As a business owner, you’ve probably heard that if you want people to find your company, you need to develop more content. But do you have a content strategy? Do you know how to tie content to your brand, products, and services? How do you manage content scheduling to help keep on top of building your content library? While it’s possible to fall short on content, can you ever have too much? Here we explore content best practices to ensure you have the right amount of content for your marketing strategy.
Quality Over Quantity
The number one rule of content creation and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is quality over quantity. You can have hundreds of blogs on your website, but if most of them lack substance, they aren’t doing you any favors. Your objective should always be to create high-quality content that serves a purpose for your target audience. You want content worthy of starting conversations—that answers questions, solves problems, and even entertains.
You want to build trust and relationships that lead to business. If time is not on your side, set up a schedule to create new, valuable content that suits your needs and focus on creating the best collection of blogs to help build momentum. If you focus on volume alone, time constraints could lead to bad quality, which, in turn, hurts your SEO.
Short But Compelling
Another issue that might interfere with the amount of content you produce is an obsession with creating long posts. The length of a post is secondary to its quality. A provocative, informative blog in 500 words is perfectly acceptable. If your content answers key questions, solves problems, and/or creates interest in what you have to say, the lower word count is doing its job.
On the flip side, never leave your readers hanging. Be sure your blog hits all the important talking points so your content doesn’t disappoint. One way to harm your business is for people to waste time in a read that misses the mark. Use attractive headings and informative subtitles so people get what you’re saying or can easily find the content they need.
Silence Kills SEO
Be mindful that people who read blogs and find a resource they trust and enjoy crave more of the same. If you decide you’ve got too much content, chances are you’re wrong. Content is a constant, and although you can certainly produce what is called “evergreen” content that maintains its weight in gold regardless of trends, your failure to talk about trends makes you seem outdated and irrelevant. Make sure your schedule allows you to produce continuous quality content to ensure you remain timely and relevant—weekly is ideal if you can manage it.
Don’t Post for the Sake of Posting
Be sure you aren’t just posting for the sake of posting. This approach can backfire if you struggle to find something to talk about. Consider subscribing to industry blogs and magazines in order to keep up with the latest trends and glean ideas to share. Also, don’t forget your own backyard. Customer stories showing how your brand works for others make great stories to tell, as do expert blog posts written by key players at your company.
Use Metrics
Last, be sure to use metrics to track what blogs do well and which ones fail to attract interest. Consider posting blogs to social media to increase interest and get more bang for your content buck.
Your goal is to maintain a presence with new, high-quality content that is relevant and useful; therefore, while you can never have too much high-quality content, a single, poorly written post is one too many.
