50 Shades of Content
As you well know, 50 Shades of Grey was recently released in theaters amid a bunch of excitement and scandal. It made $93 million in just four days, and its sequels have already been approved. Whether you’re a fan of this (I admit, risqué) story or not, you have to admit it does have some amazing content marketing power. Taking some inspiration from the famous book title that has now premiered in worldwide theaters, I’m taking an original, descriptive look at 50 Shades of Content. Do you actually know just how many shades content has? From bold to macabre to natural, there are so many shades out there among the millions of web pages that exist. Use these content shades to help you identify and create awesome blogs, product descriptions, and more. A Descriptive List: 50 Shades of Content Authentic content. When writing content, you always want to make sure it is authentic. This will help make your content powerful, and help engage your reader base. Just write from your heart and what you know, and you will be creating excellent, authentic content. All your content should have a shade of authenticity. Exceptions could be sales targeted/landing pages, where you are trying to sell rather than simply offer authentic advice or wording. Bold content. Bold content is a great way to catch people’s attention. You can be bold by writing opinion pieces on things within your industry or the latest trends. This is a good content type for emails, home pages, and other busy, targeted areas of text. Creative content. When you write your content, you need to make sure you are being creative. A great way to gain creative inspiration is to write on the latest trends. For example, I took the opportunity to use 50 Shades of Grey as inspiration for a post that helps you learn about the different aspects of content. Use whatever you want and you can have some incredible, creative content. Blogs are a great outlet for content creativity. Direct content. If you are telling your readers something important, you always need to make sure you are being as direct as possible. This will help show people that confident, know what you’re talking about, and also help convert them from simple readers to clients. Email content is one of the best “direct” content shade examples. Engaging content. Engaging content is something that everyone needs. It helps to get your readers and clients involved, which really helps your business be successful. All your content should have a shade of engaging. Fun content. You want to provide your readers with something of value, but you don’t always have to be super professional. When you write your content, you should always make sure you include something fun to add more life to your blogs. This could be something trendy, like how many businesses brought up “The Dress” on their social media sites. Social media should always have a shade of fun to avoid being boring. Good content. This is a given when it comes to content – it always needs to be good, or what we refer to as high-quality. Focus on crafting great content pieces all the time. It might seem like it takes too much time to focus on good content, but when you do, you get some great results. Let’s be honest: all your content should be this shade. Horrible content. Now, this is a shade you absolutely want to avoid. Horrible content is a surefire way to make sure your content fails, losing you many clients and revenue. You need to stay away from horrible content at whatever cost. You don’t want to face the terrible consequences of it. Unfortunately, a lot of it exists on the web. NO content of yours should be this shade. Inquiring content. This is great when it comes to creating engaging content, especially for social media. Ask your clients and readers questions, and have them provide their answers. You can give silly polls or ask serious questions that can help you tweak your content to be more powerful for your readers. Emails and blogs are good outlets for this content shade. Joyful content. When you write your content, you should always make sure you have a happy tone to it. It doesn’t always have to be puppy and rainbows, but make things more upbeat for your readers. We get enough negativity with the latest news reports, so give your readers some great, positive content. It can be pretty powerful being one of the bright spots on the Internet. Seasonal blogs and emails are a good way to present this shade. Knowledgeable Content. You can write content on almost anything, especially with the Internet at your fingertips. However, this can sometimes lead to you writing content that isn’t very knowledgeable. When you write your content, make sure it is on a topic you know or one that you have done a lot of research on. Lackluster Content. This is yet another form of content you want to avoid. Lackluster content is boring, and many times, unreadable. Make sure you craft fun, engaging content all the time to get the best results from it. Macabre Content. Now, this could be good or bad, depending on your macabre sense of humor, and your industry. You can write macabre content, just always make sure to stay tasteful, and keep it on the lighter end of macabre humor (Tim Burton is a good example). Natural Content. Natural content is a great way to rank on the SERP and also helps keep people on your site, reading. You can write natural content by not focusing on keywords and writing about something you have a passion for. Original Content. Your content not only needs to be knowledgeable, natural, and good, it also needs to be original. Write your own content, on your own ideas and you will easily have great, original content. Of course, you can always gain inspiration from others, just always make sure … Read more
