Why content equals sales success

- When it comes to reaching your consumer online, content isn't king, it's the whole royal family. Why? Because content, whether on your website, in a blog, in an email, or elsewhere, is where you get to tell your story and engage the buying brain of the consumer. And according to a study by the Custom Content Council, 70% of users prefer to get their information from articles, rather than from advertisements. To the outside observer, you are your content, and your content is you. You are useful and informative, or you are not. You are a thought leader, or you are not. You are engaging, relevant, and valuable, or you are not. So what is the secret to creating great content? Copyright legend Joe Sugarman famously said that every element of an advertisement, every image and every word, serves one sole purpose and one purpose only: to get you to read the first sentence. He then added, the sole purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence. I think you can see where this is going. In a now-famous study conducted by Microsoft Canada, the findings revealed that the attention span of humans had dropped from 15 seconds to eight, making our species' attention span one second shorter than that of a goldfish. Now, that may be a best case scenario, because according to an eye tracking study of advertising attention conducted by Fairfax Media in Australia, we may in fact only have milliseconds to communicate our message. Now, I have no idea how or even why you would measure the attention span of a goldfish, but even at a generous 15 seconds, it's clear that when it comes to homo sapiens, we have a very small window of opportunity to capture our audience's attention. When it comes to creating content, every headline, line of copy, and visual element must be working together to engage the buying brain and guide them seamlessly on a clear path to your call to action. And make no mistake about it. When it comes to consuming content, the eye is lazy and the brain is easily distracted. They're like the dog in the brilliant animated feature Up. In Up, we meet a golden retriever named Dug who wears a collar that translates his thoughts into English. Dug is a lovable dog whose ability to focus and communicate is constantly interrupted whenever he thinks he hears a squirrel. In fact, shouting the word squirrel has become a way of describing a person who has difficulty staying focused. Sugarman understood that consumers are equally challenged. Content is less like misdirection, where the magician is trying to get you to look one place instead of another, and more like shaking the keys to keep a baby's attention. When it comes to layout, a great default position is the F pattern. According to a study from the Nielsen group, online consumers overwhelmingly view content in an F shape, going from left to right, top to bottom, with a heavy focus on the left side of the screen. If you give the eye too many things to choose from, it will give up, look away, and move on to something else. It's true, the attention span of online consumers is short, unless you give them a reason to keep paying attention. This is demonstrated no better than in a well-designed infographic, where words and images seamlessly work to guide the consumer's attention while successfully engaging the emotional triggers of the buying brain. It also works on a beautifully designed website where every image and word, no matter how short or long the copy, keeps you reading to the end. It might seem hard to create that kind of website. That would be correct. It is hard, but the work is in getting the content, your concept, down, and staying totally focused on that and never letting the eye or the mind wander away. Content is important because until they become a customer, your content is the only thing of yours the consumer is actually consuming. If you're not in the business of creating engaging, educational, and effective online content, you may find yourself not being in business for long. It's important to be actively creating content for social media, blogs, automated campaigns and email, anywhere you'll engage your target customer. But a great starting point is your very own website.