The Ultimate Cheat Sheet On Creating Quality Content

Abandoned Twitter handles, non cohesive Facebook posting or poorly shot Instagram photos leave a bad taste in the mouths of potential clients. Yet it happens with young companies over and over again. If social platforms were your office, is your conference room something you can be proud of? Can you entertain clients in these spaces? Online platforms are the face of your company, it is where consumers go to interact with their favorite businesses and brands. Make sure you're leaving a good first impression by upping your content game.

Collaboration Drives Successful Content


In April Target launched a collaboration with designer Lilly Pulitzer, the campaign success left stores selling out within minutes of opening. Every major news publication picked up the story. If you didn’t know who Lily Pulitzer was, you do now. Target is a major influencer who partners with high end designers to create limited edition clothing lines. This strategy elevates Target’s brand, increases the reach of the designer and drives content.

Businesses are paying close attention to their analytics to judge which collaborations, posts, photos and updates are getting the most traction. Start with smaller influencers and writers to increase your SEO linkbacks and create collaborative content. By collaborating with small to midsized influencers, you expose your brand to new audiences at a fraction of traditional advertising costs.  Small to Medium sized influencers tend to work in trade and charge significantly less than icons like entrepreneur Tim Ferris, or big time fashion bloggers such as Man Repeller.

You can find and evaluate influencers through tools such as Moz’s SEO bar, which shows you what an influencers SEO rank is and where their inbound links are coming from.  Buzzsumo or Followerwonk helps you find Twitter handles and websites of key influencers based on their bios. To test your new strategies look to Hubspot, KissMetrics and Cyfe. These help measure your reach by tracking how active your engagement is.

Write Google Friendly Blog Posts


Google is continually updating their search algorithm to be more conceptual and quality driven. For example, websites that don’t have mobile-friendly pages will start to lose their rank on mobile devices. They are focused on finding the most relevant quality content for their consumers.  Traditional ways of implementing keyword research into content articles have changed as google starts to value more inbound links. Here’s a great article by HubSpot that gets into the nitty gritty of article of writing successful blog content.

Become an Authority


Position your brand and business as an authority in your industry. An authority or guru is alway up-to-date on industry news. You can do this in your own updates by sharing the very articles you read to stay plugged-in. An authority writes about the industry in their own publications and in others. Content writers and creators boost your brand reach and trustworthiness by creating well researched, relevant and authoritative content.

Pay Attention To The Details


Raise your social standards, whether it is double checking spelling and grammar, or inserting a quality picture into your Facebook or Twitter posts. Pay attention to headlines and subheadings. Social Media is the online face of your businesses, so it’s important that every post is treated as if your most sought after client or investor is reading it.

Ensure That Your Social Promotion is SEO Friendly


Content is being organized and written differently in order to fit Google’s new standards, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that social sites aren’t still relying heavily on search keywords. For example, Pinterest introduced guided search this year.  Their new search bar lists keywords at the top of the page to lead pinners in the right direction. Theses keywords in Pinterest are a great place to start if you’re stumped on how to begin keyword research. Once you’ve gathered a list of relevant keywords and search terms for your business, start incorporating them into your social updates and hashtags to drive traffic.

Quality Content Builds Trust


Ultimately, giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter don’t want their consumers to be scammed. They want to create dependable marketplaces that are driven by smart, quality work that is backed with integrity. They will continue to snub black-hat marketing techniques. Developing quality content campaigns will build trust both with customers and the companies you do business with.