How to Produce Value Driven Content for Better Earned Media Results
Earned media is word of mouth media. It happens when someone comments on their social media site or blog about your business. For example, “just tried the cocoa hazelnut coffee at Buzz Coffee and it was amazing.” Buzz coffee just received “earned media.” Earned media also occurs when people link to your site, quote your content on social media, or when they share content that you’ve published.
So, while your customer service and products need to be top quality to generate earned media, your content can make a difference too.
What is Value Driven Content?
Value-driven content is content that is focused on providing immediate and apparent value to your reader. For example, a downloadable checklist is a form of value-driven content because it helps a consumer work through a process in a systematic way. It provides them with immediate value. Now, there are many different types of valuable content, and they range from checklists to webinars, white papers to videos. Infographics and how-to articles are also forms of value-driven content. The format isn’t as important as the value to your reader.
What’s Useful to Your Audience?
Learn what your audience wants and needs. What is your audience seeking? You might review your competition’s content. What does their audience respond to? For example, one health tracking application company and blogger created a downloadable chart of healthy oils and non-healthy oils, so readers would know what their options were and make healthy decisions. The image was downloaded and shared on social media hundreds of times.
Make it Visually Interesting
Content that has images generally has better engagement. People share visual content more often. They also comment on it and share it with others. Content that has added photos, memes, short video clips, infographics, charts or drawings will offer more value and increase earned media opportunities.
Be Original
Try to take a different approach to topics that your audience is accustomed to. Be creative and focus on value to your audience. A fresh perspective or approach is often appreciated.
Focused and Specific Instead of General
General and broad scope content can be found anywhere. Instead, try creating content that is tightly focused on a narrow. Information dense content is more readily consumed by both consumers and businesses. It boosts credibility and authority.
Data and Relevant Facts
Want someone to tweet a fact? Give them one to tweet. By adding useful information, data, and facts to your content, you increase the value. You also add to your own credibility and authority in your niche. However, you can take it a step further and leverage technology to make specific information in your content shareable on social media.
If you want better-earned media results, then you have to make it easy for your audience to talk about you. Providing value-driven content that is easy to share and engage with is one effective way to make that happen. Consistency and persistence are keys. Get your readers in the habit of talking about you!
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