How to make your content future-ready

Understanding how audiences find content in the digital era is a good place to start. Here are six things you need to be doing:

1. Create search results

By now, it should be a truth universally acknowledged that your audience usually navigates your website via Google – simply because it’s easier. There is a point for arguing that in some cases this is beneficial – building brand authority is about allowing your customer to sometimes find the right answer through Google. In a world where the consumer needs answers imminently, the art of creating search results and personalised content that addresses very specific questions is ever more important.

2. Make friends with Siri

Voice is becoming increasingly important in online search – a point strongly emphasised at BIMA’s breakfast briefing earlier this week on the Rise of Automation. Predictions that ‘50% of searches will be voice searches by 2020’ come as no surprise when voice search is, in some cases, easier than manual typing. It’s worth noting, though, that voice assistants won’t always understand you because of nuances in diction, pronunciation, etc. That said, the rise of voice assistants means that search is increasingly becoming a conversation and your website’s content should focus on surfacing the right answers.

3. Get noticed by the machines

Machine learning is already being put to use and only the most engaging content survives. Targeted advertising is not only enabled but encouraged by digital billboard advertising that rotates. Not to mention, more targeted advertising can rotate more often, allowing operators to sell more ads. The advance of technology means that we are already able to read people’s reactions and emotions when they view a particular ad. 4. Get hyper-personal In a time of too much content spread across too many channels, we need atomised content that is adaptive, structured and specific. Adapted content is detailed, time-specific, platform-specific, hyper tailored and hyper personalised. It’s about creating multiple reusable/repurposable pieces of content from one main piece that can be atomised into multiple outlets and distributed through events, whitepapers, webinars, videos and blogs.

5. Speak with clarity

The content that goes in your website should be split into meaningful terminology. Your company should be able to speak a language that’s logical to all – both internal designers and developers, and external audiences.

6. Make content king

Above all, don’t ever prioritise design over content – the content you create should always have a point. When it comes to measuring the performance of your content, it’s worth understanding whether your audience is achieving its objectives. The right, multi-purpose content strategy should be designed to save time and money, and offer a better customer experience. If you are looking for that kind of future-ready content, which pushes your marketing further, aids your brand message and positions your brand as an authority, get in touch at hello@wardour.co.uk