How can your content strategy help to boost your brand credibility?

Your business content is very valuable, especially for a business involved in selling a product or professional service to their target audience. However, working out the right content strategy that best appeals to your audience isn’t always straightforward.

No matter what content you create, whether it is a blog post, an information video or your social media content, it has to resonate with your target audience but also has to rank well with Google and the other leading search engines.

Balancing customer appeal and SEO

It can be difficult to balance the need to appeal to your audience and appear as a credible source for their needs while at the same time trying to get your SEO right. This is why your content strategy should always emphasise high-quality, useful content that your reader will find valuable, but will also be relevant from an SEO perspective.

Once you have tempted your readers to your website you will also need to ensure that you have appealing website featuresto keep them on your page.

Focussing on relevant keywords and key phrases to target the best SEO rankings is important, but at the end of the day, your content should be crafted to appeal and emotionally connect with your readers. By doing this you will be delivering quality content while at the same time building credibility and trust in your brand name.

Write for your audience first and foremost

When you work in business marketing you will always be keen to target your content to ensure it ranks well. However, never lose sight of the fact that your customers are your end target. 

Search engines will rank your content but these days they are more concerned with the quality of your content based on how you are engaging with your audience. This means that the content you create must be written in a tone and language that your end customers understand and use themselves.

Problem-solving content

We all know that most adults will turn to Google or another search engine to find answers for common problems or issues that they are experiencing. As part of your customer research, you should know what your audience is searching out on the internet, so you should build content around topics and issues that your audience has.

Providing valuable content that contains expert advice that can address their issues and provide a solution can make a positive impact and will help to build your brand credibility amongst your target audience.

The way content has been created has changed over recent years. Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing and now the focus has shifted towards reader-focussed content. However, this doesn’t mean that your historical content no longer carries any value. 

You should have a plan in place to reinvigorate your old content and refresh the message carried within it to emotionally connect with your audience. By adding extra value to your old content you can use it as a tool to boost your SEO and brand credibility further. 

Improving the visual appeal of your content

As a high percentage of the public are visual learners you can add value to your written content by adding appealing images. Adding images to blog posts, for example, can help to break up large sections of text to make it easier to read. 

Many people are put off reading large blocks of text, especially if the typeface is small and difficult to read. By breaking up your written content into bite-size pieces it will be easier for your reader to absorb.

Make your content images work for you

Adding images to your written content can also help your content to rank higher in search engine results too. Your images should be chosen carefully and be something relevant to the content. This will help to further enhance your message and boost engagement with your target audience. 

The images that you include can also help to bring more traffic to your website. Providing you optimise your images correctly to include a relevant description, alt text and keywords, then image search engines will re-direct search traffic to your site.

You will also have a greater chance that your content gets shared by your readers via social media if you include relevant and appealing images. 

Video content value

According to Statista(The Statistics Portal) the most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2019, ranked by the number of active users (in millions), ranks YouTube in second place with 1,900m users after Facebook in first place with 2,320m users.

The power of using video to engage with your target audiencecannot be ignored. Including video where necessary can be an incredibly powerful tool to help get your message across and build your credibility.

If you haven’t really thought about including using video in your content strategy, then you should consider the following valid reasons for doing so:

• Video content draws in more people and encourages social sharing thereby increasing your audience reach
• Your prospective customers will find it easier to understand your product or service 
• Using video in combination with other forms of content can help to convert sales much quicker than by using written text alone
• You can display your video content across different platforms such as YouTube and social media pages to drive more traffic to your website
• You can produce short videos that tell a small part of a much larger story to keep your audience engaged

Including relevant images and engaging video will give your content a broader appeal and can help to give your audience a break from plain text content. Mixing your content up in this way will more likely encourage your readers to like and trust your brand, build your credibility and persuade your readers into becoming customers.

Emotional engagement to build brand trust and credibility

As part of your customer research, you will drill down your information to identify your customer demographics such as their gender, age, likes and dislikes, issues and concerns. 

Your content is the cornerstone of your business brand and credibility so you will want to make your content connect with your target audience on an emotional level. Emotional connectivity works so well that it is a leading marketing tool for big brand names. 

Here are some examples:

• L’Oreal Paris: “Because You’re Worth It.”
• MasterCard: “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”
• De Beers: “A Diamond Is Forever.”
• Nike: “There Is No Finish Line” and “Just Do It.”
• BMW: “Designed for Driving Pleasure.”
• McDonald’s: “I’m Lovin’ It.”
• Maybelline: “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.”

All of the above big brand names use emotional content to connect with their target audience. 

Using a content strategy that incorporates the use of emotional connectivity will take your brand credibility far beyond other important factors such as pricing, affordability, convenience, ease of purchase etc. 

Why else would people choose to buy branded products over and above a much cheaper generic version available on the market? 

Our emotions play on a level that cannot be easily defined so we will buy a desirable product that we have an emotional connection with regardless of price if we trust the brand name.

The UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising conducted an analysis of data in the book Brand Immortality. What they found shows that marketing campaigns that contained purely emotional content performed nearly twice as well when compared with purely rational or factual content (31% vs. 16%).

Know your customers inside out 

So, how can marketers profit from these insights? Quite simply by knowing their customers well enough to understand how to generate an emotional response through your content strategy that will influence their decision to buy.

This is why you need to spend quality time building a solid profile and customer avatar(s) for your target audience. Establishing this base will give you the emotional ideas to use in your content strategy to help build your brand profile and credibility.

If you’d like to chat with us about a content strategy for your business, we’d love to hear from you – why not request a free consultation or contact us.