Create Engaging Web Content for Customers and Search Engines

In 1996 the legendary tech visionary and philanthropist Bill Gates wrote a very famous phrase that has shaped the development of the web since that time.

Content is king.

In that moment, 22 years ago, it was a great and profound statement. And for much of the following couple decades, people took content to mean something like ‘outbound marketing text on websites intended to sell a product or service’. It more or less worked.

Nobody would have predicted that content would cease to be a static thing and that with the advent of social media, ‘content’ would become much more dynamic and fluid. Something closer to a conversation than a series of statements.

And so we need to ask ‘If the nature of content has changed can we still call it king?”

Yes and no.

Content in the modern sense must be written for a purpose that directly reflects, and is informed by, the needs of your customers.

Not only were the old strategies pretty utilitarian but they relegated the customer or client to merely an audience and not a participant in the creation of content.

That is the key difference.

The web continued to evolve past those strategies as Google and other search engines changed their algorithms to better reflect the ‘user experience’.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

What we’re talking about here is a change in approach for content creation.

We’re recommending a move away from marketing to customers in favour of a more integrated approach that understands customer wants and needs. We respond to that input with content that provides solutions to customer questions and desires identified by communicating with them directly.

It is a deceptively simple change in our perspective as content creators to begin to generate content in this way.

It requires a crucial and often-overlooked skill: listening.

Listen to your customers, learn from your competition, and make informed decisions on how to create the most useful and relevant content for your customers.

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Solution: A Content Strategy That Cares

Regular readers of the Eggbeater Resource Centre know that we write about Content Strategy all the time. Probably too much… but the reason that we don’t shut up about it is that it’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to interact directly with customers. We need to understand their motivations.

We recognize that it may not be right for everybody but that doesn’t mean that it’s not right for you.

A content strategy that cares has three important ingredients:

A website that is built to support content generation and development over time.
Social media accounts that are integrated with the website and provide direct listening and interaction opportunities with customers.
Staff that are empowered to engage with customers in these channels and create strategic content that reflect and even provoke these interactions.

In this strategy, everybody is responsible for keeping the customer engagement going and for ensuring that the website is up to date and responsive to changes in customer needs.

At Eggbeater, we work with clients to ensure that these questions are investigated at the beginning of the process and provide strategies that are unique to the resources available.

A good content strategy can scale from one that can be managed by a single person or a small team to other strategies that involve more people and more sophisticated approaches.

Creating Purpose-Driven Content: Listen, Engage, Act, Repeat

The true measure of success for purpose-driven content is engagement that drives better, more consistent, and more specific content over time.

Listen. Pay attention to what your customers and followers are saying on social media, to what your competition is doing with their web presence, to what other brands that you admire are doing as well.
Engage. When you see an opportunity to speak directly to a customer about your work seize it! The simplest interactions can be very instructive and can lead to improved reputation over time.
Act. Take what you’ve learned about customer wants and needs from your interactions with them and create fresh content for your site. This content can take many forms but it should be accessible and directly relate to providing solutions for your customers in the moment. Your actions must help provide solutions!
Repeat: your content will evolve as you develop your strategy and as your network grows and changes over time. Static content strategies will fail in this dynamic and that means that everyone needs to be on-board with your plan.

These Principles Can Be Applied to Any Website

You know your customer the best and you know what they need, when they need it, and how they want to learn more about things that matter to them.

Everything in this post is adaptable to any business that cares about speaking directly to its customers and driving traffic and increased reputation based on that type of engagement.

By following these principles and applying a Content Strategy that deploys purpose-driven content to solve customer needs, you will have a website that ranks high on search engines. This won’t happen over night, but is a worthwhile investment and a great reputation for your business or organization.

At Eggbeater Creative we’re here to help you succeed: today and tomorrow.

Contact us today, and we’ll happily work with you to create a website and a strategy that’ll help you on any day of the week.