If Google says “Content is King”, we all have no choice but to believe it. If someone says “You need a ton of content to survive”, it seems true because the online space is becoming too crowded and you literally have to be omnipresent to make a mark.
But one thing that every content marketer finds hard to believe is that some of their content is really boring. It’s absolutely useless. It is not helpful in anyway and lying unnecessarily collecting dust. Of course content is king but the heaps of uninteresting content doesn’t help.
You have not only wasted your time, money and effort in creating it but have also spoiled your image online. Stale content makes it tougher for you to grab readers’ attention in the next round.
There are two things that you can do in this situation. One, you close your eyes thinking everything is working well and you will get results sooner or later and; two, you go back to the drawing board and rework on your content marketing strategy.
If you choose to go the tougher way, that is, reworking on your strategy and gathering new ideas about how to bounce back, fear not! Before creating anything, make sure to work on what people like, what they talk about and what matters the most to them.
Here is what you need to do and find:
1. Understand your target audience
This is the most important step but unfortunately, most content marketers don’t get it right. Instead of shrinking their target audience, they keep on expanding it and then supply them with content that they think fits all. That’s where they fail.
Here the idea is not to include anyone and everyone in your target audience; instead it is to select the ones having the loudest voices for you. If you really want your content to work like nothing before, you need to convince these people first so that they share your words further with the people in their network.
Sift through their social profiles and find out about them and their interests. It is difficult but tools like Followerwonk can be of great help. Owned by SEOmoz, it’s an app for Twitter analytics. Using this, explore the influencers and learn about their social behavior.
2. What they talk about
After figuring out influencers, it’s time to find what they talk about. To do this, you can analyze their Facebook comments, tweets, blog posts, LinkedIn discussions and likes and comments on all other social channels they are present at.
There are two ways to do this – one, manual and two, by using tools. To analyze their tweets, you can make use of Tweet Archivist or Foller.me. Here is what you aim to find using this tool:
- What websites they visit regularly?
- Who they follow?
- What type of content they read and share?
- What they comment about?
- Are they more interested in videos or infographics than text?
3. Create something to strike a conversation
Once you know who your targets are and know their likes and dislikes, create content pieces to strike a conversation with them. Come up with something that they like to talk about and discuss it at any length. Read a lot and hone your skills so that you can answer their questions before they know that have any such question.
Be unique and valuable in your approach plus give attention on substance rather than style. They are looking for something that they don’t know or that could amaze them or that could add value to their knowledge span.
Keep in mind that influencers are not looking for promotional material. So, better not stuff your content with the sales pitch; rather keep it simple and informational. If you are able to strike the conversation, you will be able to sell them also. But this shouldn’t be your initial criteria. First things first – engaging them in conversation is the first thing that you should focus on.