Insightful.

your website’s live – you worked so well to get all the copy and images looking their best. everyone’s happy and the champagne is swinging.

fast forward six months. everyone’s still happy but, the website is looking a little tired and the news section hasn’t been updated since it went live. sound familiar? or worse… maybe swap out six months with sixteen months?

once a website goes live, it’s just the beginning. 

i’m sure we’ve all heard that before, so why do we ignore it? time. money. forgot to do it. know-how. motivation. too busy. this list sounds like the reasons why i don’t wash my car! in the end, it comes down to procrastination because there are ‘better’ or more demanding things to get done.

what does this mean for your website? well let’s look at some different scenarios from a client perspective…

the client who never updates/

the website is looking a little bit tired. that one seasonal image is now looking super out of place… but hey! if it was left for another quarter it could be relevant again!

search engines are indifferent to the site. they are ranking the website, but it’s slowly moving down the list because competitor websites have more recent content.

the client is probably happy, thinking that everything is ticking along nicely and that now that the website project is completed they’re ‘done’!

the client who updates weekly/

the website is looking good! a fresh face every week, or new articles in the news section every other day.

this client is signaling to their customers that they are active, relevant, available. newer content is perceived as more trustworthy.

search engines are happy there is new content! new content is improving the website’s ranking. tip: keep in mind that search engines like to have longer and quality posts to index.

updating websites has huge benefits, not only for you, our clients, but for search engine optimisation too.

some of you might be saying “we update our content all the time…”

well done! high five! keep it up, and don’t stop at the website – update your social media too!

can you update more than what you are doing at the moment? remember, constantly and consistently align your content with your website and business strategies to maintain your marketing effectiveness, to stay relevant, topical, fresh, and to keep the search engines constantly ranking you highly.

do you know what type of content our clients should be creating when they’re wanting to:

educate customers about their new strategic direction for this year?

what about inspiring their customers to engage with their product more? 

or convincing their customers that they should lease that new property… 

or perhaps our client’s goal is to entertain their customers

what sort of content should we help them create?

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i have a super cool infographic to share with you that will help you answer all of the questions above – the content marketing matrix.

what is it? it’s a content creators dream. it’s a tool that suggests the type of content clients (and therefore us, #clientfirst) should be thinking about creating, depending on what they’re wanting to achieve. 

the content marketing matrix

source: smart insights

as you can see there are four quadrants that categories are split into (entertain, inspire, educate and convince) and along the outside are the overarching type of content you’ll be creating (rational, emotional, awareness, purchase). inside the quadrants are the recommended best type of content to create!

let’s give this some perspective, examples are our friend!

buying a bbq.

last weekend (after years of wanting one) my husband and i bought our first bbq. pretty exciting, right? a lot of thought went into the purchase as we wanted one that would last, but didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily.

i’m sure you can appreciate that if you were in the market to buy a new bbq, you’d want to shop around. compare features, read reviews, compare prices, perhaps even watch videos about how to use them.

if you’re shopping for a bbq then the goal of the marketer/content creator is to convince and inspire you to purchase one. using the matrix above the best types of content you should have are: celebrity endorsements, ratings/reviews, checklists, product feature documents and price lists.

do you agree?

what about an annual report?

the primary goal of an annual report is to tell the corporate story and educate and inform shareholders of the companies activities and financial performance throughout the previous year and propose new goals for the year ahead. shareholders are wanting to be reassured that their money is being spent well, and be convinced to continue to invest in the company. some of the content created is very rational and analytical – very different from buying a bbq - while the storytelling components are very much about painting a bigger picture: inspiring and convincing.

do you agree?

we use these to support our strategy and design to deliver what the client is wanting to achieve.

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there has been a huge amount of research poured into this way of thinking – it’s fascinating. you probably looked at the sheet above and thought “well yeah, that’s just common sense” – exactly – it’s all about knowing and creating the right kind of content for our customers, and their customers.

laura

ps. we bought a weber bbq