Content is engagement.
To engage with a customer you draw them into an interesting ongoing
relationship, a relationship which keeps them returning to your website
on a regular basis. Without dynamic content, your website may be
superficially interesting, but it only holds the customer's interest for
a limited period of time. Content as engagement means that the customer
wants to return to your site because they receive something of value
every time that they do.
Whether you sell a physical product or a service, you have a lot of
competition online. Ask yourself what distinguishes your site from the
competition, and then ask yourself whether you will even have the
opportunity to show your stuff to the potential customer or whether your
site will never even be looked at. There are tools such as search
engine optimization (SEO) and to be sure, being at the top of a web
search is valuable and worth pursuing. However, it is not enough to be
high in search engine rankings.
While potential customers will search for a product on the web if
they have to, before they even take that step, they search their own
recollections and experiences. If they can recall a vendor who has
captured their imagination, they will never even do the generic web
search, they will look for that resource that they already know. A
successful content as engagement strategy means to become the resource
that people already know rather than the result that people search for.
It's not enough that a potential customer has seen your site a single
time. Compare this to driving by a billboard advertising a plumber a
single time. You have seen the advertisement, but by the time that you
need a plumber in a year or two years, you have also seen a million
other things. Now consider driving past the same billboard every day on
your way to work. You are constantly reminded of this plumber, and
though you still may not need a plumber for the same year or two, when
you do need one, you will be more likely to think of what you have been
seeing every day as you drive past it.
The same idea holds true of websites. Just because someone browsed
your site a single time a year ago does not mean that they will remember
you when they need your services. As with the commuter, the web user is
bombarded with an ever-increasing amount of information, and if nothing
stands out about your site, there is no reason that the customer will
think of you first.
Content as engagement means that the customer will voluntarily come
back to your site before they need you. They will remember that you
exist out of the thousands of your competitors. Essentially it is
stockpiling goodwill against the day that the customer needs a vendor
like you. When that day arrives for the customer, you want to be the
thing that the customer knows rather than the thing that the customer
searches for.
Content as engagement obviously must change, be current, and develop
continually. No matter how impressive your site is or profound your
original blog entries, if there is no change in content, there is
nothing to make potential customers come back to visit again and again.
This increases the chance that they will forget you before they need
what you provide. With dynamic content, customers come back just to see
what you have to say and what you think. You become one of their sources
of information, and that keeps you in the forefront of the potential
customer's mind.
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