5 Things Your Content Must Do To Be Successful

We both know you did not wake up to embark on content marketing without any goal in mind. No one invests such time, effort, finance and other resources in any venture and not want to make something out of it. So we could agree on certain things:

• Firstly, you have your goals (things you want to achieve through your content);
• Secondly, you really desire that your content would facilitate these goals;
• Thirdly, you will feel fulfilled if your content succeeds in doing that;
• And fourthly, you will feel disappointed if your content doesn’t succeed.

But what we may not be sure of now is whether your content has what it takes to succeed. I don’t want you to get disappointed, so I’ll share these tips on what it takes for content to be successful. Every successful content must do the following.

Catch Attention

Since you did not prepare the content for yourself, the first concern you should have is to be able to grab the attention of the audience. It is the first thing every content must do. Any content that doesn’t do this is already useless.
There is just so much out there to distract your target audience, and so much competing for their attention per time. You are in a tough competition, and you have to fight well. It begins with your headline and the accompanying image, before the first sentence.

Retain Interest

Don’t relax yet just because you have crafted a screaming headline that is able to pull the attention of your audience. Now that you have their attention and they have come to consume your content, will they find something interesting? Will they find something they would want to consume? Or will they sigh and walk away?

Your knowledge of your audience should help you get into their mind and know how to sustain their interest. Whatever it is you are talking about, make it interesting. Certain tricks do it, like stories, humour, astonishing facts and statistics, statement of problems they are encountering, etc. I will cover more on this in a subsequent post.

Add Value (Inform, Educate)

Content marketing is like a bank account or an investment platform. You want to get something out of it, but first, you must give something. Your content should offer value to your audience. Teach them something new, give them some valuable piece of information, help them solve a problem, make them feel better about themselves, help them make better choices, help them earn more or save cost.

The secret to adding value is knowing the desires of your audience and helping them fulfil one or more of those desires; or positioning yourself as one who can help them achieve their dreams in any way (as it relates to your products/services).

Engage

Even though you don’t have a specific person in mind that you are writing/talking to, and your content can be seen by just anybody, do not sound bland or impersonal. Go personal as much as you can. Make each individual consumer of the content feel as though you prepared it for them and you are talking to them directly.

Be human and let them be able to connect with you on a personal level. Employ different techniques to invoke reactions and get them involved.

Propel Action

You must have heard so much talks about Call To Actions (CTAs). This is where you begin to attempt drawing from the deposits and investments you have made. Somehow, your content should be able to propel your audience to carry out an action.

Make it clear, and keep it simple. But mind you, you must not try to sell something with every content. It could be to get them to leave a comment, go ahead to read other posts, share the content, take a survey, request a quote, etc. Sometimes your actions need to be building up into getting them to make a purchase decision; you should be smart not to throw “BUY” at their face ALL THE TIME. People don’t naturally like to be sold.

Now that you have seen the five fundamental things every content must do to be successful, you will have to evaluate what you have been putting out and any subsequent content you create.