Creating fresh content for your website can feel like a demanding task when you have little time to write it, let alone sit and think of new ideas that will help you capture your audience’s attention.
Content remains king, it’s a cliche but still rings true. It not only helps to support your SEO efforts but it also enables your visitors to learn more about your business and the products you offer. A key part in developing brand loyalty and gaining that all-important conversion.
You know it’s important, otherwise, it wouldn’t be a fundamental part of your marketing strategy. But when it comes to the ideas part it’s easy to run out of inspiration.
If you’re currently bored of the content you’re putting out and struggling to think of new ways to make your content feel engaging, we’ve rounded up some key parts that should put the sugar coating back into your content marketing.
Focus on Your Audience
It’s surprising how few businesses consider their audience when creating content. In fact, too many organisations are simply creating content in a sales format rather than a marketing format.
We know it’s easily done, so we won’t judge too harshly, but remember that your audience is already perhaps interested in your product or service, so you really don’t need to use your content as another sales pitch.
The key to any content is to know your audience and the struggles they have.
Only by answering their problems are you going to become the solution they need. And by this, we don’t mean simply offering your product or service as the solution, we mean offering advice and guidance around their problems.
Think about your target audience and create a personal profile. This can help you to ‘get to know’ your audience at a much deeper level.
Once you have this created you should then look to find out what their biggest problems are.
For example; if it’s a marketing executive, it could be how to be the most productive in their day, or updating them on a new social media platform.
Truly get to know the biggest battles your audience face, and start creating content around these problems.
For example, with the marketing executive, you could create a blog post – 10 Ways to Improve Your Productivity in An Open Plan Office.
When you uncover the problems your audience face creating content not only becomes easier, it also becomes incredibly useful to your audience and will keep them coming back for more.
Discover Comments
We won’t keep banging on the same drum, but once you know your audience, you will also get to know the types of books, social channels and websites your audience use.
This is particularly helpful because on these platforms you can discover what topics your audience love, and which topics they wish they had more information on.
One task to try is to visit Amazon and find all the relevant books your audience may be interested in.
Let’s use the marketing executive example once again. If we find out what books they love, we can then look below in the comments section to see what other marketing executives thought of the book.
Comments provide us with a wealth of knowledge about how the audience really found the book and if it provided useful information to them (ignoring the spam comments).
Don’t just go by ratings. What we’re looking to do is investigate if the book missed something and if the audience felt a particular part was helpful. This dissection of the books will then provide us with golden eggs of information that can be transformed into a guide or a blog post.
Another great trick is to visit forums. Forums are still incredibly active on the internet for niche groups.
Jump onto popular forums and find out the questions they’re all asking at the moment and the hot topics that get everyone talking.
It honestly won’t take you long before you go from idea starvation to idea overindulgence.
Harness Influencers
When we say the word ‘influencers’ in the marketing realm it’s easy to think of the hugely popular social celebrities that have millions of followers. In fact, you could call them the Cadbury’s Creme Egg of the social world (this is an Easter post after all).
But, the fact is, not everyone loves a Creme Egg and they’re not always the best option.
The same goes for influencers to your audience. Sometimes they engage better with their peers or thought leaders than they do with the big popular celebrities.
Using our analogy of marketing executives again, think about the people they relate to or wish they could speak to about particular topics.
Interviews and features with peers is a great way to not only engage with your audience but also offer unique content that is truly insightful and helpful to their lives.
For example, you could have a series from other marketing executives sharing their tips and suggestions. And you could have a video series with journalists and social app builders sharing their knowledge to marketing executives.
The opportunities are endless when you consider the knowledge and experience that could be shared.
Plus people love being interviewed about their experience and it can create strong blogs and videos that truly engage with the audience. Do some research around your influencers, see their recent comments, articles they’ve published, make sure they are the right fit for your brand.
Be Alternative
There are so many forms of content now available that you shouldn’t feel restricted to just writing blogs.
While we would always recommend doing some written content, it’s also good to think about other ways you can engage with your audience so more information that can be quickly consumed.
From videos, podcasts to full ebooks, consider how your audience may prefer their content, and think about which topics would be best suited to these mediums.
PDF resources are often popular for those who need practical steps to improve or learn something new. Whereas shorter form content such as videos is ideal for busy people who perhaps don’t have the time to read.
Don’t be put off if you’re the first business to try a new form of content directed to your audience. Just because you’re the same as everyone else, doesn’t mean it’s always going to work.
Testing and trialling different forms of content can be an ideal way of discovering the sweet spot for your customers content needs.
Be Generous
Many businesses are concerned that they don’t want to give their knowledge away for free.
The fear is, if they reveal too much then the customer won’t convert and they’ll simply just do it themselves. But let’s be honest, many of us simply don’t have the time to do it ourselves, which is why we’d prefer to hire someone to do it for us or buy the product that helps.
Therefore, don’t hold back on what you give away.
Providing insightful and useful content will only help to increase your conversions rather than make people run away.
When you think about what you wish you could tell your customers, don’t be shy. Shout about what you know and they’ll be so overwhelmed with information that they’ll probably hire you to help them do it.
If you really want to be a little more discerning with your content, then gate it with a form and build your email subscribers, but whatever you do, don’t limit your knowledge when it comes to creating content.
What can you share or provide that will help your customer?
