When you boil it down, what is the point of your website? Sure, experience and style come into it, but chances are it all comes down to communication. Whether selling or sharing, content is always going to be the core of that conversation and while the design will help guide people down the right path, it’s the words that will turn your audience into customers.

From the strapline that greets users to your website to the landing pages that help you rank; every website is filled with content and it all serves a purpose. Whether it’s growing awareness, building trust, encouraging conversions or inspiring brand loyalty, the content you put on your website influences people at every stage.

With this in mind, it’s important that the content throughout your site not only represents your brand but is seen as an opportunity. And in terms of adding value and sharing knowledge, one of the best opportunities is your blog.

Why is a blog important?

At Venn, we have extensive experience within the recruitment industry and creating focused content for our clients has become our bread and butter. So, while this example may focus on that sector, it can be applied to most.

Your blog is an important tool that can bring plenty of potential leads through to your website. Whether it’s traffic from search engine result pages or the social channels you promote your content on, your blog has so much to offer.

Over the years we’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Even we can be guilty of neglecting our blog, but too often we see mistreated content hubs humbly bragging about the top earners’ Monaco holiday and frankly, your blog deserves better.

A good blog is filled with insightful information into the areas you specialise in. Your audience wants to learn, so give them the opportunity.

However, that doesn’t mean you should be creating generic blogs. Using recruitment as an example, a quick Google search for ‘CV writing tips’ finds over 95 million results and with companies like Monster, CV-Library and The Guardian taking the top spots, getting to the front page will be tough. Besides, there’s only so many times people can read the same tips about standing out and proofreading.

However, it’s not always possible to find a unique topic, so make sure your content provides an angle that makes it better and different from what everyone else is writing. Loyal communities will also want to know your take on common, well-covered issues, so provide them with your unique opinion. 

Create content that matters

To attract your audience, you need to write about the topics they care about. If you specialise in a specialist area, then prove it. New visitors may not have heard of you before and you need to show them that your industry knowledge does more than talk the talk.

Your content is more than just an SEO tool and there are three different aims to creating content that truly matters:

Help your audience

This type of content looks at the pain points your audience is struggling with and looks to offer solutions for these issues. Frequently this involves identifying long-tail keywords, more specific questions your target audience may be asking.

One of our examples includes work we did for We Buy Any House. Through keyword research, we discovered that there were around 880 monthly searches for ‘Can I sell my house to my son for £1’. To take advantage of this, we created a blog post that answered the question quickly and concisely making sure we avoided overcomplicating it with jargon.

Once the blog was published, we were able to secure a featured snippet for the key phrase placing the company in position 0.

Even though this blog was written back in 2017, it’s still bringing in plenty of traffic as their fourth most visited landing, seeing well over 4,000 visitors since the start of the year. This just goes to show how writing to help your audience can lead to evergreen content that consistently performs.

Engage with your audience

Your business is filled with experts who have a lot to say about the industry and as we’ve mentioned before, your audience is eager to learn more. Markets are constantly changing and whether that’s due to new tech innovations or legislation changes, your experts’ opinions can help build a unique voice in your sector.

By consistently producing high-quality content you can keep the audience coming back to learn more about your specialist subjects. As you continue to post insightful content your reputation as industry experts will only grow, helping build trust with your audiences.  

To properly engage with your audience, you need to create content that answers their questions or addresses their pain points. Using tools like Answer the Public can give you a detailed insight into what queries people are searching around a specific topic. Alternatively, simply talking to your customers can help you discover the types of content they want to read.

Whichever approach you decide to take, keep checking the performance of your content. Knowing which blogs are bringing more users to site and keeping them engaged means you can tailor your writing around those types of content.

Get in front of new audiences

Growing your audience means you’ll have more chances to gain loyal users and to do this, you need to make sure your content is constantly getting in front of new people. So, whether it’s through guest posts or social activity, finding new opportunities will only help your business.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should host all your content off-site, as you’d just be giving your valuable content away for free. You want your audiences to read the content on your website, where they can learn more about what you do and start their conversion journey.

For example, sharing your content on LinkedIn can be a great way to build your audience. However, constantly publishing your articles on that platform doesn’t give readers much of a reason to continue through to your site.

So, always look for opportunities to get your content out there but don’t give everything away. Gauge their interest through social posts, emails and guests post, then link back to your website.

Invest in your content

Creating meaningful content is just the beginning, there’s so much more than can be done to make it even better. For example, creating long-form content allows you to take a deep-dive into a topic and provide a rich experience through the addition of additional media such as videos and graphics.

A thoroughly-researched and well-designed piece full of interesting data and stats is always going to engage your audience more than a 700-word wall of text. Take a simple blog, add a short interview segment, a video embed and some supporting graphics. Even if it’s not a long-form you’re already on your way to creating a better experience for your audience.

Back in 2017, we helped Eurostaff showcase their expertise in the tech sector by creating a piece titled ‘The Evolution of Cryptocurrency.’ At the time, Bitcoin was a massive talking point as it continued to swell in value and we wanted to make sure that Eurostaff’s audience knew that they were already aware of the latest industry trends. Alongside the content, we built a structure that ensured all the information was digestible and produced graphics that summed up complicated information.

Alongside this, we sat down with people within the business to get their thoughts and opinions on cryptocurrency and what it meant for the future of finance. Featured as a question and answer section, this allowed them to provide their own opinions on the topic based on their knowledge.

The results of this content marketing campaign have seen the page become their second most visited landing page since it was published in December 2017.

What do your users want?

While the main aim of any SEO strategy is to help you earn those top spots in the SERPs, the content featuring on these pages still needs to focus on what the user wants. There’s little point in ranking well if the content on site is turning users away.

Whether it’s a food & beverage or e-commerce business, you don’t want to be bringing your audience through to a page that blocks the next step with a wall of text.

A good example of this is can be found with featured snippets. While it may be tempting to write a long essay filled with keywords to try and secure that coveted top spot, it’s not always the best approach. Instead, writing concisely and making sure users can easily find the information they need is only going to create a better user experience. At the end of the day, some people just want to know how to boil an egg.

Your content is important, so make sure you’re using it correctly to serve your audience. Making sure that your writing about what people care about is a sure-fire way to build your loyalty with new and potential audiences. So, make sure you know what your users want to read and invest in your content to provide solutions to your audience’s pain points.

At Venn, we’ve created content for a wide variety of industries including recruitment, e-commerce and property. So, whether you need engaging blog content or website copy that encourages conversions, we can help. To find out more, get in touch today.