

However, if you imagine that the same crying child is standing in front of a shop window in a pastry shop, you will most likely give a suggestion and you will get the feeling that the child wants a pastry or something from the shop window but has not received it. Here is the essence of the example we wanted to offer with this "analogy" - the same idea (information) can change, enhance / reduce its meaning and credibility depending on the structure and design of the environment in which it is located. Of course, this example is only working and does not claim an ideal message, but we are convinced that now you understand what exactly we would like to put the focus on.

Software environment through which you are going to broadcast your content must be adapted to ensure your needs and requirements. Otherwise, talking about good results from your content marketing will be tantamount to the probability of winning the biggest lottery jackpot :)

Conclusion that follows is that:

In practice, in order to do a professional content marketing, it is necessary to cover several categories and sections with their adjacent tasks and skills. In conclusion, we would like to emphases that content marketing is not a newly discovered niche or a system hole that allows "without much efforts and hard-work" to achieve result equal to a large, well-planned and optimized marketing campaign.

These results can be even higher with a properly structuring and implementation of the Strategy...... but a lot of work has to be done. "Chinese and Indian models" in Internet promotion and marketing are gone and the creativity, uniqueness, intellectual property and especially the man himself are now top of the agenda. I would rub my hands in glee for the Google’s efforts in this direction. Human labor has a price and it is different depending on
what was achieved, how and the efforts devoted to the cause.