Content: It’s Not Rocket Science

I consider LinkedIn a necessary evil. It’s the price we pay for professional connection in world that is ever-more connected, but has unabashedly replaced quality with quantity.

Since I work in content strategy, the algorithm serves me other content strategists’ posts. I’d rather see what potential clients are talking about, but the industry shop-talk echo chamber is what it is.

Two types of content strategy information show up often, and yes, there is a generational divide here. The first is “say more stuff, rank higher; words are a commodity, keywords determine what you talk about, AI leads the way.”

The second generally starts with a just barely inaudible, “Oh, fer Pete’s sake …” And then it addresses the role of content as communication and describes why optimization is easy when you have any business talking about a particular topic in the first place. And, by the way, therein lies the magic key to attracting AI search attention.

I’m sure you know which camp I fall into. And this is where I frequently find myself starting an explanation with, “It’s not rocket science.” Here’s what I mean.

What is “content” really?
It’s just communication. In the industry, people distinguish “content” from the elements in traditional sales conversion pathways—like ads, landing pages, and purchase-driving email flights—or public relations efforts, like press releases, articles for placement, and media talking points.

Content is communication that delivers some level of education or entertainment that is valuable to your audience. It reinforces their opinion of your organization, builds trust and affinity, and supports a relationship that eventually results in sales, donations, retention, and advocacy for your brand.

 If you’re thinking of stages of the conversion funnel, most really successful content lives in the middle.

• The top is for building awareness, and it’s owned mostly by media and “category killers” that focus on general information—think WebMD in healthcare, Investopedia in finance, etc.

• The middle is for helping an audience build knowledge, engage with your brand, and learn that they can trust you to provide the specific quality and experience they seek.

• The bottom facilitates an immediate action, whether that’s a registration, sale, donation, or some other transaction for your product, service, or effort.

No doubt, you’ve realized that the very first part of creating content that works for you is to identify your audience. Not just who they are and what they spend (demographics), but what makes them tick (psychographics). What they value. Why they care about what you do. What they enjoy. Who they spend time with. What channels, platforms, and media they consume—online and off!

Audience personas spell these things out in a profile to help you put a face to discreet subgroups (segments). So when I say “Granola Gary” or “Analyst Amy,” you can immediately call to mind the qualities of that type of person and make content plans accordingly.

Better is better; more is just more
Many organizations make the mistake of producing content for content’s sake—NOT in service of an identifiable purpose. That glut of nonsense and redundancy (callin’ it like it is!) is frustrating for audiences and incredibly taxing on both time and cost.

It doesn’t generate the results you seek (because see above) and it’s unsustainable to manage or keep fresh without a massive investment in automating your content management system—and rigid adherence to content governance and documented SOPs.

That’s why, once you know your audience, you’ll want to make sure you have crystal clear answers to these questions:

• Why are you the best one to provide your service/product?
  Answering this question with ruthless awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities or threats posed by your competitors and the market at large, gives you a unique perspective on the topics you choose and the way you express your authority on those topics.

  Don’t fall for old-school “magic” that has you talking about services you don’t offer, just to game the search algorithms. Talk about what you do offer and use the quality of your content to show the people the quality they can expect from your work.

• What does your audience need to hear from you?
  What you want to tell your audience is not necessarily what they need to know to take the action you want them to take. This is when less is more.

  Think of it this way: Telling an audience you are valuable is meaningless. Provide targeted information that demonstrates your expertise. Help them make the most of their relationship with you. And they will tell you that you’re valuable. That’s the goal.

• Where is your audience looking for you?
  If you know they are on social, pay attention to the channels your audience uses and what they use them for. You don’t need to be everywhere, because your audience isn’t. And you don’t need to waste your time on channels where your audience’s purpose is different from yours.

  This applies to all audiences, but it’s really stark in the B2B space. In the U.S., specifically, Facebook is typically viewed as a consumer platform, for example. B2C content can work well there. However, it is highly unlikely that someone working in, say, financial services, is on Facebook in their professional capacity looking for service vendors. They’re more likely to use LinkedIn or search for that. So, if you’re offering tech services to banks, don’t waste your time posting on Facebook.

Why do we overcomplicate content?
“But,” clients say, “what about our keywords and how do we optimize for AI search and what you’re describing makes so much sense and sounds so simple and that can’t possibly work?!”

It is simple. When you’ve done the work I’ve just described, it’s breeze-easy to look at keyword analysis and see what terms you can use to optimize the content you are already best positioned to create. You don’t write to the keywords; you write what needs to be said, and apply the keywords as synonyms, or in critical page tags and headlines, so the search engines “see” them.

As for AI summaries and search results, stop and think for a minute. What intelligence is being artificially replicated? Human intelligence. What do humans do that search engines don’t? Process information in context.

AI is doing the same. But it’s still computers. So if you’ve gone through everything I’ve described, then using proper organizational structures that help humans read and retain information will guide AI crawlers the same way.

And the category killers or more authoritative organizations (Mayo Clinic, Fidelity, news media, etc.) will still eat your lunch in the summaries. That’s totally normal.

Your job is to create content that is useful to those who land on your site, or that you send out through other channels. The goal is to stop that person from searching because they’ve found what they need and want to learn more about you, your product, service, or initiatives.

Don’t overcomplicate it.