By now we all know that content is king, but why content is king is still a discussion we have frequently with a number of our clients hesitant to invest in content when they don’t see an immediate ROI.

Below is a list of the 5 biggest benefits to content for SEO and how ROI should be measured.

SEO

Content helps with SEO in a number of ways, but the two biggest factors are inbound links and social shares, arguably the two most important SEO factors in play today. Every time a quality site links back to your content, you gain a valuable link, and every time somebody shares your content via social media, you receive a social share, thus reducing the time you need to spend on manual outreach.

Additional benefits of quality content for SEO purposes include:

      • Increased number of indexed pages, thus more opportunity for organic ranking
      • Increased traffic to your site, which equals more respect from search engines

5 things to consider when writing content for SEO purposes:

      • Research your chosen topic
      • Write naturally; include keywords when able (without forcing them)
      • Write quality, in-depth posts of significant length and value
      • Encourage customer reviews of products and services
      • Comment on competitors’ and/or industry leaders’ blogs

Related: 10x Content

Social

Have you spent thousands of dollars increasing your fans on Facebook, yet now struggle to reach even 10% of them? This is because Facebook has monetized their entire platform and the only way around this is to provide your followers with great content that is more likely to be liked, shared or commented on. Remember that a steady stream of sales posts will lose you followers and engagement, so content is a great way to interact with those who find your brand interesting.

Start trying new ideas; get to know your audience a bit. Ask questions, respond to answers, use hashtags, be insightful, and don’t be afraid to tag other pages relevant to the content you are sharing. Remember, social media is exactly that: a medium to be social. So start socializing!

Within the art of socializing, you are going to want to post content from you as well as from industry leaders, individuals and organizations that you or your company has come to trust as quality resources. It is important to engage on social media; the more quality content you can aggregate, the more quality conversations there are to be had.

But the best way to control the conversation and show your expertise is to create content.

Quality content. By creating socially shareable content on your blog, you will increase click-through rates and engagement, and hopefully boost conversions as a result.

Creating “top 10” lists, “how to” articles and other socially shareable content is a great way to reach out across various social media channels and engage with users who may not have previously heard of your brand.

Lastly, social media is an important asset in your online marketing portfolio. Most consumers will check a brand’s social media accounts prior to making a purchase if they have not shopped on that site previously, and if all they see is a tirade of sales tweets instead of informative and helpful content, they may think twice about patronizing your business.

Lead Generation

Another benefit of content is attracting quality leads. The most basic form of lead generation via content is a whitepaper, ebook or some other form of in-depth content, but my favorite lead generation campaign to date is an idea I pitched to a company a few weeks back.

The situation was this:

A medical supplies company who offers a vast array of specialized medical supplies to a number of institutions across the globe was looking for a way to capture leads. They did not have a newsletter or social media presence and few channels were being utilized. The medical industry is thankfully still a face-to-face and handshake type of business. That said, hospitals, family doctors and medical institutions are still relying heavily on information they find online for researching new equipment, and in some cases buying equipment directly online. However, the company I am working with is still heavily dependent on the face-to-face/handshake stype of business model (and they are doing quite well), but they knew they needed to also leverage their website to capture more leads.

Their current website contains numerous product pages, but these pages do not offer an in-depth description for each product. Using that as a starting point, I decided that the best way to capture not only more leads, but more qualified leads, could be to simply offer a more user-friendly description. The most effective way to describe one of these machines is with a demo video that allows viewers to have their questions answered without having to reach out for more information. The idea was that users would need to sign up in order to receive that video via email. Another option is to include a shorter variation of the video on the page and then send the full video via email.

The obvious benefit would be more qualified leads, but best of all, less traveling for the reps. Instead of sending a rep across the globe each time a prospective client calls, they now have the ability to walk the client thorugh the product via the video. If the client still wants an in-person demo, that’s great too; it will be a much warmer lead to meet a prospective client that has seen the product in detail and wants to learn more (as opposed to one who has only see a few images and text).

This would be a very extensive lead capture campaign and the videos would have to be top quality, but this approach could lead to an immediate ROI and take this medical supplies company into the future.

This is just one lead capture idea, but capturing leads essentially comes down to offering worthwhile content.

Email Marketing

At Mad Fish, we work extensively in email marketing, and one of the best ways to keep the open rates and click-through rates increasing is through new and engaging content. The type of content a company should produce for an email campaign depends on the goal of the business. A business focused on driving sales may be able to get away with only offering monthly sales emails, but a company that has a longer sales cycles should really focus on becoming a resource for their current and prospective clientele, and nurture that relationship to the best of their ability.

Much like social media, an email marketing campaign is another opportunity to be a go-to resource for informative, entertaining and engaging content so that you can remind your current and prospective clientele of the benefits of staying engaged with your company. The best way to do this is to create content. If this is not an option, you must at least become a content aggregator and look at using a tool like snip.ly to drive traffic back to your site.

Thought Leadership

What is thought leadership? It is possessing an authoritative voice through any number of channels, in either a specific field or in multiple areas of expertise. And what are you really getting from “thought leadership?” The answer is trust. By becoming a consistent resource for your customers, you are building trust in yourself and your company. When you have people’s trust, you have their loyalty. When you have loyal customers/followers/fans, you have a long-term business strategy.

When it comes to creating content, Thought Leadership really is the end goal, but the goal is not to just get there, but to stay there as well.

To create content that you know your audience will be interested in, be sure to offer a variety of timely, informative and entertaining content to engage your audience as much and as often as possible.

And remember that even though they say content is king, it’s what you do with it that matters most.