Content Rules To Live By

For those of us who work in public relations, social media and marketing, we all know one thing to be true: Content is King. Anyone can draft a tweet or write a blog post, but there is a fine line between producing content that actually matters to your readers and producing content that no one will read. There are brands that have done an excellent job of generating copy and visuals that appeal to their target audience (e.g. J. Crew, REI and Starbucks, to name a few), and those who have struggled with cultivating an audience who can’t wait for the next post or tweet. Here are a few rules that might help if your brand is struggling with content creation:

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Make a list of your competition, skim through their social profiles, blogs, websites, etc. and see what they are doing that is working and isn’t working. This will give you a better scope of how you might want to appeal to your audience based on the social platform you use. Additionally, auditing your brand’s content on all channels is an effective way to gauge what is working and what you might need to reevaluate.

GAIN PERSPECTIVE

You’ve identified what changes you need to make with your brand’s content. Now what? When writing, it’s helpful to think, “If I was a member of my audience, would I want to read this? Is this interesting to me? Would I share this with friends, family, or coworkers?” Asking brand-awareness questions during the writing process can be beneficial because writing with your audience in mind is key to successful content. Conducting research on your audience is another powerful way to gain an understanding of what will appeal to them while they’re scrolling through social channels or a website.

ABSOLUTELY NO CLICK BAIT ALLOWED

“You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!” We’ve all fallen into the trap that click bait so meticulously places on our screens, but that does not mean that it’s a solid way to appeal to an audience. Sure, people click on these articles, hence the name, but that’s all it is- clicks. You want to think about the long-term relationship that your brand is building with your audience, not just about how many likes, clicks or traffic an article gets. By Starting with quality content that engages your audiences, likes and traffic will follow naturally.