I once read a story about a crazy scientist who performed an experiment on a frog. In the story, the scientist asked the frog to jump and the frog did. The scientist then cut down the frog’s one leg and ordered it to jump again. The frog did so with great effort. The scientist proceeded to cut the frog’s second and third legs and ordered it to jump again. The frog was in extreme pain, yet somehow made a small jump.
Finally, the scientist cut down the frog’s last leg and ordered it to jump. But the frog, with no legs to stand on, remained still. The scientist then wrote his observation:
“When frogs lose all their legs, they become deaf”
In today’s scenario most of the content marketers behave like that crazy scientist and end users are the frogs. As a content marketer, we keep writing content without understanding user behavior, and when we come across terms like high bounce rate, drop offs, and low conversion rates, we conclude that either the content is not relevant or it is not engaging enough.
How many of us check the analytics tool and try to understand the reasons for users not engaging with the content? We just keep adding content. Of course, content is the king, but distribution is as important as creating.
We sideline the vital aspect of user’s behavior while reading the content. We ignore the importance of presenting the content and providing a suitable platform to users to navigate through the content. There are many factors which impact the content: UX design and promotions are the broad categories which covers most of these factors.
Content today has surpassed the age old method of writing long essays. User gets a lot of exposure to varied technologies, and in this process their expectations from the content have grown. User is not just reading, but driving the content. Demand for visually appealing content is high, and the user acknowledges good content through engagement. Content’s success is defined by not just number of views, but how much that content is shared and discussed on the Internet.
Promotions were always important, but now when there is so much distraction for the user; it is the responsibility of content marketer to make the content easily available to the user. Even the age old print media channels have also realized these aspects and have adopted technology platforms which provide customization, flexibility and high level interactivity.
So, it’s high time we start listening to users rather than acting like the crazy scientist.