At Content Marketing Conference 2017, many questions were posed by the keynote speakers and influencers but a common recurring theme seemed to be, “What actually makes good content?”
Marketers frequently get hung up on the notion of “good content”. But what actually makes content “good” and better yet, causing it to be high-performing?
The Focus on Quality
First, the quality of the writing certainly factors in.
Hiring a skilled freelance writer who is familiar with the topics at hand can result in what many decision-makers consider to be good content because the quality of the writing is high.
However, a writer who is less proficient at word-smithing is also capable of producing good content given the context and other aspects of what makes content good.
Attributes are another aspect that marketers tend to be hung up on once the writing quality has been examined. For instance, does your audience prefer shorter blog posts to longer posts because readership starts dropping off after a certain point consistently?
While this is important to figuring out what your audience truly wants, length alone doesn’t determine if your content is good.
Other attributes like bullet point lists, breaking things up with subheads, using more video instead of text, and so forth also aren’t necessarily what makes for good content.
It’s Written Solely For a Specific Audience
What really determines if content is good is how much it is resounding with your audience. How long are they staying on the page? How often do unique visitors return to the page, and how often is your content being shared?
Knowing what your audience really wants and giving it them is how to create good content. Making an effort to understand your audience means that you need to create the type of content they are looking for and the topics they have burning questions about.
It’s not very prudent to stick to topics that you simply find easier to work with because your most reliable writers are good with those topics, or you find them easier to understand.
By writing about the topics that your clients are specifically looking for, you are ensuring that you’ll have regular readers who are constantly sharing your posts.
It Has Been Analyzed For Service
Even if the writing is of high-quality and the attributes are what your readers are looking for, you need to analyze how well each post is performing.
Look at how much it is being shared and at which point most visitors start leaving the page.
Quality and attributes alone don’t determine whether content is “good” because while a post may seem to be very high quality, it isn’t actually “good” unless it’s serving your audience.
Understanding your audience is critical for creating good content as the people who frequent your website and buy from you are ultimately who you need to please.
Read more recaps from Content Marketing Conference 2017 to learn The Basic Principles of Great Content from Nadya Khoja, and How to Create Bigger, Bolder Content from Ann Handley.