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Not too long ago in the land of content marketing, the philosophy was based around content pushing, keyword stuffing and content sharing. This thought wasn’t necessarily wrong a few years ago when the algorithms of Google and other search engines were much much different.
Whether you are a company starting out on your Internet expedition or have been in the content marketing arena for some time, its vital to determine what your goals are for the company. Our last blog article briefly touched upon this, but lets dig deeper on this.
Content such as photos, info graphs, blogs, e-books are great for sharing on all sorts of platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Stumble upon or the other millions sharing platforms now available for public use. When Google algorithm updates rolled out midway last year, it was thought that writing a blog post and sharing it on every social platform was the best practice in order to have your website maintain or surpass its placement on search engines.
Like all easy practices, Google went a step further and decided to dig deep on shared content and determine the quality of shares, where they originated from and determine if the sharing was consistent with an easy ranking strategy. Why? As we have said before, Google wants to offer the best user experience as possible along with giving a level playing field to those companies and businesses trying to make their way into the Internet marketing arena.
So now that we understand that content and the quality of shares matters, why must we determine the goals of our company?
Going Viral doesn’t always lead to a pot of gold.
It’s really simple actually. You have a website where you add your blog content to on a regular basis. You first need to determine what kind of content you’ll be comprising. Will you be trying to sell, sell, sell your company? If so, Let’s ask a questions:
If you go to Google, and ask a question such as “Tips for getting a stain out” are you going to want to read an article that is stuffed with plugs from a stain removal product that isn’t offering many tips at all other than the company who makes it? Are you going to want to feel like you are being sold on a product versus your answer? Does the content leave you without an answer?
If so, you have answered your question regarding content:
You need to offer up the content with the idea that if your content is of good quality, the person finding the answer will go a step further and better understand your business.
So now you have great content and want to share it. Perfect! Now from a social media standpoint, have you:
Friend as many people as you possibly can that you barely know? Are you limited to selling in one state or location yet 10% or less of your social media audience are from there? Do you share content without replying to any comments?
The moral of the story is simple. You could be so focused on pushing content and sharing it to a world that might never have the ability to utilize your company. You are more focused on the likes versus the quality or a single comment that might be left by a potential, future client.
Don’t misinterpret this post. Likes, comments and shares are awesome! +1’s are Fabulous! Re tweets are awesome!! However, if you are losing sight of the proper audience and are still in the mindset that Google wants mass quantities of content and social activity, you might want to focus less on going viral and more on going for quality on all platforms.
