Win Your Audience Over: Create Content With Purpose
Your audience seeks content for one of many reasons. They could be bored. People turn increasingly to their phones and computers to pass the time. Entertainment like branded games, videos, and even social network content fills the need for many.
Others might be looking for inspiration. Sometimes people need a spark or a lift in their day, content like a shareable Facebook post or Instagram pic. They might be seeking information in the form of how-to content or instructional videos to help solve a problem in an easy digestible way.
What Purpose Does Your Content Serve?
You must understand what your audience wants before you can start providing a solution. More often than not, your audience is looking to you to solve a particular problem. Once you’ve figured out what your audience wants everything you do needs to circulate on filling that need or want.
Say for example, you are a life coach. If someone is searching for a coach to help them overcome obstacles, it’s not enough just to say yes I can help you. You have to give them a taste of an experience with you looks like in whatever form that is authentically you. It can be written, oral, video etc. This is your time to shine so make it count.
Give Endless Value
Give your best advice out there for free. Don’t worry about giving anything away. The content you may delivering can probably be found elsewhere. When they see you holding nothing back, they’ll want to jump at the chance of working with you.
Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
In 2007, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Steve Martin gave an often-quoted piece of advice. He said, “When people ask me ‘how do you make it in show business or whatever’ …I always say, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
The same holds true for success in content marketing. Focus on what you’re doing instead of how you’re doing it, and your audience will come to you.
Steve also noted that this advice was often not what people wanted to hear. He said, “What they want to hear is ‘here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script, here’s how you do this’” Anyone looking for the easy way to write content that ranks well, connects with and delivers an audience is going to be equally disappointed.
That’s because there is no shortcut to being good. It takes practice, it takes hard work, and you don’t get to be “so good they can’t ignore you” overnight. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t learn about writing techniques, SEO basics, and study your craft. These are all ways you get better. It is to say that no single piece of information is going to catapult your content from blah to blammo.
Build your knowledge base, learn about your subject, and focus your time and effort on creating content that’s interesting, that’s valuable, and that your audience will want. A great idea in a wrinkled wrapper will win over a piece of recycled content in a shiny package every day. There’s a big difference in spending time looking for shortcuts and spending your time focused on creating better content.
No Shortcuts to Success
Shortcuts only work for a short while. It’s virtually guaranteed that if you find some loophole or trick that gets your content to an audience or catapults you up higher in the search rankings, eventually that trick will stop working. And even when it does work, you’re building a reputation for yourself as someone who relies on shortcuts. On the other hand, every time you produce a piece of content that’s good, that’s interesting, that offers something of value, you build a reputation for doing just that. Which will build your audience.
Understand that in this day in age, your content will get shared so make sure you’re taking time to produce quality content worth sharing. It’s got to be content that’s designed to leave your audience wanting more.
Get Social
Once you’ve done that, take to social media channels and have a plan to spread that message. That’s how you get your audience talking about you and coming back to learn more.
