Creating Solid Content for Information Marketing

The body of your content should focus on providing exactly what the title and summary promise quickly and efficiently.

The purpose of your content is to give the one viewing it the information that they were looking for, so that they will view it and hopefully take the action you are looking for.

If you don’t deliver, then people will quickly hit their back button and see if they can find content that does deliver.

When you are creating content, there are a few simple things that you should generally try to keep in mind:

Keep the feel of the body similar to the feel of the title

If you used a secretive title, but provide content that doesn’t have a hint of secrecy to it, your viewer may decide to go elsewhere.

They chose your content based upon the title…so chances are good that they want content that has the same general feel to it.

Keep it short

Unless you promise a novel, it is best to keep your content as short as possible, especially when creating text content.

Start strong and stay strong

Your first two sentences should be as strong as you can make them. For audio and video, the first half minute should be good enough to hold peoples interest.

Most people will go look elsewhere if you haven’t caught their attenting within the first paragraph.

Providing a week introduction will prompt people to go elsewhere.

Use paragraphs liberally in textual content

Long paragraphs turn most people off. By breaking up your paragraphs, you make your writing more inviting and/or less intimidating for most people.

If you know that your target market doesn’t mind (or even enjoys) long paragraphs, then ignore this.

Use whitespace liberally

If the venue or medium allows, consider using images and boxes to break up your text and make particular pieces of information stand out better.

Use subheadings

If it makes sense to do so, be sure to create subheadings in any textual content.

This helps skimmers find the section of your content that they want to read.

Callouts:

If it is allowed, you might want to include a callout in your content.

A callout tells your viewer what they should do now. If you don’t suggest that they do something, most people won’t.

When it makes sense, I prefer to place callouts that are similar to titles, telling people the benefits of taking the action I suggest rather than just telling them something like "Click here to buy!"

For example:

• “Learn how the courts work and answer your own legal questions without a high priced lawyer!”
• "Ignore the sycophantic media.
  Learn the real reasons for our economic problems now!"

Directed towards the proper audience, both callouts could be quite effective…even though neither one notes what, exactly, will happen if the reader clicks either link.

For comparison sake, here are the callouts they might replace:

• "Buy Jurisdictionary Now!"
• "Get your copy of The Revolution, a Manifesto now!"