Importance of content in the ever-growing digital world

In this millennium, we have been witness to advances in the technological world at an exponential pace. This is only bound to accelerate in the future.

In such a scenario, if businesses wish to grow and expand their reach globally, they need to reach out to prospective clientele and communicate with them effectively to convert them into customers.

Most of today's consumers use digital devices, like PCs/laptop and mobile devices, for both professional and personal use. This makes it imperative for businesses to disseminate information about themselves by creating content that is both informative and engaging on digital platforms, such as websites, with blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, and social media channels, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, among others.

In this context, companies must concentrate on producing top quality content that can be marketed well using effective online marketing strategies. Once they do that, they can establish their organizations as the most dependable in their fields of expertise.

The content must communicate about the products or services they offer and also should be able to convince them to opt for their services over their competitors. Recent studies have shown that most of them will spend a considerable amount of time to read and view content online. For any product or service, about 80 percent of the customers will strive to understand the context of the content better by exploring links to related topics though hyperlinks or ones that are posted at the end of an article.

Most consumers of services online base their purchases on online content. This process also entails seeking suggestions of friends offline and on social media platforms. The content providers, therefore, should provide them interesting content that makes for easy reading to allow them to digest it easily and later recall it without much effort.

It is thus incumbent on companies to ensure they produce content that is meticulous and highly informative. It should answer all the questions that the readers may have and instill in them a craving for more information on the services/products they offer.

Companies could provide facts and figures relevant to the topic to make a lasting impact on your readers. When necessary, they should stir human emotions by including in the content real-life examples or allusions to popular tales to which an audience in a particular region of the world can relate to.

They need to make the content search engine friendly so that the article is accessible to numerous readers. When they do that, a wide audience will read and share it. They need to post it in formats to make it easy for sharing with their family and friends.

Before producing content, businesses should understand their target audience and how their organization will go about addressing their issues. These aspects are necessary for them to create engaging content and to connect with the people who will most likely be reading it. Also, they have to ensure to emphasize the unique selling proposition (USP) of their services. Once they achieve that, their posts will stand out and their enterprises can then concentrate on the branding of their services.

Types of content and their benefits

Although we classify content broadly as textual, audio-visual and pictorial, they can, for clarity's sake, be sorted further into blogs, E-books, videos, infographics and guides, among others.

Blogs, informally written formats of content, when presented properly can capture the attention of audiences that businesses target. With their absorbing content, they help businesses to connect with their readers more efficiently. This, in turn, can convert them into customers. But blogs need to be written and posted regularly to sustain the bonds created.

E-books, also known as electronic books, are effective tools for marketing and are made available in PDF or HTML format. The primary purpose of an E-book is to provide answers. Within E-books, content is presented using bullet points, infographics and images to engage readers.

Infographics, on the other hand, have content with a lot of facts and figures, like flowcharts, maps, timelines, that must be visually pleasing, easy-to-understand and shareable. Here, content is divided into sections to keep statistics and information apart. It should be embellished with due care by employing people with informed aesthetic senses.

Videos are an effective form of content for obvious reasons. Video content will showcase a company's products or services as they are. They can convert more prospects into customers. Importantly, they can be shared.

Guides are help manuals and are akin to lengthy blog posts. They will be more instructive and should be designed as per the audience of a particular vertical. The content should be compelling, relevant and should aim to inform the readers lucidly on the service or product. Guides can include graphics, screenshots and other elements to improve the engagement with the audience.