4 Content Marketing Elements that Make Your Content Powerful

Regardless of your business or cause, content marketing will play a major role in your success.

This is a fact, whether you like it or not.

Do not believe for a second that your content doesn’t matter. It matters whether you are trying to convince dog lovers to buy your home made dog food, and it also matters if you trying to get mothers to read your parenting newsletter.

This is especially true when your primary marketing strategy is finding ideal customers online. Many will argue that content marketing is actually most effective when done online, but it is effective anywhere a purchase decision is made.

In this article, I will discuss the four (4) elements that can be used in your content marketing strategy that will make quality content even more powerful in terms of building your audience.

When you begin employing these elements as you are creating quality content, you will discover that your content marketing efforts are paying off more and more.

4 Powerful Content Marketing Elements that Will Make a Huge Difference

What business in their right mind would not engage in marketing activities that would improve their bottom line?

This happens when you start paying attention and begin improving the user experience that is associated with your digital content. I have always embraced the idea of trying to improve 1% every day rather than trying to change 30% or 50% in one single week or even a month.

The 1% rule will gradually improve your actions, your habits, and your results over time. This is the approach that brings about real change. Because it is these gradual changes that are most likely to become habits.

I recommend that you begin embracing these four (4) content marketing elements gradually as you write your blog and website content. Let them become your new marketing strategy as they begin to transform your online business.

The Magnetic Factor That Keeps Readers Coming Back For More

To have really successful content marketing, our digital content should possess that one powerful magnetic factor.

That magnetic factor is Entertainment.

Our content must be entertaining to keep readers coming back for more. Why else would they return to your blog or website?

Oh yeah, I have heard about (and even written about) the major objectives for blog posts and digital content. It has been said many times that our content has to either be entertaining, informing, educating, or inspiring.

While this is technically true – I say that each of those types of content must be entertaining. Why? Because that is what separates your blog posts from other blog posts.

The cold hard fact is that there are other people out there who are writing about the same things that you are writing about. And they are most likely using more than one form of content platform. So it really comes down to whose content all those readers enjoy reading the most.

Even the most boring instructional content needs to have a little life and personality.

How many times have you forced yourself to read a certain article because “you need to”? And how many times did you actually finish reading it?

Here are some content marketing facts about how our ideal customers are consuming the digital content they discover online:

• 55% of total page views that a piece of content gets will last less than 15 seconds.
• About 60-70% of all online content remains unused.
• Only 10-20% of all readers ever read an entire piece of content online.
• Those who read your content for three minutes or more were twice as likely to return for more.
• 67% of all online readers prefer content that is visually beautiful than plain looking content.

If you read those facts again, then I think you will agree that they convey a lack of digital content which entertains and actually builds an audience!

Many people think that entertaining content means you have to be funny and witty, but this is not true at all. There are several ways to entertain your target audience.

Here are four (4) ways to create marketing content that is more entertaining:

1. Inject drama into your content
2. Tell stories that are compelling
3. Dare to say things that no one else will say
4. Make them giggle and laugh

The Super Power that Makes Readers Respond

This super power that I am referring to is Persuasion.

Persuasion is how your content achieves its objective and getting people to take the actions you desire.

Most content marketers will refer to persuasive writing as writing copy. This is an extremely valuable skill to have. Highly skilled copywriters are usually very wealthy. Average bloggers probably couldn’t afford to hire any of them.

But since we know that writing is a craft that can be improved with practice, common sense tells us that our copywriting skills can be improved with practice as well.

Many of us believe that we have little or no persuasive skills, but this is not true. We have persuaded others all of our lives, we are just not aware of this because most of time this persuasion has been applied subconsciously or even nonverbally.

What we need to realize is that these subconscious acts of persuasive can be the most powerful because they are natural and are not contrived.

The key with persuasion is learning to apply it naturally without invoking stress or discomfort from either party. This is the perfect way to move ideal customers toward the buyer decision – starting with brand awareness.

Let us examine some great ways you can begin using more persuasion in your content marketing strategies:

Focus on your very best target audience. As I have stressed in my article about creating a content strategy, it is the content that is very focused to specific audience with a specific objective that perform the best.

So you should always think about your most ideal customers and write content that is especially suited for them.

Demonstrate empathy for your readers. The second thing you should do when you have identified your best audience is begin identifying and feeling their plight. Show them that you have been there and that you understand the problems they are facing. This establishes immediate rapport with them.

Whenever we want to solve our own problems, who is better to talk to than someone who has already solved that problem?

Tell them why right away. One of the quickest ways to hook your readers is to tell them right off the bat the main benefit they will receive from your service, product, or idea. When you convey this specific message in the clearest way possible, you will definitely attract and retain more readers.

Amplify their pain points. Before you can effectively persuade, you must understand the listener’s major pain points. Do not forget that these issues are the reason they found your digital content in the first place.

You must realize that these painful issues provide two opportunities:

• Pain points give leverage to your call to action
• Pain points allow you to build both rapport and empathy

Be repetitive about your major points. In subtle ways, your words need to repeat your main benefit and your call to action over and over again. This is why you want to tell them why immediately – so that you can keep telling them again later.

Address their objections beforehand. Think of every reason why your target audience would reject your call to action and then list those objectives by priority. Now address each of those top objections in your marketing content.

Your goal is to address these objections at the precise moment that you anticipate an ideal buyer would formulate them while reading your digital content. This is a powerful way to deal with their objections.

Use social proof as much as possible. Here’s a fact for you – whenever a person is confused about what to do, they often do what other people are doing. This is especially true when they are in a new environment. This is the power of social proof.

Whenever you can, use the testimonials and experiences of others because it is very effective. The point in the buying process where social proof becomes most powerful is when someone is almost ready to make a purchase decision. They just need a little push in the right direction – things like guarantees, facts, and social proof are all quite effective in doing this.

Start adopting a headline psychology. When conveying your message, begin thinking of headlines that will attract your target audience to your blog or website. Ask yourself what is the one sentence that best describes how a reader would benefit from reading a specific piece of content.

While you are creating content, you should have its headline in your head. As you embrace the headline mentality, you will find that your content marketing will get stronger and stronger because it gradually becomes more targeted.

What Forces Readers to Keep Coming Back to Your Content

The one thing that keeps readers coming back to your content is its Usefulness.

The most useful piece of content is the one that gives you valuable information that you can put to action immediately. Other types of useful digital content are those that contain information that you will need later when performing a specific task.

Haven’t you bookmarked a really useful blog post that has proven to be great resource? Of course you have – we all have.

The overall idea is to make your own content more actionable and useful. We should all strive to create blog posts that become a resource for others. You learn to do this as you better understand your market and target audience.

As a content creator, you must understand each stage of the buying process for your brand and market.

Here are examples of content marketing methods that result in quality content that is actionable:

Resource lists – Every market and industry has many tools and resources that are used extensively. It is always a great idea to make a comprehensive list of every useful resource that ideal customers in your market are presently using.

For huge lists, ensure that you group these resources by market categories. Be sure and advertise your resource list on the front page of your blog or website – put it in your main navigation menu and label it as “Helpful Tools” or something similar.

Here are some examples of what those lists could be about:

• List of Major Book Sites that accept Self-Publishers
• List of Image Sizes that each Social Media Site requires
• List of Sites that Allow Free Graphic Designing
• List of Pet Sites Allow Guest Posts
• List of Free Image Sites

Pictorial How-to Articles – There is nothing that gets your readers more engaged than a very specific and informative how-to article. The key to this type of quality content is “specific and informative” because you will be demonstrating with step by step pictures, how to achieve a specific task that pertains to your niche.

This is particularly effective for tasks that are complex. If it is a challenging task, then you can be assured that members of your target audience will be following along with you. But you must make sure it does achieve the desired result.

If your how-to article is well written and laid-out, and if it addresses a task that people in your market want to learn how to do, then it will definitely be bookmarked and shared by your readers.

Self-Quizzes and Tests – Another great way to immediately engage your ideal customers is by including quizzes and tests throughout your content. One clever way for employing this content marketing method is to make these self-tests conditional on the way your readers consume the content itself.

For example, you could present the self-test and then say … “if you answered 4 or more correct, then you should do (specific task 1), if you answered 2-3 correctly, then do (specific task 2), all others should immediately do (specific task 3)”

This is a very effective content marketing approach.

Templates for common tasks within your niche – Offering task templates are another popular way to make your blog posts more actionable. Who doesn’t like a useful template to work from?

Obviously, what makes content that contain templates so useful is the fact that your readers do not have to invent the wheel each time they do repetitive tasks within your market.

The body of your content would be a simple description about how to use your templates. At the end of the blog posts, you would then offer the downloadable templates to your reader in a variety of formats such as pdf, doc, xls, txt, etc.

Checklists for common tasks within your niche – Checklist can be treated the same way as offering templates. You would structure this kind of blog post the very same way. Using the body of the content to describe how to use your checklists, and then offer the checklists in several downloadable formats.

An Important Point about Actionable Content

As you can see, there are several great ideas listed here that will make your content more actionable. You have to understand that useful content gets bookmarked and shared more than most other types of content.

It is for this reason that I urge you to use your own creativity to create an actionable form of content for your own ideal customers. This will make you the exclusive person in regards to this valuable information – and you will become an instant authority in your market.

For instance, you could develop your own scoring system for evaluating something critical within your specific niche. After that, you would write a detailed piece of content that outlines how to use your scoring system and offer downloadable Excel templates to make it easier and quicker.

Not many digital marketers are using this content marketing method.

The Content Activity that Dramatically Builds an Audience

The activity that expands the number of people that are reading your content is Sharing.

The digital marketers who are getting their pieces of content regularly shared are the ones who are enjoying big growth in their readership.

Experts have long told us that it is impossible to forecast which posts on social media will go viral, but we can employ content strategies that increase our daily shares. In fact, the marketing strategies that we have already listed in this article will help tremendously in getting more shares.

What you need to understand about viral posts is that it wasn’t a bunch of social media accounts from average people that made them go viral. In most cases, they got propelled by several “influencers” (usually celebrities).

So having a content marketing strategy of going viral on social media sites is not the right frame of mind to have.

You have to understand the mentality of sharing content with others. Sharing content is a “social action” so it is very important to most sharers what their friends are “seeing them share”.

Don’t believe me? Then check out the fact below:

That fact pretty much says that people share stuff because it makes them look cool – not because they read it and felt someone else would find it helpful or entertaining.

So articles like “5 Ways to Treat Skin Rashes” would not be shared very often for obvious reasons. It is important to understand this distinction when it comes to sharing content. There is a “What Other People Think” factor at work here.

In terms of getting shared, it is things like the headlines, the images, and the way your content looks that become quite important.

Here are factors that help your digital content get shared more often:

• Content that triggers an emotion
• Content that tie to their identity
• Content that addresses trending topics
• When there are plenty of easy to share buttons available
• Content that uses pop culture
• Interviews with celebrities or influencers

Summary

As I like to do in many of my articles, I have identified and shared four (4) vital content marketing items that most content strategy articles do not discuss.

• Here’s what we covered in this post:
• We discussed the most effective way to approach our content marketing efforts
• We identified the one factor that makes readers come back to read more
• How to get your readers to respond more often to your written words
• We identified a second factor that practically forces readers to read more of your content
• We listed several ways to make your readership grow

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