Whether you’re a small local business, a large global organization or a charity, the key to good PR and marketing is creating good and relevant content. Good content enhances your brand’s reputation, attracts customers, and is successful in converting potential customers to paying customers. Below are a few tips on how to create content that is strategic and purposeful:
Do research on your audience
As renowned marketer Brian Gefter has noted, “Before creating content, the first thing to do is to conduct research on your audience. To create an effective content strategic, a deep understanding of your audience is crucial. If you don’t have a good understanding of your user, then your content won’t be as effective. Set aside ample time to do research. Research isn’t always expensive and time-consuming, as many people believe. It can be as easy as conducting surveys or just calling up consumers. These are great ways to understand your target audience and get to know what they think of your brand. Find out what they like/dislike, and what attracted them to your brand in the first place. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.”
Create content that is easily located
This means focusing on SEO. Help your audience find your content easily by taking into account Google algorithms when creating your blog or video or website. You might have excellent content that will resonate with your viewers or audience, however if they can’t find out with a quick Google search, then that content might not get as much engagement as it deserves.
Google rewards brands that answer questions by their users and incorporate relevant keywords in unique and rich content. With the rise of voice recognition technology, such as Alexa and Siri, it is more and more important that your content answers recurring and relevant customer questions.
Do a content audit
If your content isn’t working or not getting the results you expected, then it’s a good time to do a content audit. The first step is to go over all the content that has been produced. Then, second step is to find out what content the most customer engagement versus what content lacks in customer engagement. Do some digging to find out why certain content does better than others.
Find patterns in content that does well and content that lags behind. For instance, you might surmise that long form content doesn’t get much engagement, whereas quick videos including customer stories results in more engagement. Identifying what works and what doesn’t will make the content your create in the future more purposeful.
Sometimes, less is more
Brian Gefter added, “Blogs and articles can be a great tool to disseminate information, interact with customers, answer questions, and explain complicated issues. However, remember they are not your only option. In a world where there is so much information being taken in by people through the internet, sometimes less can be more. Make sure you alternate your content and include content that also caters to customers that might have less time or a shorter attention span.”
