Entrepreneur and bestselling author Seth Godin recently discussed the importance of maintaining exemplary customer service at all times. He wrote,
"When a homeowner decides to put his house on sale and calls a broker...
When he calls the moving company...
When a family arrives in town and calls someone recommended as the family doctor...
When a wealthy couple calls their favorite fancy restaurant looking for a reservation...
Go down the list. Stockbrokers, even hairdressers. And not just people who recently moved. When a new referral shows up, all that work and expense, and then the phone rings and it gets answered by your annoyed, overworked, burned out, never very good at it anyway receptionist, it all falls apart.
What is the doctor thinking when she allows her neither pleasant nor interested in new patients receptionist to answer the phone?"
That next phone call could be your next lifelong customer. You would never shortchange a personal interaction that could lead to a sale. Why would you cut corners online?
Such shortcuts can be seen time and time again. Marketers fail to adequately respond to customer comments and concerns on channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Who has time to constantly monitor consumer insight and reactions in the digital space? Blog content fails to be relevant to target consumers. That's okay, isn't blog content merely supposed to increase my search engine optimization? Content does not have to be great, right? It just needs to satisfy the Google crawlers and push my domain further up search engine results page. Plus, I have more important things to attend to, like determining what shade of blue should appear on the background of my company's new banner advertisement.
Think again-uninspired web content is no different than a disgruntled receptionist who turns visitors off from your business or brand.
Digital content has never been more useful in converting visitors to customers. While it is true that online media does much for your business outside of revenue generation, as marketers, if we aren't trying to sell something, what's the point?
Creative and engaging content is a critical first step towards capturing a customer's attention. A business has to be capable of convincing that online visitor that they are an industry expert; after all, in a new economy where the dissemination of information is virtually costless, attention becomes the most valuable form of currency. If a business cannot convince a blog reader or Twitter follower that they are worth that visitor's precious few moments of attention, they have already lost the lead. If you can't capture my attention for two minutes, why in the world would I ever want to do business with you?
Another key takeaway is that quality, not quantity, of information is most important in the digital space. In the age of Twitter, we are deluged by information on a daily basis. Creating high-quality, engaging content capable of cutting through the noise and reaching your target audience holds a priority over simply producing content en masse just to ensure that you will be heard. While increasing consumer touchpoints is a worthwhile endeavor, if your content is not spurring action, you might as well be shouting into a pit. Fortunately, the web offers an unprecedented level of consumer analytics and tracking to provide your business with the data it needs to decide what is working and what is not.
Here are some steps you can take to increase the engagement and relevance of your online content.
1. Speak to an audience.
You wouldn't try to speak to the entire marketplace in a radio or print ad. Why would you try to online? Content that tries to appeal to everyone ends up appealing to no one.
2. Continue the conversation.
Consumer responses to content are the absolute best thing that can happen in the context of your digital marketing framework. Any time a consumer goes out of their way to respond to a piece of information that you have broadcast, talk back! You will form a personal connection with the individual and encourage them to continue consuming your content.
3. Analyze results.
Too many marketers are not taking adequate measures to track how their content is doing. What Facebook posts are bringing in the most traffic? Which tweets are causing followers to abandon ship? What blog posts have the lowest bounce rates? If you know this, you can continue producing effective content while discontinuing content that is not worth the time you put into it.
Businesses are putting an increasing amount of money into their web infrastructure and marketing efforts. Don't sell yourself short by not giving the content-creation side of your digital media strategy the attention that it deserves.