The job of good content

Search engines

Experts estimate that up to 85% of web visits are generated through search engines. While many things affect your search rankings, content plays a major role. If people are visiting your website to view or read your content, this will boost your blog or website's position in the search engine rankings. If they share this information over social media, this will further boost your SEO. Where Google frequently updates its algorithms to outsmart people who try to "cheat" their way up the SEO rankings, the type of content used in content marketing campaigns, written for people rather than computers, isn't generally affected by this.

Authority

Fresh, original content on a subject you're familiar with will establish you as an expert in your field. It would make sense to stick with a topic related to your brand or your industry - one your consumer is likely to look to you for information on. If your audience knows that they can count on you for regularly updated content they won't find anywhere else, as well as curated content that will save them time searching the web for information, they will consider you a "thought leader" in your chosen field. This will draw an audience to you and keep it growing as you share your content over social channels.

Brand exposure

Good SEO and establishing authority both result in brand exposure. Content marketing works by finding ways to connect with the consumer despite the challenges of competing in the busy social media sphere, cut-through in a crowded online market, and the fragmentation of audiences. Brand exposure happens naturally as the consumer is drawn to a company's web real estate as a useful resource, which then in turn builds brand loyalty.

Create relationships

Think of your content as your language. This is your tool to speak to your consumers. See what they share, what they read and interact with, what they dislike, and build up an understanding of who they are.

Create insights

All this sharing and reading! Now what? Well if you've set yourself up properly, you should now be sitting on top of a big pile of data. This is great news for any brand or publisher who is actually interested in their audience. This data can take the form of topics, timings, etc, and allow you to then create what we like to call 'insights driven content', meaning you will be more relevant to your audience than ever before.