7 Golden Rules to create Killer Content for your Corporate Website

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We’ve been in the business of creating corporate websites for nearly two decades. Our new clients always ask us about our process or approach. So we thought of putting down some pointers.

Of all your digital assets, your corporate website is the most powerful. It’s the most credible source of information related to your brand. It’s the first place media, investors, business partners, potential employees, and other stakeholders will come to check out your brand. That’s reason enough to look at all possible ways to unlock your corporate website’s full value and potential.

Content gives your brand a unique voice. Content helps you engage with and build a dialogue with your stakeholders and visitors. Content allows you to demonstrate your corporate brand’s value proposition and leadership. Getting it to deliver results is both a science and an art.

Using these 7 golden rules for content can make all the difference to the performance of your website. Let’s quickly look at them.

Define your content strategy

•  Clearly define your target audience before you begin writing content. What information would they seek on your website? Make sure your content creation activities take stakeholder needs into account.
•   Think credibility and thought leadership — Showcase content relating to white papers, case studies, achievements, awards and testimonials.
•   Think social — Introduce blogs for story-telling about your corporate brand. Build in links to relevant social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
•   Think freshness — Keep your content updated. Develop an editorial calendar for refreshing banners, stories, media releases, social media feeds, videos, etc.

Go visual!

•  An image speaks a thousand words. A video grabs eyeballs. Use these when building credibility.
•   Limit the use of text. Use multimedia formats like infographics, videos and gifs.

Great writing helps

•  Great story-telling depends on great writing.
•   Your content can be descriptive but it should be easily absorbable. Make text clear, crisp, relevant and useful for visitors.
•   Think ‘snacky’ — Use short, easy-to-understand sentences and paragraphs. Avoid jargon.
•   Your content should compel readers into believing that you can solve their problem. Be honest and transparent. Avoid hype.
•   Keep your content easily scannable by introducing sub-heads and bullet points. Research suggests that only 16 percent of people read web pages word-to-word.

Think inverted!

•  Use the inverted pyramid approach. Feature the most important points first on your web pages.
•   The right kind of headlines, intros, images and numbers right up on top will convey your message even if the visitor just glances at your page.
•   The rest of the web page can have supporting information, diagrams, images, infographics, etc.

Talk to your visitor

•  Use the word ‘you’. Instead of saying, “We are reachable any time”, say “You can reach us any time”.
•   The right ‘voice’ on your corporate website will add greater appeal to the brand identity.

Host digital campaigns

•  Your digital campaigns on social media need a place to reside. And they need to be supported by content on your corporate website.
•   Ensure that your corporate website is in sync with social media. Create banners or stories with information and content that your social media handles can link back to.

Attract search engines

•  You are competing with 1.5 billion websites, over 2 million blog posts that are being published every day, and 3.5 billion searches happening on Google every day. Don’t you want your corporate brand to be identified by certain keywords? That’s the heart of a good SEO strategy.
•  Here’s an interesting fact: Ranking in the first position in Google can achieve a click-through rate of 34.36 percent for desktop computers and a click-through rate of 31.35 percent for mobile devices. Analyse search volumes to identify keywords relevant to your business, products and services. The judicious use of the right keywords can help your website cut through the web clutter. Don’t attempt to rank your website for all of them. Create content that beautifully weaves in the most relevant keywords with credibility.
•   Use videos imaginatively. YouTube is one of the top search engines. Instagram is the current favourite for images and videos.

If you have any questions, or need guidance implementing these golden rules, help is just a phone call away. Don’t hesitate to call us and we can schedule a ‘no-obligation’ tête-à-tête over coffee.