content_press_socialWeb 2.0 is changing marketing communications as emancipated media citizens demand transparent and useful information as well as an open dialogue. Marketing and PR professionals are confronted more than ever with the task of developing quality content, tailored to the needs of their target groups.

According to a study of the Meltwater Group, 78% of the companies they surveyed in Asia, Australia, Europe and USA rate content marketing as important for their communication strategy. And indeed, qualified content is becoming the new currency in Web 2.0 and the key to new customers.

Current and qualified content is especially important if you want to achieve a good ranking in the search engines. Up-to-date content relines Google and other websites as it is the driver for search engines, triggering the crawling and indexing of a page more frequently and thus better. It is therefore high time to rethink established communication strategies and to use quality content in a targeted way to attract new customers on the Internet.

Topics that provide answers to important questions and solutions to problems are successful. Those who manage to generate interesting content and deliver it to the right target group of customers, gain credibility and trust, which are most important for marketing communications. Thus, qualitative content provides the basis for loyal customers, fans and followers.

Content marketing for man and machine

According to research, 96.5% of web users deploy search engines for their information search. In order to list relevant search results, search engine robots regularly scan the Internet for new content with specific keywords and assess the content in relation to specific criteria. Thematic content and relevance of a website is plays a decisive role.

The relevant factors of web content are measured primarily by two factors:

  • Content quality: well-written, with new texts, relevant content and keywords.
  • Link-building: a vast network with other, relevant websites (backlinks).

Online PR is a perfect tool for doing all this as current and qualified texts are provided. Search engines love editorially processed information - be it recycled and republished contributions of articles, technical articles, white papers, presentations, or videos.

Publishing corporate news online supports a link-building strategy, as links from the press releases and contact information automatically generate links back to the company's website (backlinks). Thus, for a good position in the results pages of search engines, far-reaching announcements and connecting of PR texts is required, not to mention that simultaneous publication of press releases on a variety of news archives produces ten times more resonance than publication on a single portal.

More coverage via press portals, blogs, RSS services, social media and Co.

Press portals are the place for online press releases. The content-rich portals, with a lot of current content, are usually listed high by search engines, therefore, an announcement on such portals increases the chance of good visibility of the information on Google and Co.

Other channels of communication for publishing press announcements are blogs and social news portals such as Webnews. Even file-sharing communities such as SlideShare or Scribd provide space for press releases, presentations, white papers and professional articles. On article portals and expert forums like Suite101 or brainGuide, companies can demonstrate their expertise in providing their technical papers to the public.

With RSS and micro-blogging services like Twitter and Friendfeed, news and latest announcements can be briefly touched and connected. Further, corporate blogs give corporate news that personal touch and allow an open dialogue with the readers.

The frequency of announcements is the decisive factor for the exposure of information on the net. Newsworthy content is frequently crawled and indexes by the search engines and the regular release of qualified content on many different websites and portals significantly improve visibility in the search engines. To make a long story short, interesting content creates the basis for credibility and trust and ensures loyal customers, fans and followers.

By Daniela La Marca