BOO…well, that was kind of a content shock, but let’s talk about another type.
Content shock isn’t a good thing. It’s not being overwhelmed by fantastic content and needing a big sit down and a cup of tea afterwards – it’s actually describing what happens when we reach peak content.
Basically, your brand needs to make sure that you’re not bombarding your audience with so much content that it becomes physically impossible for it to consumed, valuable or deliver a strong ROI.
If you’ve got to a point where you’ve reached content shock, the content you create afterwards can be obsolete and not worth the effort.
How do I know when I’ve been shocked?
There are a few things marketers can look out for when they’re going through a content shock. Low click-through rates, high bounce rates and poor conversion rates can be symptoms of content shock.
More work needs to be done to create considered content that hits your audience at the right times, so your content stands out and has an impact.
Customer-focused Content
By doing more research into your different customer bases and their motivations leads to more finely-tuned content. Carrying out analysis into when and how audiences are interacting with your brand gives you more information to use when deciding which content is most effective and worth pushing.
Always thinking about a customer’s journey and experience helps you to only produce content that benefits this journey.
Create Value for Customers
It’s even more crucial that your content provides immediate benefits to your customers. You can do this by creating valuable, useful content that gives something worthwhile to your audience. This can be through promotional, branded content or even offering solutions to common questions.
Or in a less tangible way, valuable content can elicit a positive emotional response from an audience. Your content can provide humour or a heart-warming feeling (something to do with puppies maybe?!) – whatever it is, emotion can compel your customers to carry on with their user journey. For example, sharing content they relate to.
More Effort
Making your content more immersive means that you can capture customer’s attention and keep it for as long as possible. With the amount of social channels and entry points for content available, making content memorable is key.
You can offer ways for an audience to immerse themselves in content while they’re on the move - videos, podcasts, long-form blog posts, they’re all ways of encouraging your audiences to delve into a subject.
It’s a worthwhile investment to look at richer content.
Measure, measure, measure
As always, measuring results and the success of your campaigns is essential. Try to understand the formulas, trends and similarities behind your high-performing content; what leads to better social engagement?
This will help with your content strategy and the planning behind your content generation. Performance metrics give you more of an informed idea when you’re creating content.
Turn Content Shock into Calm
So, in a brand landscape that heavily pushes content marketing, your content must be better than ever, so you can fight content shock. Create more intelligent, valuable and immersive content to grab attention and keep it for longer.