There’s a major problem facing the content marketing world today: oversaturation. When done properly, content marketing is a highly effective, cost-efficient, profitable marketing strategy. But it’s easy to fall behind when there are so many competitors battling it out to get more visibility in news feeds and organic search results.
By some reports, only one-fourth of all content produced ever attracts any links or shares, meaning three-quarters of all content is essentially worthless (or nearly so) for the brands producing them. As competition becomes even fiercer and consumer tastes become increasingly refined, this “quality gap” in the content sphere is only going to grow more aggressively.
So what distinguishes successful articles from ones that are not? Ultimately, it boils down to these seven key ingredients:
1. A unique topic
This one is basic, and probably the most essential out of any of the ingredients listed. If you write on a topic that’s already been done multiple times over, without having anything new or interesting to say about it, nobody’s going to read it.
If you want to stand out, you need to say something that nobody’s ever said before. If you feel constrained, or if your industry isn’t subject to many new developments, you can make up for this by putting a unique spin on a topic that’s already been covered extensively. For example, you could offer new insights on an old process, or offer a dissenting viewpoint on a popular topic.
2. A useful premise
Choosing a unique topic is a good start, but does the topic matter to people? Is it useful? Is it practical? Is it valuable?
If it’s not, it won’t be read, shared, or linked to. The most successful types of content are ones that actually help people; they provide value. The obvious choices are how-to and tutorial posts, but don’t feel limited by these categories.
Even opinion posts, overview posts, and FAQ posts can be useful—after all, how many times have you looked for these types of articles to supplement information you already had?
3. Solid research
Speaking of research, you need to include some in your article. People inherently trust well-researched content over content that’s unsupported by objective evidence. The best course of action is to produce your own research by conducting a study or a survey. This will give your article an extra boost of originality, and can increase its value to people since nobody else has offered that information before.
But since this isn’t always possible (or cost-effective), a suitable alternative is secondary research—finding and citing what other people have historically said about your topic. Cite authoritative sources and use external information to back up your claims.
4. Concise details
Notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about length here. The word count of your article doesn’t matter nearly as much as the amount of detail you include in it, and the ratio of useful content to fluff or filler content.
The first is a measure of raw detail, and the second is a measure of conciseness. The more details you include in your post, the more valuable it’s going to be. And the more concise you are, the more value per word you’re going to give your readers. You’ll need both if you want your content to be successful.
5. A memorable voice
Don’t just write content for the sake of putting words on a page. Inject a memorable voice into your content, whether that’s your own personality seeping through or a voice unique for your brand. An example of a memorable voice is Tim Urban’s from WaitButWhy, who also supplements his writing with hand-drawn stick figures and illustrations.
If you don’t already have a brand voice established, create one by melding together all the traits your brand exhibits to give your readers everything they would like in a person. Consider your demographics here—for example, a teenage boy won’t want the same things as a college-aged woman.
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6. Proper formatting
Formatting may seem like a minor, superficial quality of your piece, but it’s actually more important than you might realize. Many online readers will glance at a post without having read a single word and instantly form an impression of that content’s value.
If your content is purely text, grouped together in a massive wall-o’-text, they’re going to leave. If it’s broken up into subsections with numbered lists, headlines, and embedded images and video, they’ll be far more likely to stick around. Make your article aesthetically pleasing.
7. A shareable quirk
The best way to make content successful is to get it shared, and the only way to do that is to offer some emotional quirk that inspires people to share it with their friends or family. That emotional spark could be in the form of humor, or surprise, or sadness, or excitement, or even fear. The stronger the emotion, the more likely you’ll inspire a share (provided all the other content checks are in place).
If you can consistently produce material with all seven of these crucial ingredients, you should have no trouble overcoming the content quality gap and supplanting the competition. More content pieces can give you more space on the web, more traffic, and more potential visibility, but remember that quality must always come first.
The days of fluff content are over—you need to make a serious commitment to creating quality material if you want to be successful with content marketing.
RELATED: 15 Essential Skills for Content Marketers—Do You Have Them?
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