Well, Thanksgiving came faster this year than kids eating their Halloween candy the day after. The foodie holiday is also a great way to reflect on the amazing year you’ve had (or okay year, we all can’t have it all). As we here are making our lists of thanks to awkwardly share with our table of family members, we have to remind you to add these two things to your list: social media and high-quality content.
These two digital marketing strategies are the side dishes everyone pins over in your industry because without them, the whole marketing meal isn’t complete.
Social media and high-quality content will fill your business up more than grandma’s green bean casserole, and we have several reasons to give thanks to these two strategies—plus we won’t make you stand up in front of everyone to tell us why you’re thankful.
18 Reasons We’re Thankful for Social Media
Social media has impacted all of our lives—from the early years of Twitter to your not-so-favorite aunt adding you on Snapchat. It surrounds us like the Force and manages to keep us entertained when you’re waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to begin at 2:00 PM. We made our list of thankful reasons for social media and checked it twice. (Too soon?)
- Social media gave us a reason to stay connected to all those high school friends you couldn’t wait to get away from after graduation but still congratulate after they announce ANOTHER baby that’s on the way.
- Social media is a perfect place to reconnect with and cyber stalk old best friends, lost lovers, and acquaintances we would never have seen again. (Guy that ghosted me: I see you fam.)
- Social media allows us the opportunity to promote our amazing events and talk about how awesome we are.
- Social media gives us the news at our fingertips—at least the pop culture trending topics. You know, the stuff that really matters. #teamcardi
- Social media reminds us of our friends and family’s birthdays, so we don’t have to write them down anymore.
- Social media provides the perfect platform to view all those cat videos we love casually. We are also here for a keyboard cat come back.
- Social media provides a platform for people with the same ideas and beliefs to come together—and judge other people who do not believe as they do.
- Different social media sites exist so we can choose if we want to see people’s pictures of food, business tips, videos of people doing stupid crap, 140-character complaints, or a mixture of all of the above.
- Social media is a place to go when our phone falls in the toilet (a common Social Media do-do) or gets lost in Cabo.
- Social media provides a digital space to connect with friends, family, clients, and more.
- Social media is a place to connect with random strangers who can turn into potential clients or customers or long-term roommates.
- Social media allows us to advertise to random strangers and even provides us with the ability to target our ideal potential customer or client demographically.
- Social media advertising can amplify our message to more people than ever imagined. Even potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
- Social media allows us the opportunity to join the conversation in the subjects that we are most interested in…like web presence marketing.
- Social media networking allows us to connect with professionals in our industry who we can cross-promote, collaborate with and exchange valuable information.
- Social media has more than 4.02 billion active users, and we think that’s awesome. There are so many people to connect within one type of space.
- Social media marketing can bring in more money and a higher ROI than traditional marketing and PR, if you do it right.
- Social media keeps your mom entertained and quiet when you’re trying to concentrate in crocheting a beanie for your bae (if he ever stops ghosting you).
We can go on and on but its a no-brainer: Social Media is the G.O.A.T.
High-quality Content: The Side Dish Everyone Wants to Get Their Hands On
Adding to the list of things we’re thankful for, high-quality content can do no wrong. This year, we’re grateful for the ability to create and engage with content all over the interwebs. Be thankful, and discover some tips to write content that will taste oh-so-scrumptious.
What is high-quality content?
Think back to your favorite pieces of content from this year. Remember all the blogs and think about those pieces you shared on Facebook and Twitter. All the content that evoked an emotional response and caused you to hit a ‘Like’ button is high-quality content.
The content you can be thankful for isn’t just words on a blog or webpage; it’s words worth reading. High-quality content provides the best answers as fast as possible to real questions that web users ask. High-quality content gets quoted, linked, and shared all over the Internet.
How does high-quality content help your business?
You may be wondering why quality content is essential. The purpose of SEO is to deliver the right people to your website—readers or consumers looking for answers. Quality content provides solutions to their problems.
Quality content creates a continuous connection between users and the knowledge they seek. Websites serve as the setting for the relationship, while the product, services, or information on the site are the answer the user seeks. Think of websites as the Thanksgiving dinner table and products or services like the food itself.
Don’t stuff your content with keywords
Google’s goal is to provide users with an interactive experience and the best answers in a swift manner. The mistake many content writers make is stuffing their work with irrelevant keywords to influence SEO. Keyword stuffing is a technique to manipulate the search engine results page (SERPs) by loading web content with keywords.
Google frowns upon the use of irrelevant keywords and penalizes the culprits. Keyword stuffing goes against Google’s goals by disrupting the user experience with frustrating results, low-quality content and misleading information. Users don’t want their search for answers slowed down thanks to irrelevant keywords disguised as an answer. No, thank you.
Content writers should align their writing with Google’s terms by using keywords as a guide to know what users are searching for in your industry. They should aim to provide a connection with readers and provide an interactive experience, which you can achieve with high-quality content.
Your content needs quality ingredients
Creating quality content is a lot like preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a time consuming process, but if you do it correctly, it’ll produce a delicious end result. Like a turkey, high-quality content is meant to be scrumptious for people to consume.
Be original if you want to impress your readers this Thanksgiving (and every day). Originality is vital in both content and ideas. Just like nobody wants to eat the same thing every day, nobody wants to read the same thing every day.
Don’t recycle ideas already written. Instead, come up with your own unique ideas. This blog is a great example of an original idea. Who else do you know that is writing about being thankful for high-quality content?
Add these extra flavorful ingredients to your high-quality content:
- Strong titles: 80% of content readers report reading headlines, while only 20% read the rest of the article. High-quality content should keep people reading past the headlines.
- Keeps the reader engaged: High-quality content awes your audience, just like Thanksgiving dinner should awe your family. An engaged audience will reply to you and ask you thoughtful questions. Use this to gauge what they want to learn, and give them what they want in a future post.
- Relevant and accurate information: This keeps readers even more engaged and gives them a sense of action. Use high-quality content to give honest tips backed by qualified research. Provide the answers your readers are searching for with credible sources.
- Keep your content FUN: Using pictures, videos, infographics, and gifs in content marketing provide an engaging and entertaining user experience. Web users enjoy visual cues, so show them examples. Keep high-quality content informative and entertaining; after all, this is the Internet, home of the funny cat video.
We Couldn’t Be Truly Thankful without Adding These to Our List
Social media and high-quality content are the gluten-free bread and vegan butter keeping us happy always, but we can’t really finish our list of thanks for the year without the following:
- Websites
- Avengers: Infinity War
- The Internet
- Content
- Laptops (#teamwindows)
- Chris Pratt (except in Infinity War…he knows what he did)
- Keyboards
- The color blue (This dinosaur kind, preferably)
- Invasion of Privacy, Cardi B
- Spotify Premium (or Apple Music, whatever tickles your fancy)
- Headphones
- Toilet paper
- Rocket ships
- Windows (Clean ones, rather)
- That fire Black Panther soundtrack
- The color green
- Sunglasses
- Cars
- Smartphones
- Post-its
- Whiteboards
- Water
- Last, but certainly not least—coffee, coffee, coffee!
Add Post Launch to Your List of Thanks—We’re Grandma-Approved
Make this Thanksgiving one of pride when you tell your family how much more successful your company is now thanks to content marketing from Post Launch. Our web presence nerds will shine a light on your business for your consumers to find you. Also, don’t be afraid to bring us along for Thanksgiving dinner—we’ll even bring some pie!