It is all about building connection!
“um, I’m gonna need some context here…”
That was a recent text from my brother-in-law.
I sent my sister and brother-in-law a text last week. It was the code to unlock my phone.
“in case I go missing,” my text read.
Now my brother-in-law knows I have a true crime problem. So, I thought he’d connect the dots pretty easily.
The Murdaugh Murder case is in full swing, and we can watch the trial LIVE. It took months to unlock that poor kid’s phone to find out who he was with in his final moments. By that point, evidence was a bit messy.
If I go missing, can we really afford to wait months to unlock my phone to see where I was, who I was communicating with, and what I was doing before the event?????
This was all the context my brother-in-law was missing before I sent that text.
And at the same time my sister was like, I understand and I got you, boo.
Live MURDAUGH trial coverage. We are on the case! 🕵🏻♀️
Don’t Make Your Audience Work
But it had me thinking…
There are so many times we do not connect the dots for people in our marketing.
And as Donald Miller always says, “if you confuse, you lose.”
Here’s a really cool thing I learned from my garden this winter. (If you feel like you just experienced story whiplash, hang with me. I’m gonna tie it all together like those satisfying gift wrap tik toks.)
After we cover our garden beds with compost and let the soil rest, something magical happens.
I told you nature keeps doing things in winter. Even if we can’t see them.
It turns out, the ground builds fungal networks. And the networks make connections allowing plants and the soil in the surrounding areas to communicate through electrical impulses. 🤯 The soil is basically making a big telegraphing brain underground.
Through this fungal network, plants communicate their needs to Mother Earth. The fungi pull nutrients from other places and bring them to the roots of the plants who need them. And they exchange the nutrients for the carbon the plants are soaking up from the environment. That carbon allows the networks to grow farther and stronger.
Networking Gives Context
All this networking gives the soil context to know what’s needed in specific locations and where it can be sourced from other locations. It bridges the gap for nature.
Strong networks lead to thriving plant life. That’s because the networks allow the plants to access what they need when they need it.
A strong fungal network creates the ultimate personalized plant life experience.
Guess what disrupts the fungal networks? Digging.
So, winter is the best time for fungi to build the strong networks it needs for high production in spring, summer, and fall.
Marketing Application
Now, how does this apply to marketing in your business?
Winter is the perfect time to create connections between your content online like a good true crime murder map.
Look, if you come to my website, I talk about profit, ROI, messaging, audience, websites, SEO, strategy, frameworks and more!
Reading an article alone, these pieces lack context. However, if I create a good content network, you’ll see how each topic relates to one another. That makes the information more useable.
Guess what else? Google LOVES connected data. If you write a single article, and you don’t link to it from anywhere else on your website, Google thinks you were having a random day of inspiration. And that means you’re not an authority on that topic. You just talked about something once and never again.
We call this orphaned content. And every orphan needs a big, happy, connected family in order to thrive.
So, here’s winter tip #3. Build your connections.
Go through all your old content and find 4 – 5 pages on your website that you can link back to that article. That means you have to find and communicate the context taking your visitors seamlessly from one topic to another.
For your users, that creates a better experience.
Plus, giving Google context helps the algorithm know you’re more than random. Your information is authoritative, deep, and connected. And it helps everyone apply the information more easily.
Just like once I connected the dots for my brother-in-law, he no longer thought I was in immediate danger or completely neurotic. Instead he thought, ok, Tina’s in the middle of another true crime saga. We’ll add this to her “if I die or go missing binder.” This information should be filed under the “mysterious circumstances” tab. 🙄 (So, maybe just a little neurotic.)
Context helps your audience (and Google) know what to do with the information you’re sharing. And typically, that means you’ll engage readers for longer. The time a user spends on your page (a.k.a. – time on page) boosts your rank-ability in search. That means the longer someone spends interacting with your content, the more likely Google is to serve your content up in organic search.
So, connect the dots and watch your website traffic and your business grow! That’s big impact without a ton of work.
P.S. Check out my other winter tips below ⬇️
Winter Action Tip #2 – Making use of the Refuse – Using Old Content
