If you are like many entrepreneurs, you often have the following persistent thought that keeps you awake at night: if only I could get a few more clients each month, week or day. At times you are not even sure if learning how to create content that people want to read (and share) is even the answer.
I get it.
But just because you think people do not want to read, does not mean you should not create content for your audience.
A few weeks ago I was taking my daughter to her summer camp. The camp is located inside a university.
It was a morning like any other, but my daughter noticed that at the entrance there was a sign that welcomed the new students and immediately she explained that it was a good thing, because it meant that there would be good food in the cafeteria.
The truth, it made me smile and made me think about how sometimes messages can be interpreted in so many ways especially when we are familiar with certain experiences.
And in a way, that is exactly what happened to me recently talking with a friend about how to improve the traffic of their website.
Maybe because I’ve had these conversations hundreds of times with clients and friends, I had a similar feeling to my daughter’s, about the direction where the conversation was going.
But this time the experience was not making me smile
What made me get the feeling was the concern my friend was expressing about how the website should look and what the texts should be like.
But I almost stopped breathing when he finished his sentence telling me that the reason why all these changes had to be done was that when people go to his website they do not want to read.
Most business owners do not realize that what keeps them stuck is that they try to solve the traffic problem by redesigning the website
And that’s how, once again, I found myself having exactly the same conversation.
This issue is critical and can prevent so many mistakes that I thought it was important to delve into it.
Most business owners do not realize that they leave tons of money on the table because they keep busy doing activities that are easier (or familiar) such as designing and redesigning the website, creating visual content and videos for social networks.
It is easy to fall into the trap because everyone thinks that people do not want to read and that is precisely where the problem lies. Most experts say that money is in social networks and that people do not want to read.
How to create content that people want to read (and share): 3 reasons why you should balance written content with visual content
1. All successful businesses are on Google
If the only thing that will really work is the visual content and the videos and the written content was really not important, do you think that then Google would exist?
If you are failing to create written content because you think that people do not want to read, you are limiting your growth.
And you’re also leaving the way open to your competitors.
If everyone really thought that way and agreed that people do not want to read.
The competition to position your written content would be less.
When you stop writing written content you are not only leaving the way open to your competitors but you are also driving your business to failure and I want you to think a bit about that.
2. Visual content works best when combined with words
The visual content allows us to talk to the emotional part of your audience and the words allow us to speak to the intellect.
Additionally, we use texts to position images and videos, because images and videos are not understood by any algorithm. Algorithms do not understand the visual component of an image.
We use longer texts in Google and social networks so that people spend more time in our posts and the algorithm thinks that the post is valuable and relevant and that in turn makes the algorithm decide to show the post to more people.
Before continuing with step 3, I want to share an infographic that illustrates: How to create content that people want to read (and share):
3. A strategy without traffic is destined to fail
To have traffic, you need to think about how people are going to find you.
Remember that it does not matter the aesthetics of your website or how the texts on your website look if nobody finds you and do not know you exist.
What every successful entrepreneur understands is that written content is what makes people find you.
The text and the way you communicate your message is the only thing that makes people find you on google and on any other platform.
Conclusion
People search Google because they are looking for answers to their questions and spend time on social media because they are consuming content.
So thinking that you do not need to learn how to create content that people want to read (and share) because people do not want to read is a bit like hiding in a cave and turning off the light so that no one else ever finds you.
