Creating Successful Content

In this lesson we're talking about creating successful content. This is important because in SEO and marketing we create a lot of content, and a lot of it just isn't that good.

There's a huge gap between doing keyword research and putting words or a video on a page that are good enough for people to share. We see a lot of bad content on the Internet and that's not what we want to create or see. We want to create content that people are spreading around, because spreading the love helps our marketing message and our brand.

At Moz we create a lot of content and researched what makes content successful. One researcher in particular we like is Jonah Berger who did a study of New York Times articles that get the most email. He found certain content that gets shared have some common characteristics.

Emotional Engagement

One of the most important characteristics of successful content is creating emotional engagement. That means when your visitor lands on a page there is an actual emotional connection to that content and not just any emotion.

Researchers have found that high arousal emotions do much better than low arousal emotions. Things like awe, anger, anxiety do much better than sadness or melancholy, which are kind of boring and don't get shared.

We've also found that positive emotions get shared more then negative emotions. If you're preaching abundance, if you have content that enables people, or it shows you all the riches of the world and enriches your life you're more likely to be successful.

Practical Utility

Creating useful content is some of the best content to create and it gets a lot of mileage. At Moz we do a lot of practical utility content, including Moz Academy, the video that you're watching right now. We like content that shows you how to do something. This content enables you and enables others to do useful things, so you tend to want to share it.

Perceived Value

As content creators, one of the easiest things we can manipulate and change is perceived value of our content. It's important that the content is good, but we can make it seem better and get the most mileage out of it. It's like cleaning your car to make it look as good and shiny as it possibly can. For the web it includes things like making sure you have good web design or a nice user experience.

Author fame is also a good way to create value. If you have someone famous at your company who can attach their name to content is going to make it go a lot further than someone who's unknown in the industry.

Social proof and publisher reputation are the name of the game. When you land on those pages and you see those great social shares, all those tweets, Facebook likes, it seems more valuable than something with no social proof. and it's much more likely to be shared and spread than content without shares.

Visibility

Finally, once you create this great content, you want to make sure it's visible. Many people make the mistake of making great content and no one ever sees it. That means really simple things like just making sure it's at the top of your page or putting it on your homepage.

Highlighting your best content on your sidebar and then try marketing tactics like social outreach/networking, traditional outreach emails, asking your contacts to share your content, and any other form of marketing your content.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help you get a leg up in your content strategy, check out Ross Simmond's Whiteboard Friday to learn more - How Content is Evolving Thanks to AI.