How to Create Valuable Content for Your Consumers

Your audience is likely sick of being disrupted by ads and pop-ups, so where do you start? Consumers want to be met with content that is rich in value and action; something they can easily digest without it being boring or lack-lustre.

The world of content marketing is a tricking one to get your head around, and there is no right or wrong way to approach it. Depending on your business model and audience, different approaches can be implemented. So how can you create content for your audience that will be seen as valuable? 

Create Goals

First and foremost, you need to have an in depth understanding of why you’re making content, and what you want to achieve from it.

Creating content that is valuable isn’t easy, and it’s easy to get caught up in the tactics of it. Understanding your goals early on will guide other decisions as you progress with your marketing strategy. Setting small, specific goals will help you not only stay accountable, but keep you on track to achieve your next goal. Achieving one goal will simply act as a motivator to achieve your next.

Goal setting sometimes isn’t as straight forward as it may seem. If you have multiple things you want to achieve, it can be difficult to know where to start. Concentrate your attention on the basics; what is it you aim to achieve, when do you want to achieve it by, how will you achieve it, and what metrics will you use to measure the success of your content?

The goals you set don’t have to be elaborate or extravagant; they can be as simple and minimalistic as you want. The main thing to remember is, if they’re specific, relevant, and attainable, you’re on track to achieving them.

Do Your Research

You wouldn’t approach a new task headfirst without knowing what you’re doing, right? As a marketer, you may think you already know everything there is about your audience and what they’re after. If you haven’t already revaluated your audience since the beginning of the pandemic, now is the time to do it.

COVID has changed the way we behave, and our thought patterns have been adapted to fit in with these new changes. Your audience has likely changed since the beginning of the pandemic, and it’s equally as likely that your new audience won’t respond to content the way your previous audience did.

Understanding people has its challenges, especially when you haven’t met them, but taking the time to understand your new audience can make the world of difference. Go back to the basics, who they are? What do they do? Their interests? Where do they consume their media? While being simplistic in approach, performing an audience analysis will give you the opportunity to find out exactly who your audience is, and how to tailor content to target them specifically.

Keyword Research

This falls under the category of doing your research, but it deserves its own. Keyword research is one of the most valuable insights you can use to understand your audience.

Keywords help to inform you of the language used by your target audience to describe your business, product, or service. From there, you can take that information and create your content including the language used by your audience, helping you target them specifically.

Knowing where to start with keyword research can be tricky, but there are several free tools created by Google that can be useful. Take Google Autofill for example. Autofill provides insights into what people are searching regarding specific topics. Similarly, Google Trends allows you to see how many times a keyword has been searched over a certain period of time.

With the use of these tools, you can understand what words people are searching in relation to your business, or its products and service. Furthermore, you can take it a step further and see what keywords are trending and at what times.

Decide How You Want to Produce Your Content

There are a variety of different formats you can use to create content. Blog posts, videos, infographics; they all have their time and place and choosing the right one can be paramount.

Before you decide what format you will use to produce your content, you need to make sure it is emotion based.

Your content should leave a lasting effect on your audience. The last thing you want is to go to the effort of creating content that your audience won’t remember.

Your content should include these four qualities to have a lasting effect:

1. Emotion: how do you want your content to make people feel?
2. Change: what do you want your audience to take away from your content?
3. Alert: what new information will the audience get?
4. Share: does your content have a shareworthy impact?

Once you’re able to answer these questions, you’ll be able to deliver your content to your audience. Taking a step back to understanding your audience, ensure that you’re delivering your content in a format that your audience will engage with. If your audience is heavy readers of blogs, deliver your content through blog posts. If your audience primarily uses Facebook, ensure your content is delivered through Facebook over LinkedIn.

The main takeaway message of this all is, understanding your consumers is critical in creating valuable content. Valuable content is subjective, and not everyone will find the same piece of content of interest. If nothing else, remember, it’s about creating value, not noise.

Image Source: Unsplash-Nick Morrison