Hello y’all and welcome to episode 24 of Conversations with a Digital Strategist. We’ve already discussed that content is king, that’s a given that isn’t going to change any time soon. It’s very common for people to believe, since content is king, lots of content must really be influential. However, that’s not really the case. This week, we’re going to compare content quality over content quantity. Let’s get right into it.

Cool Tool of the Week

I absolutely love what I do. I love writing these podcasts and creating content and working with my clients. I love speaking at conferences and hosting webinars and workshops. I love running my business. But there is one piece that I can’t stand. Simply because it’s so difficult to do, and that’s competitive analysis. I hate it! I never know where to go to find details on my competitors. Well, until now. I recently ran across a very useful Chrome plugin that is helping me analyze my competitors. It’s called SimilarWeb.

You start by visiting the website for one of your competitors. Then just click the SimilarWeb icon and let it build the report. It can tell you how much traffic the website receives, the bounce rate, estimated time on site, top referrers, top keywords used to access the site and gives you a list of similar websites on the Internet. So you can identify more competitors. Did I say I love SimilarWeb? Ok, I love SimilarWeb! The best part is, this Chrome extension is free. Sure, it has some limitations, but its just too great of an extension to pass up. If you’re interested in using this extension, just go to the Google Chrome store and search for SimilarWeb. And if you didn’t know, now you know.

Why is Content King?

No matter what anyone tells you, content in it’s most general form is still king. Furthermore, I don’t see this changing any time soon. Content is the foundation of any great marketing plan. If you want eyes on your company, you must get into the content game. The biggest problem most people have with content is the massive amounts of time it takes to create content, let alone quality content. We’ll get into this is a moment. For now, I want to briefly review the types of content that have the highest conversion rates.

• Video Content – of course, video content is one of the highest converting content types. It is important to remember that people simply don’t read anymore. You’ve heard me say this before, but it’s more and more true each time I bring it up. People aren’t going to read long articles or blog posts. Heck, we can barely get people to read all the text on a meme. Because people don’t read much anymore, you must find a way to get your message across in a non-text format. Video is perfect for this. The only thing to remember is, while people will watch video, they won’t watch for long. So when you create your video, be succinct and exact, adding the most important points in the first 30 – 45 seconds of the video.
• Images – imagery is an extremely persuasive type of content. It can be great way to influence people to do what you want them to do, simply based on one image. Think about Coca Cola trucks. They always have an enlarged photo of a ice cold CocaCola bottle dripping with ice chips. And it never fails. You always pass the truck on the hottest day of the summer. Why do they place that image on the side of their trucks? Because that image makes you want an ice cold Coca Cola! Imagery works!
• Animated Content – by this I am referring to animated GIFs, essentially its a combination of the first two content types. Take an image and make it into a video and poof, you’ve got an animated GIF. This type of animation is used to catch someone’s attention. Because it is a short video, often 3 – 5 seconds of the same image sequence repeated over and over again, it is jarring to see this repetition and encourages people to stop scrolling and look at the moving image. It also, helps that most GIFs are funny.

So these are the three highest converting types of content. Notice, I didn’t include text content. This because, while text content like articles and blog posts do still convert a bit, they pale in comparison to the content types previously discussed. So now that you know why content is king and which content is best, let’s talk about setting your content apart from all the other noise heard by customers on the Internet.

Why is Quality Content Better?

Yes, noise. Think about all the images, videos, text, ads, banners, GIFs, live streams and other content types shouting at you throughout the day. I’m not as addicted to social media as most people. This is probably because I don’t follow a lot of people on my personal social media accounts. I mainly only use Facebook and Instagram to follow the growth of the new babies being born into my family. I use Twitter to follow the political pundits and catch breaking news. And I watch YouTube in lieu of turning on the actual television. Outside of that, I don’t spend hours scanning through social media. But, many people do! You may be one of them. So again, I say, think about all the messages thrown at you in just a few swipes.

If all this noise is overwhelming to you, you can imagine how your customers are feeling. You’re competing with everyone else, not just your competitors. This is how business has changed. You don’t have to compete against the other companies in your industry for space in the phone book. You have to compete with all other companies out there, for space on your customer’s social media timelines. It’s maddening and insane if you think about it. How do we notice anything, with all these messages bouncing around?

Quality! That’s catches our eye. Quality images, well made videos, catchy headlines. Quality! Everything you create, no matter the content type, must be of a high quality. The down side to this, is quality content is time consuming! The up side to this, is quality content is uncommon! That’s why people stop scrolling when they see it. Tasty videos are know for great content, easy to understand techniques, and clear concise steps. Tasty videos are quality videos.

Don’t just throw content up on the Internet for the sake of getting content on the Internet. That tactic will backfire on you. You want to take pride in your content. Even if that means creating less content, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. You don’t the best equipment to create quality content, you really just have to know what your customers want. What information do they need? What questions are they asking? Which content topics will improve their lives? Giving them what they want and need, is the recipe for quality content.

What About the Quantity of Content Produced?

Now, some gurus will tell you, you’ve got to create a lot of content. They’ll say, get at much content out there as possible. You want to stay in front of your customer base. And this is only half true. You do want to create as much content as possible. The key word here is “as possible”. If it is only possible for you to create three quality videos, two memes, and one blog post per week, then that’s what you need to do. The focus shouldn’t be on how much content you can create, but on how much quality content you can create.

I could write three blog posts per day and record five podcasts per week, but they wouldn’t be very good. I wouldn’t be able to put in much effort to writing and researching them. So, they wouldn’t be of much value to you, my listener. If I’m not providing value, then what’s the purpose? You’ll stop listening or reading my posts, and then no one is receiving my message. It’s a loss all the way around.

So the key point here is, while you should create multiple pieces of content. Focus on multiple pieces of quality content.

How Can I Balance the Two?

At this point, you’re probably wondering how to balance content quality with content quantity. This is actually easier to do than you think. The most effective way to accomplish this balance is to create reusable content. Reusable content is content that was originally created as a larger or longer piece of content and then later broken into smaller pieces and converted to different content types. For example, each one of my podcasts are also written into blog posts. This allows me to create two pieces of content for two separate reasons, without having to actually create to different pieces of content. The podcast is a way for you to easily listen to the words without having to go to my website and read the post. The blog post is created to give search engines a way to crawl the content of the podcast, and properly index it to be found through later searches.

You can take videos and turn frames into animated GIFs. You can also take a long form blog post and create quote snippets that can be tweeted by readers. Not to mention, taking snapshots of a video and creating memes. You can take one piece of quality content and create several additional pieces of quality content with minimal effort. This is call working smart.

In Conclusion

And there you have it. Content is king and it’s going to be king for a long time to come. But, your focus needs to be on creating quality content that benefits your audience. If you create one piece of content  per week, it should be amazing, life changing, high quality, useful! If you create fifty piece of content per week, the quality should be the same as if you created one piece. Don’t let your need for content determine the quality of your content, let the quality of your content determine how much content you can create every week. The quality is the piece that matters.

Thank You!

Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of Conversations with a Digital Strategist. If you have questions about anything I covered, feel free to email me at podcast@level360.co. If you’d like more information about me, visit my website at Level360.co. I’m also social, you know. Follow me on Twitter at Level_360. Or on Facebook at Facebook.com/Level360LLC. Until next time, live true, work smart, and in the words of one of the greatest strategists to ever live, think different! Bye!

Intro and outro music by: DJ Quads
DJ Quads Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
DJ Quads YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCusFqutyfTWRqGhC8kHA5uw