Over a decade ago, Bill Gates uttered a phrase that changed the entire marking landscape: “Content is King!”
This is the typical response given to clients or perspective clients on what makes a website so successful. Web designers say it. SEO experts say it. Marketers say it. And even almighty Google says it. And without fail, it has and will always be true. Sounds super important, does it not? It is! Allow us to dissect what that phrase really means.
Information is Power
Sounds like a phrase from a movie, right? Sure, but it rings true in real life. The Internet is all about information, and information is content. People are online everyday looking for information they want and/or need. You can have a website, and it can be the best looking website on the planet, but if it does not have any information worth sharing then that website is utterly useless.
Think of it in this way: people may be impressed by the fancy new paint on a car but if they look on the inside, turn on the engine and it feels and sounds like hamsters are powering the vehicle instead of horses, they are not going to buy into it. The same can be said of any website without any content that is informing the reader.
Empowering Your Audience
Let us say a customer has found your website and it is full of wonderful content (great job!) and they found that it is useful to them. What you have done is you have armed them with vital knowledge they may not have had before they stumbled upon your site. These new insights will inform their current and future decisions in the hopes they will make the correct choice.
Many times web content is created solely on advertising how great their product or service is without answering important questions: why is it great? Will it make my life easier? How will it make my life easier? The list goes on. A website that has not answered these questions is a failure because it has not given the reader information they want when they wanted it.
Only when you have empowered your audience will the next point apply to you…
Excellent Content Creates Trust
Think about this: what is your favorite news outlet or paper? What is your favorite TV show? Answer either or both of these, then ask yourself, what keeps you coming back? Additionally, you can also ask yourself, what makes them better than the rest that is out there? It can be summed up in one word: content!
You keep coming back to the same things over and over again because you like what you saw, realized there is value there, and you go back to it because you trust it.
A website is successful because the content is interesting, informative, and trustworthy. People always go back to what they know – who better to buy a product from than a retailer that has given you what you wanted before and offers a service you enjoy? Who better to seek information from than from someone who has given you insights in the past?
Trust is the bond that ties people together, and similarly brands and businesses that are able to build and keep that trust will have a loyal following that comes back time and time again.
Having great, well-informed and well-written content is the key to winning over readers who are not visiting just for the fancy web design. They are there because they are looking for valuable information and if you do not have it, they are leaving will likely never to return. But if you do have the content, they are going to come back and buy from you. For more information on creating well-rounded content, contact the experts at Premiere Creative and give us a call at (973) 346-8100.