What Exactly is Quality Content and How Do You Create it?

This is an edited extract from B2B Content Marketing Strategy.

There’s No Single Definition of Quality and It’s Fine

Quality means different things to different people. Even the dictionary description is vague to the point of being absurd: “The standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.”

Think about the listicle. This is one of the most commonly used types of blog post content marketers use, even though most of them hate it, but they continue to publish them because they are popular among readers.

What about video? For years, you needed big budgets to create videos, but now a person talking to their phone camera with text over it performs just as well. Both could be considered “quality.”

Sometimes quality is the idea itself, rather than the way it’s presented. Other times, the idea matters less than how it’s presented.

LinkedIn is a good example of this. When I first started publishing posts, “quality” to me included a healthy dose of creativity that my friends loved but didn’t really fit the platform. At the time I didn’t care, but when I was ready to build an audience I hired Christine Orchard, a LinkedIn strategist and she taught me how to restructure my posts to get more attention while saying the same thing. Within two months my posts started going viral and I gained 2,000 new followers.

My point is, stop worrying about THE definition and create your own meaning of quality. Just make sure your criteria match what your audience recognizes as quality too!

The Problem with Quality as a North Star

One of the biggest mistakes I made and I see marketing teams make is focusing too heavily on content quality as the driving factor of their programs’ success. I saw this repeatedly during my time at Animalz, where clients would obsess over making every piece perfect while missing larger strategic opportunities. Here’s why this is prob­lematic.

Quality is inherently subjective and constantly evolving based on changes in:

· human behavior

· technological advancements

· cultural movements

· community preferences

To make your content “high quality” you need to know your customer and design with them at core and contextualize so they remember it’s what they want.

Speak in their language. Grammar doesn’t matter to everyone and can turn certain people off because it appears too contrived.

Companies often treat quality as a static target, creating rigid:

· style guides

· communication guidelines

· brand standards

· marketing ops processes

· customer profiles

This leads them to miss opportunities that could give them unique advantages. They get stuck in the “should” trap:

· we should be on social media

· we should have a podcast

· we should be creating video content

Should you?

The result: Companies adopt performance metrics that don’t impact their ultimate growth goals.

We’re no longer spending time convincing companies to do content marketing—everyone’s already doing it. The conversation has shifted from “should we do content marketing?” to “how do we do it better?”

Developing Quality B2B Content Marketing

Since there isn’t a universal definition of quality, I can’t give you THE answer, but it would be rude to have a chapter on quality and leave you with nothing. Here’s how I evaluate the value and efficacy of B2B content marketing:

· Is it serving company goals?* This is an indication that it’s working for your audience, too, since your company goals should center on the customer.

· Can you execute on it? People, resources etc. you need are available to you when you need them.

· Can you sustain what’s working? In other words, can you execute it long enough for it to show results?

*Serving business goals with content is part of the creative process! It’s not just about words and pictures and CTAs—it’s about strategy and the ability to execute it too. Because if you can’t execute, then it’s not good and you have to come up with another idea.

If you want to achieve maximum ROI on your content marketing strategy, you need to have space to play, experiment, learn, refine. Then rinse, repeat. This is how new forms of virality are uncovered. This is how some brands are “made” while others fade away.

It’s All About Your Audience

The only person whose opinion matters about quality is the person whose attention you’re trying to get. And that attention can take unexpected forms. Surprise, a sense of urgency, loneliness, anger: These are all forms of getting attention and can be “high quality” parts of your strategy if they lead to your intended outcome.

Remember: Your uniqueness is your competitive advantage–no one else has your exact perspective or style. More often than not, the things that make you unique are higher leverage than conforming to industry norms. There are infinite ways to tell the same story and to discover new angles—you need only to look to your customers, your team and yourself.

Just make sure to be selective about details. Literature uses vivid descriptions to immerse readers; business content should do the opposite. Spark curiosity so they want to learn more—don’t give them everything upfront.

How Do I Know If I’m Successful?

I can’t tell you exactly what to do to achieve quality content, but I can tell you what not to do: Don’t do what everyone else is doing.

Instead, look for some of these signals:

· the community saying your messaging back to you, to each other, externally;

· sharing aspects of your vision and how it impacts them externally and internally;

· the community offering their own ideas based on the messaging and ideas you’ve shared.

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