Stop, Read, Think ... Convert: The Present and Future of Marketing Success

You have only roughly eight seconds, the average human attention span, to grab someone's focus. What do you have to offer in eight seconds that is worth someone's time and attention?

We have come a long way from magazine, TV, and radio advertisements. Commercials can be skipped, magazine advertisements flipped, and internet ads can easily be sifted through in seconds. But what exactly entices people to surf daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly through top sites such as Google, Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia, and Yahoo? 

Quality content. The biggest being, of course, viral content. This led to the recent push of content marketing, "a technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action." With today's huge emphasis on social networking, the usage of back-links and keywords from SEO will not guarantee the same widespread audiences and broad successes, which content marketing is able to now attain. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are prime examples.

The greater demand for high-quality content from Google after the Penguin updates prompted a question of uncertainty about the role SEO would play in the face of content marketing. 

Is SEO still relevant in the face of content marketing? 

This debate of Google's intentions can be found in greater detail in three fascinating articles by Jonathan Piggins, Ken Krogue, and Sujan Patel. These authors all discuss similar issues but have diverging viewpoints regarding the potential possibilities of the relationship existing between SEO and content marketing.

The title of Krogue's article "The Death of SEO" speaks for itself as he describes SEO techniques as mere "pulp" filler, which boosts promotional materials and links. He heavily stresses engagement with social media, PR, and investment-worthy content over continuing SEO tactics as the primary force. On the other end, Piggins demonstrates optimism toward the adaptable role of SEO. He upholds that future collaborations and potential "symbiotic" relationships can exist between the two marketing techniques as the key to the largest potential audiences. In the last article by Sujan Patel, he brings forth other ideas, which explain how SEO intertwines with content marketing. To a great degree, his viewpoints fall within the same line as Piggins by drawing a workable relationship between the different marketing strategies.

In response to these three articles, I am most inclined to agree with Piggins. SEO will not be extinct from marketing practices anytime soon due to job-role adaptability, however, it will stand as the underlining to content marketing. In today's market, the filler content and pointless links originating from SEO will no longer be welcomed by either Google or the public. However, I found Patel's ideas of using keywords as links to social media materials such as blogs, videos, and etc. are applicable in supporting content marketing without seeming spam-like. Thus, I predict that SEO's future role will evolve into research support-orientated by simply tracking words or phrases that are frequently used by the online community. 

Content marketing, on the other hand, should carry the primary role by using compelling advertisements and social media engagement to specifically address and keep to the particular needs of the public. This idea is similar to Krogue's viewpoint, and I too consider social media engagement a crucial component for the success of any product or service. Only quality content has the ability to make the audience stop, read, think, and convert as I stressed in the title. The major goal of any marketer is to make their target consumers think differently. This requires intellectual and investment-worthy content. The type of content Google is ultimately searching for and will reward. Many other companies seem to have the same train of thought; according to Roper Public Affairs, nearly 80% of companies prefer information to be written in a series of quality articles rather than quick advertisements.

This is the visual depiction of how I see the two marketing techniques stand in today's market.

Yet, some may ask: "How can the objectivity of algorithms (from Google) actually account for the subjectivity of quality content?" 

This is an interesting inquiry briefly mentioned at the end of Piggin's article; however, my perspective on this issue is more in line with Krogue's ideas. 

Sharing and general web engagement should be used as the ultimate measure for content quality. 

These actions can be gauged through the "Big Three" monsters of social networking: Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. Simply put, the more online activity on a page translates to a higher-ranked page on Google.

While yes, certain pages with a lower-level of quality may somehow still be propelled forward. Generally speaking, the more shares, tweets, comments, general activity, and buzz on a high quality page will compel, but most importantly, retain a larger audience and carry the public spotlight longer. A trait that low-quality content marketing is unable to do. This process of success can already be observed through smaller scale activities such as Youtube videos or Internet memes that rapidly circulate through all social networking sites from shares, likes, and retweets. Thus, yes, I firmly see content marketing as the central figure in today's marketing conditions.

Now, that the importance of quality content has been established. Here lies the major question, I mentioned earlier: 

What do you have to offer in eight seconds that is worth someone's time and attention?

As times and technologies change, the idea of quality is constantly evolving. So how can you determine what the audience wants quality-wise within a specific industry? You need a content-intelligent company that can accurately deduce what and when content is currently the most trendy, posted, shared, and tweeted by your target audience. This is a service, that content-intelligent companies such as InfiniGraph, offer for any industry ranging from automotive to fashion. 

The graphs above depict the remarkable capabilities that InfiniGraph is able to provide for marketers who understand the crucial importance content marketing plays today. Here, large sets of data from  major social networking sites are translated in a form utilizable by any marketer for the benefit of their company. These vital tools can answer the crucial WHO, WHAT, and WHEN questions of your choice industry and audience.

This process essentially solves the ultimate question: what do YOU have to offer in eight seconds that is worth someone's time and attention?

Quality content specifically geared toward the target consumers at the right time and place.

By seeing and utilizing the data gathered, you can judge for yourself what content is currently sought out by the public and what content would entice a broad online audience. In this age of modern technology, your company must offer suitable high-quality content that the public requires to make them stop, read, think ... and convert!


Sources:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-intersection-of-seo-and-content-marketing/64264/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2012/07/20/the-death-of-seo-the-rise-of-social-pr-and-real-content/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/may/10/google-content-marketing-seo
http://www.infinigraph.com