I had a small business owner tell me the other day that they thought blogging was for the likes of the Kardashians or Miley’s of the world. They had no understanding of the value in business, at all.
Undoubtedly, those of us in this content marketing world, know it is so much more than an online diary. Truly, certain celebrities should stick to tweeting, as their thoughts really aren’t worth much more than a 140 character limit anyway. But us savvy businesses owners who are looking to create value packed, search engine happy, customer attractive content, we will blog. We will create. Let quality content marketing dominate the business pages on Facebook with engagement and social interaction, as it was meant to be.
And, let’s leave sassy gossip columnists to their eyeballs-glued-to-screen tweets between their newest selfies and Sriracha cuisine.
Keywords are king. Which means content is ruler of the universe, and that’s why blogs should be like the Terminator. Here’s what I mean by that: Quality Content Marketing needs to be both for the search engine algorithms (machines) and for the readers (humans).
The Machines Must Benefit from Quality Content Marketing
Algorithms are changing all the time. They have to. They create evolving and changing, and hopefully, relevant content from being pulled up when we search. As we, as consumers, get more sophisticated in our searching in order to get the results we really want, the machines need to keep up. They want to produce good results. In fact, producing good results is what creates profit for them. Follow the money… it runs the machines. And they will take over the world, unless Sarah stops them.
The machines want to give us a good experience, and they do this by analyzing a variety of information in the quality content marketing plan we are producing for business communication:
- Are we getting engagement? (Likes, Shares, Follows)
- Do people mark us as SPAM? (Are we human? BTW, Is it funny that computers are determining our humanity?)
- Are we found on a variety of platforms? (Are we verified and legit?)
- Do we talk about the same things consistently? (Keyword density)
- Are we clear in what we know? (Keyword strategy)
But, if we simply write for the machines and follow all their rules, they may just come back from the future and kill us. Well, really, if we do this, we are doing ourselves, our clients, and potential clients a terrible disservice.
The Humans Must Benefit from Quality Content Marketing
Humans are changing all the time. But our behavior follows the laws of the universe, such as gravity, lack of becoming a liquefied metal, and statistics. Our online activity is constantly being analyzed so the machines can predict our movements and sell us stuff. And while we are buying this stuff, we are also filling our heads with knowledge. And sometimes, “knowledge” is the loosest of all terms, such as watching videos about how to apply fake lashes or watching compilations of men getting hit in the crotch.
Quality content marketing is one way to add extreme value to our fellow humans. At our best, we offer them knowledge and entertainment. When we just write for the machines, we offer little more than minutes off their life. We want flesh- that is human connection, feeling, and engagement with our content marketing. And, below that flesh, we want mechanics- that is a strong keyword strategy as part of a high quality content marketing plan that is a threat to all the competition. We want our competitors to ask, “Who made them king?”
In that moment, we will turn our heads, gears turning as we meet their smug faces. They will think we are crazy and maybe that we gave up on the fight. They are wrong, however. We will pull up the collar of our black leather jackets of badassness and say, “I’ll be back”. And post yet another blog that throws them against the wall with superhuman strength. Yes, that is how we do quality content marketing. Come with me if you want to live.