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How To Produce Useless Manufacturing Marketing Content in 3 Easy Steps

Ask any SEO company representative, and they’ll tell you that the fastest way to gain better rankings in search engines is to produce more content. More is better appears to be the motto when it comes to search engine optimization and rankings. And before Google (on which over 70% of searches is conducted) released its four major algorithm parts for search engine results quality, that was the truth.

Amit Singhal, in charge of search quality at Google, told Vanessa Fox of Search Engine Land back in 2011 that Google was “focused on showing users the highest quality, most relevant pages on the web.” Google hasn’t strayed from that objective.

Today’s sites need to work hard to create useful, relevant content in order to rank well and delight readers. I define useful content as creating engagement, encouraging a click through to another site page, and ultimately, converting a visitor to a lead or to a customer. If that’s not your goal, though, then I have 3 easy steps for you to avoid creating useful content for your manufacturing website visitors, and they’re pretty fool-proof.three_things_to_do_for_useless_content.jpg

  1. Don’t get to know your audience.
  2. Don’t utilize a content strategy.
  3. Don’t publish in-depth content.

Don’t Get to Know Your Audience.

Getting to know your audience by creating buyer personas can lead to writing and publishing content that’s useful to them. Keeping a consistent record of generally who they are, what they’re looking for (and where), what problems they face, and what they’re researching as solutions are all ways to get yourself into trouble if you want useless content on your site.

According to Neil Patel, content that is well researched, in-depth, and gets shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and the other major social platforms continues to rank well [in Google search engine results pages].” Clearly, your content is relevant and useful if it’s being shared socially, and engagement is high. Watch out.

In addition, getting to know your manufacturing prospects and buyers encourages you to become an outcome-centric company, selling outcomes, not products. This is a powerful way of looking at your marketing, sales, even engineering and product-building. If you’re looking to produce useless content, my guess is that you also don’t want to tackle the struggle that comes with strategic change - so stay far, far away from getting to know your audience.

Don’t Utilize a Content Strategy.

Content marketing is part of a strategic marketing process for manufacturers. Don’t use a content strategy if you want useless content. An effective B2B manufacturing marketing strategy enables you to:

  • Identify goals you’d like your content to meet
  • Create a plan for meeting the goals
  • Research the audience for which you’re writing (see my first point)
  • Write content that meets specific needs for your audience
  • Measure the effectiveness of the content you’re publishing

In addition, your content is the number 2 converting tool on your website; a strategy helps enable your content to convert more visitors. (The first, in case you’re wondering, can be attributed to a growth-oriented website design - but that’s another topic for another day.)

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Don’t Publish In-Depth Content.

Building a website with content today means you should write and publish in-depth content - unless, of course, you’re looking to write worthless content.

By in-depth, I mean content that’s incredibly helpful to your audience - such as rich content (video, infographics, etc.), how-to guides, step-by-step instructions, and informative, walk-through style break-downs of information.

Google will more highly rank your site content if it’s fresh, relevant, and in-depth (also known as long-form). Creating useful content requires you to know your audience and write for them. Tell them what they want to know! Provide value through your writing. If you’re not doing that, then you’re wasting your time writing - your content is useless.

Read more about how to create useful, high-converting content in our Insider’s Guide to B2B Inbound Marketing.

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Topics: Content Marketing Blogging ROI Manufacturing Blogs