Every week, your business probably creates content. Blog posts, social media updates, newsletters, videos. But most of it doesn’t need to exist.
Only 29% of marketers say their content strategy is extremely or very effective, while 58% say it’s moderately effective. The effort is there. The problem is a lack of strategic thinking before hitting publish.
Having worked with more than 1,500 authors to turn their knowledge into bestsellers, I have seen that the difference between converting content and dust-gathering content is simply asking the right questions before creating the content.
Question 1: Does this serve a documented business goal?
Before writing the first word, determine the precise business goal the piece will support. Nothing too fuzzy here, such as “brand awareness.” This needs to be related to the expansion goals of your company.
Among very successful companies, 80% have developed a documented content marketing strategy, compared to significantly fewer among less successful companies.
Your content needs to ladder up to one of the following goals: create qualified leads, nurture current leads, promote product adoption, promote thought leadership on a particular subject or facilitate customer retention. If you cannot immediately tell what your content goals are, then you’re making content for content’s sake.
Question 2: Who is this for, and where are they in their journey?
Content that is generic and intended for everybody reaches nobody. The most powerful content addresses an individual who is struggling with a problem at a particular time and place during the decision-making cycle.
According to McKinsey, 71% of customers expect personalized communication from brands, while 76% reported feelings of frustration when it didn’t happen.
Align your content to your audience’s journey. Someone who has recently discovered a problem requires different information than someone who is considering multiple solutions or who is ready to buy. A CFO seeking information on efficient tools has different concerns from an operations manager who has to implement those solutions. When you identify clearly who your communication targets, your content will have greater relevance.
Question 3: What makes this different from everything else available?
Your audience doesn’t have a content shortage problem. They have a quality and relevance problem. According to industry research, the average website bounce rate across all sectors hovers around 44%, meaning nearly half of all visitors don’t find what they’re looking for on the first page they land on.
Ask yourself: If someone searched for this topic, would they find dozens of similar articles saying essentially the same thing? If yes, you need a different angle.
An original perspective may come from original research, an opposing view with supporting evidence, particular experiences from your field of practice, a unique framework for understanding your problem or a practice that others do not implement.
Question 4: Can they actually use this information?
Content that inspires is fun to create, but content that helps your audience take action creates financial value. The question is simple: Can your audience do something new after engaging with your content?
Effective communications will include things like specific examples of how one might apply the ideas, specific tools that may ease the burden of implementation, steps the reader can implement now, anticipated problems and ways to solve them, as well as ways to measure whether the plan is successful.
Question 5: Does this content have a logical next step?
Every piece of content should have a purpose beyond being read. What do you want people to do after engaging with it?
Reports show that email marketing generates $36 to $44 in ROI for every $1 spent, making it one of the highest-return channels. But that return depends on strategically guiding readers toward meaningful actions.
Your next step might be downloading a resource that captures their contact information, scheduling a consultation or demo or implementing a specific strategy and reporting results.
The Payoff
What to do in your next planning meeting? Take these five questions with you. Post them on a whiteboard. Apply them to every piece of content suggested.
You’ll see that more than half of the content you had intended to cover doesn’t adequately address these questions. This is a revelation. You now know the answers to the pieces of content that will contribute to wasting your team’s resources.
When you produce strategic content in response to those five questions, something amazing happens. The content library becomes an asset rather than just a collection of posts nobody is reading. The content works harder because it has something to accomplish.
Feature image credit: Getty
By Vikrant Shaurya
Vikrant Shaurya, CEO of Authors On Mission, helping entrepreneurs and professionals write, publish and market their books. Read Vikrant Shaurya’s full executive profile here.
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