Is your website content not generating the attention you want? You’ve worked hard building your website up and you’ve developed great content but you’re not reaching the desired audience. This can be extremely frustrating. Below are some tips to help reach and retain the audience that you need.

1. Purpose and Objectives
What is the point of having content and what are you trying to achieve? This needs to be clearly defined and ask yourself, “Am I using this the right way?” This answer can be complex with several objectives or it can be as simple as wanting to get the end-user to visit a web page with a request form on it. Either way, know what you’re aiming for and know objectives you’re going to use to prove impact.

2. Relevant Communication
Do your research to ensure relevance when talking about or sharing the content. Use any existing customer personalities to guide the editorial, also delve in to some basic keyword research within search engines and social media – why is this good? It’s the language that your market is already using, so echo it. With keywords in hand, and an understanding of the audience, you craft the message for the person that’s going to consume it.

3. Graphics Design
In its broadest sense we’re talking about the packaging and creativity upon which the content sits. If the content is great then shouldn’t it look great too? Design has never been more important, people expect it and the standards are higher than ever. End-users (as well as search engines) should also be able to tell what you’re trying to portray, it should be easy to consume and it should definitely be easy to share, save and post to social news and bookmarking sites.

4. Monitor Success
Always ensure that you have the tools and processes necessary to measure performance, for the short and long term. Whether you use social media monitoring tools or Google Analytics, make sure the reach of the content you are promoting is tracked. Understanding where you’re getting traction is important to enable you to improve what works and what doesn’t – most likely where you push in terms of distribution – if you cannot measure it, you cannot monitor and improve it.

5. Improvement
Test and refine! We accept in other areas of marketing that not everything we create and share will pay off. Think of testing time of day, message, creative, traffic sources and anything else that could impact the reach and engagement.

Do you have any tips to share?