Surely you’ve heard often talk about the quality content or valuable content. But what really is quality content? Is there any formula to achieve it? We reveal the secrets of quality content that captures the reader.
Informs, educates, entertains and inspires
All content should meet one of these four functions: to inform, educate, entertain and inspire. The ideal thing is to obtain more of one of these functions simultaneously.
For example, an educational text will always be better if it is also funny. A funny text will improve if you also inspire the reader to take action or change their thinking.
Fixes a problem or need of the user
The content that is most appreciated by readers is what helps you in your daily life because it solves a problem or fills a need. Before starting work on a new content you should put yourself in the place of the user and try to investigate what difficulties, fears or problems you face every day.
Then think how your content can attack these user needs: providing information, answering questions, passing a good time…
It is directed at a specific audience
In order to solve the user’s need, you first need to know who is on the other side of the screen consuming the content. It is a common misconception that a post or video will be of interest to anyone, but in practice this is impossible.
While determines who is your audience and make your content always thinking of him. Only in this way you are sure to meet your needs and concerns.
Read: Are You Ignoring these Important Content Marketing Elements?
Hook from the very first moment
One of the most important lessons to be learned any content creator is that users decide if they read an article by the owner, or if they see a video for the first few seconds of film.
As say “you never get a second chance to create a good impression” and that applies to the content. In the case of text, the headline and first paragraph are critical to engage the reader.
There are many ways to generate good headlines:
- Offer a promise: 5 foolproof tricks to sleep with a child every night.
- Ask a question: Are you investing your savings wrong?
- Eye-catching headline: This way I ruined my marriage in one year.
- Explain how to do something: What is the native advertising and how can it help you.
Optimized for the web
Online communication has its peculiarities; not knowing them could make you lose many readers. If you do not want to bore your audience, always remember these tips:
- Avoid jargon and words difficult to understand.
- Write short sentences. If you have problems to achieve this, try to replace some comma for a point and followed. It is very likely that the text is still legible, and will gain momentum.
- Groups the sentences in short paragraphs.
- Use numbered or unnumbered lists.
- Highlight in bold the most important concepts.
- Alternate the text with images.
Based on figures or hard evidence
Internet offers a lot of content but much of it lacks rigor. Support your content data, statistics or proven facts that may support your claims.
If it is not possible to find any figures or statistics, describe it based on your own knowledge. Explain your experiences to make sense of realism and authority to your texts.
Think of search engines and social networks
No content creator can afford to live oblivious to Google and social networks as powerful as Facebook or Twitter. The quality contents have the user as a priority, but also think about SEO and network virality:
- Include keywords in your texts.
- Optimize meta description.
- Optimize images for SEO: should be light and have relevant names and tags.
- Include calls to action that encourage the user to comment or share.