Three things to keep in mind when developing content for today's consumer

The evolution of technology – and the shift in how we interact with brands – has had a major impact on the expectations of today’s consumer. As marketers and customer experience professionals alike find themselves in this “always on” and “always connected” environment, we need to make sure we are adjusting our digital content strategy to meet the evolving expectations of today’s content consumer. This means you need to…

1. Develop content with the user in mind

When sitting down and deciding what to write (website pages, thought leadership, etc.), make sure you develop the content with the end user in mind; write for what your audience wants to read – don’t write for what you expect your audience to read. Some ways you can determine what your audience is looking for:

• Use Google Trends to determine what people are searching for

• Understand what people are searching for on your website by looking at the Site Search feature in Google Analytics

As soon as you know what type of content you are developing – and what the topic is going to be – the next step is to start drafting the content. Remember one thing when doing so: today’s attention span isn’t what it used to be. That brings me to my next point...

2. Develop “snackable” content

According to Business 2 Community, the average amount of time it takes for a consumer to decide whether they’re going to stay on your web page is only 10 seconds. This trend of shorter attention spans increases the importance of developing short, “snackable” content. However, you must ensure the content you develop is relevant and valuable to the consumer or else you are wasting your time and the user will go find what they need elsewhere. If you are successful at this part, it is very likely your visitor will share the content with their networks (major win!), bringing me to my next point…

3. Develop content that is shareable

If you aren’t familiar with The Network Effect, in this case it is simply the “word of mouth” effect created by a user sharing a piece of content with their network on social media – increasing the exposure of your content. This 1970s Herbal Essence Shampoo commercial does a great job of explaining The Network Effect as it relates to a consumer product. Believe it or not, content today is still published without keeping this idea in mind. If I am a user looking to share your content, I am helping you spread the word – make it as simple and as effective as you possibly can for me. How can you do this?

• Add “share” buttons to the content
• Include visuals in your content so the user has options of which images to use when sharing on social media
• Include open graph meta tags for social media (Kissmetrics does a good job in this article of explaining what these are and how to implement them)

Keeping these things in mind will be helpful in beginning the process of content development. Remember to keep the user in mind when developing content; be sure the content is snackable; and make sure you develop content that is shareable.