Why Digital Content Matters

If your career has brought you anywhere near the orbit of  digital marketing, you’ve likely heard this oft-used phrase at least once before: Content is king.

But is that entirely accurate? If digital content is king, then that would make digital marketing a monarchy. While kings in a monarchy typically inherit the throne by right of birth, content was crowned by the people. Well, the people and search engines.

To understand the true value of content and how it came to wear the crown, you need to evaluate your own perception of what content is and consider what kinds of content best engage users and provide search engines with relevant and useful results.

Digital Content is More Than Just a Blog Article

What comes to mind when you think of digital content? For more than a few people, their first thought is blog articles, or maybe even the written content on the pages of a website. Neither is the wrong answer because there is no wrong answer. In fact, there are multiple answers.

Content can be articles, but it can also be the copy written for a paid search ad that appears at the top of a search engine results page. It can be posts created for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even LinkedIn. The emails that businesses send out to potential customers are also content.

Not all content has to be written, either. Videos are also a form of content, from the ads you see before a video on YouTube to the videos a brand might produce for social media.

Because of its amorphous nature, content is an essential part of digital marketing, with a role to play in nearly every aspect of your strategy and tactics.

Quality Content Builds Lasting Relationships with Consumers

Since the dawn of the Information Age, the digital marketplace has become saturated with content. It is more difficult than ever to stand out from the crowd, which is why we stress the importance of quality over quantity when it comes to digital content.

If your problem is too much content, the solution is not simply more content. That would be like dumping a bucket of water into the ocean and expecting people to be able to differentiate between your water and the ocean water. To them, it all looks the same.

Creating quality content is the first step toward building brand authority for your business, and with that authority comes more credibility and more visibility. The key? Develop content fueled by research and strategy. Use data-driven insights to identify areas of opportunity where you can address the needs of your audience and deliver it when and where they most need it.

Quality content is how you build trust with your audience. The more effective and informative solutions you can provide for their problems, the more likely they are to turn to you when faced with a new problem. Better content also better informs purchasing decisions of consumers, becoming a lead-generating source for your business.

Content Optimized for SEO Improves Your Visibility

Quality content is nothing without someone to share it with. If you think of the internet as a crowded marketplace, search engines are the map that clears a path and guides shoppers to the businesses they think are best suited to fulfilling their needs.

Digital content that has been fine-tuned for search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to claiming a spot on the map. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing. Now, search engines demand more nuance from their webpages. Your content needs to be formatted correctly for readability and crawlability, heading tags should emphasize important text, and your title tags and meta descriptions must be unique and accurately summarize the content.

It’s all in service of visibility. If the search engines can’t find you, neither can the consumers. High-quality content optimized for SEO is critical to increasing your visibility, generating more site traffic, building trust with visitors, and converting those visitors into customers.

A digital marketing strategy without content is like a book with blank pages. You can entice someone with a good cover, but it’s the story that keeps them hooked.