What is Intelligent Content? 
Content marketers strive to craft content that’s intelligent. This is content that’s not merely smart and relevant – instead, it’s also discoverable, reusable, and not limited to one purpose. Intelligent content is the bread and butter of successful marketing campaigns because it’s easily discovered by online communities and has the potential to reach large audiences. Simply put, it’s winning content that gets the clicks.

By harnessing the tools necessary for developing rich and reusable content, teams strategically position themselves ahead of their competitors. As a writer, you’ll get the satisfaction of knowing your work is consumed by a large audience – a dream shared by most doe-eyed, eager content marketers.

Here’s what you need to know while on a mission to improve your content and leverage success.

Intelligent Content Should Be Reusable
Repurposed content can be published more quickly, limiting the amount of time it takes to reach clients and audiences. By creating content that’s modular, writers help themselves and their teams by intentionally designing content pieces for reuse.

Think about it. When you create reusable content components (or modules) you can reuse them time and again in related pieces. Marketing brochures, product splash pages, and other structured pieces use recycled content modules to create killer marketing collateral.

Best of all, your brain gets a bit of a break from having to constantly invent new and creative work. Any busy business writer knows operating under ‘creative constraints’ is a reality when deadlines must be met. Leaning on reusable content components is helpful when trying to save time and precious writing energy.

Using modular, reusable content also reduces translation costs. This is because less time is spent doing the actual writing, and content production expenses are reduced overall. When projects allow for it, reuse these valuable components. Your team will have more time for other pressing tasks – and you can finally spearhead that project you were so excited to start.

Logical Thinking Is Necessary
Alongside being reusable, content must be logically structured to incorporate metadata. Metadata is machine-readable information that tells a computer how to understand the content and differentiate it from other content pieces. SEO practices optimize metadata to push it to the top of search engine pages, ensuring your article, blog, or post is seen by many people.

Metadata can be incorporated into content when pieces are structurally and semantically rich. When the content’s structure has meaning, humans and machines are better able to detect what kinds of material will comprise the piece. We can trust that a whitepaper, for example, will contain a positioning statement, value proposition, list of features, and a list of benefits. Structured content is more easily manipulated because there is a recognizable order to it. Instead of scrambling for meaning, readers know to refer to certain paragraphs, lists, etc. Creating structured writing provides both order and coherency.

Understanding semantics is equally important. Semantically rich content contains intentionally chosen words, phrases, and optimized metadata familiar to an industry or niche. By researching and incorporating unique sets of keywords and phrases, you can create highly personalized content that targets a unique audience.

Creating intelligent content is a process requiring several important steps you won’t want to skip. Stay on top of the game by crafting content that:

• is modular & reusable
• structured intentionally
• semantically rich

Reap the Rewards of Your Smart Work
Creating intelligent content can be tough, and you’re going to have to bust out your writing toolkit. But you’re going to see some awesome results if your content is reusable, highly structured, and optimized.

When content is put together in this way success will be yours. By creating intelligent content, you can more easily deliver it, customize it, personalize it, deliver it to multiple channels, speed up delivery time, and reduce production costs – and that’s a whole lot of bang for your buck.

Good stories matter, and if they’re good enough, they make an impression on all who listen. A significant part of a child’s upbringing centers on moms, dads, and grandparents telling tales of heroes, villains, and clowns. They’re fundamental to our understanding of ourselves, our families, and the world around us, and they stay close to our hearts as we move through life.

Humans are social beings and are wired for connection. Recent studies show brains respond to stories to foster empathy, understanding, and ultimately action. If marketing aims to do the same, writers are wise to incorporate good storytelling techniques in their narratives to captivate audiences and win them over. The result is a client who now has an emotional connection to your brand or product — all with the help of neurobiology and responses within the brain.

Humans Are Hardwired for Empathy

Human beings coexist for survival and happiness, and, it turns out, empathy plays a big role. Oxytocin, a neurochemical that is produced when we experience trust and kindness, motivates cooperation with others by enhancing our sense of empathy. When we tap into how others are feeling and understand their motives for action, we’re better able to respond to situations ourselves. So, empathy brings us closer together but also safeguards us from harm.

But oxytocin isn’t released only in ‘real life situations’. According to studies conducted by Paul J. Zak, the oxytocin system is triggered by character-driven stories. To come to this conclusion, his research team took blood samples of participants before and after watching a narrative film. They found that heightened oxytocin levels led to more participation and voluntary cooperation (in this case, donating to a charity group).

But behavioral changes won’t occur if a story doesn’t keep an audience’s attention — a key finding of the studies. Only when viewers are captivated will they produce the amount of oxytocin required to motivate action. What’s more, maintaining an audience’s attention depends on the amount of developing tension within a narrative — a necessary strategy for creating character-driven stories. The more tension that exists within a narrative, the more that’s at stake for a character. This is what captivates a reader or viewer.

With an understanding of a character’s troubles and their eventual resolve, audiences create an emotional connection with the person on screen or in a book. The character’s relationship to the rising action within a story connects readers to his or her plight, forcing them to empathize with difficult circumstances that must be overcome. Sure, it sounds dramatic, but relying on classic storytelling techniques is proven to be effective, even on a neurobiological level.

Translating Storytelling to Content Marketing

The key to crafting compelling copy, then, relies on your ability to compel individuals to empathize and change. There’s a saying in the marketing world that says facts tell but stories sell. With an understanding of brain behavior and storytelling, we’ve laid out some basic principles for creating marketing materials that matter most to customers. Here’s what we found.

There is a story behind everything you do, and it should be explored and communicated back to customers. This means understanding the significance of a product or service on an emotional level. Describing the design features of a horseshoe, for example, while interesting to a farrier or metallurgist, may be lost on horse owners who care most about the well-being and comfort of their four-legged friend. A family may have lived on their farm for generations and owning livestock may be essential to their happiness.

These sentimental details need to be examined to captivate an audience, and if you feel a product is essential for someone’s well-being or happiness when creating content, you’re onto something.

It’s equally as important to speak your client’s language and communicate branded stories in a way that resonate with a variety of demographics. Having a strong grasp of your audience’s voice and identity is crucial to your marketing journey. So, learn your client’s language. You’ll more easily pull at their heartstrings.

It’s also strategic to listen to stories already being told online by clients. This is a great way to begin learning about what matters most to those you represent, and you can easily tune in to conversations circulating on social media or other public forums. When you understand the issues that resonate with clients, you can more authentically craft stories that address the things they care about most.

The Brain-Story Connection

Stories that speak to an individual’s ability to overcome a unique set of obstacles affect viewers on a neurobiological level. Audience members form emotional connections with characters who transform themselves for the better. The brain responds to these stories by increasing capacities for empathy and connection through the release of oxytocin. These studies suggest that, on a biological level, humans are meant to empathize, learn, grown, and connect.

Tapping into this somewhat primitive yet profound concept has long-lasting effects, and it’s a useful strategy in creating content that speaks to clients on a deeper level. At the end of the day, your content needs to matter. Once you empathize with clients and understand why their products or services make a difference in the world (or in their world), you’ve got their attention. And that’s what matters most.

To a digital marketing agency like ours, it comes as a shock to learn that, sometimes, successful businesses aren’t maximizing their potential because they haven’t even tried yet to dip into digital marketing. Even more surprising is when we find out that small or medium-sized businesses have yet to consider digital marketing as a main avenue for overcoming the hardships of a budding business.

Many of these businesses are relying on traditional marketing tactics to drive their businesses. There’s nothing wrong with doing so; traditional marketing is named so because it is a collection of tried and proven methods of drumming up business.

Traditional marketing includes such classic approaches as:

• Print advertisement
• Newsletters
• Television commercials
• Radio spots

But in the internet-driven business world, we recommend keeping traditional marketing efforts around to bolster a much more robust digital marketing strategy rather than relying wholly on print, TV, and radio advertising.

It’s All About Support

Digital marketing covers product and service-selling strategies for all current internet-based channels. That includes such advertising pathways as social media, user-experience-backed web design, ongoing content creation, and email marketing. All digital efforts, however, have room for support from traditional marketing.

It’s especially true for businesses that rely heavily on such sales methods as traveling sales teams, referrals, and cold calls. Having tangible advertising material on hand to support sales teams in their marketing efforts, especially when it points to digital resources, is still a reliable method for boosting the effectiveness of sales.

What Types of Traditional Marketing Fit into Digital Marketing Campaigns?

There really is no wrong answer, but there are certain traditional marketing materials that tend to be more effective when support digital marketing than others. You’ll likely find the most utility in:

• Leaflets – Single-page informational flyers can give salespeople an offline means of sharing relevant company, product, and service information with potential customers in scenarios that don’t ordinarily involve immediate connection to the internet or screens for presentation.
• Brochures – Brochures and pamphlets offer even greater opportunity to showcase products and services and provide in-depth information on them in an easy-to-read format.
• Branded Merchandise – Selling or handing out branded merchandise creates a permanent advertisement that will keep you top-of-mind for serious potential clients and customers, but creating the merchandise comes at a hefty price.
• Business Cards – Business cards that carry professional information and help direct customers and clients to your online resources are still a viable option for making connections, especially when a particularly wide-reaching convention or meeting comes up.

While radio and television ads still increase awareness and bring in the occasional lead, they are rapidly becoming less relevant, trusted, and effective. They also tend to compete with, rather than support, your digital marketing efforts, even when traditional marketing ads point back to your digital assets.

Who Performs These Tasks?

Employees at digital marketing agencies work hand-in-hand with one another all day, which means they are always picking up relevant and useful skills that can be used to drive traditional marketing efforts.

Content creation teams are skilled at outputting copy for traditional marketing, even if they haven’t worked outside of the digital realm before. That’s because the skills necessary for digital content creation translate easily to traditional marketing – unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite as well the other way around.

Paid search teams are also adept at writing copy, especially for advertisements that need to be dense with information. All copy can be adapted to print media by graphic artists and web designers who will work together to build user-friendly materials. SEO teams may also get involved to make sure that print materials support digital efforts with maximum effectiveness.

It won’t hurt to ask your digital marketing agency if they are prepared to handle traditional marketing materials, especially if you’re already on track with a successful digital marketing campaign. Even if your agency is unable to handle your request, there are teams available elsewhere with the skills and know-how to boost your digital marketing strategy with traditional marketing.

At Leverage Marketing, we’re not afraid to dive into some traditional marketing. Learn how we can support your marketing efforts with a digital and traditional combination today!