Like any other type of communication, content marketing is based on what you say and how you say it. People want concrete information they can apply to their own lives, delivered in a straightforward, entertaining way.

If you get your content strategy right, you’ll enjoy great conversion rates and long-term customer relationships. If not, your efforts will fall flat — or worse, turn people off to your brand. You don’t want your content marketing campaign to flatline so before getting started, take the time to create great content that does exactly what you want it to. These tips will help.

Understand Your Audience

Great features aren’t the same as great benefits. A potential customer might know what your product does, but they really want to know what it does for them. Your content strategy doesn’t start with your products; it starts with your target audience’s needs and interests.

Use those needs and interests to think of content topics. Stay-at-home parents are always looking for fun things to do with their kids. Small business owners want to know how to run their businesses more efficiently. Before jumping into a sales pitch for your product, create content that answers potential buyers’ most pressing questions.

Be Likable and Knowledgeable

Some content creators are great at presenting their insights but fail to connect with readers. Others are so worried about being liked that they forget to actually share what they know. If you want your content to resonate, it has to strike a balance between the two.

Your tone will depend on your target market’s experience. If you’re writing for marketing novices, for example, you’ll lose them if you use technical language or assume they understand certain concepts. Conversely, defining every term for experts may lead them to assume they know more than you do.

Also, remember that some people want to be entertained, so they might respond better to humour than to serious material. If you try this, though, be careful; if content comes across as offensive, inappropriate or mean, visitors may leave and never come back.

Write a Powerful Piece

Like traditional marketing, content marketing is meant to inspire the audience to act in a way that grows your business. While the goals may be different — content drives engagement, not sales — it still needs to be powerful enough to motivate a response.

Most people don’t read beyond the first few sentences, so get right to the point. Your title and opening paragraph should tell people exactly what they’ll get if they keep reading. Describe the worst-case scenario if they don’t act or the best-case scenario if they do. Finally, add a call to action; content marketing doesn’t work if people don’t know how they’re supposed to respond to you.

Review Your Work

Not everyone is a spelling bee champ, but most people still notice when a word is missing, or if the writer uses “their” when “they’re” is more appropriate. Content is most effective when it’s written, spelled and laid out properly, so take the time to fix mistakes before your readers see them.

Check for spelling and grammatical errors, or let a proofreader look at it. Use proper punctuation and capitalization. Also, double-check your facts. If your program cuts costs by 20% but you write that it saves 25%, you’ll mislead customers and put a huge dent in your credibility.

Content marketing isn’t just about sharing — it’s about communicating. Follow the steps above and you’ll produce content that attracts the traffic, interaction and business you want.
 

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