Value, Does Your Content Have It?
We all see a lot of content today; some of it is good, some of it is bad and a small amount is great. Some questions to ask your marketing people could include:
- What type of content do we offer?
- Does our content offer any value?
- What is valuable to our customers, clients and/or targeted audiences?
These are some tough question, but they need answers.
Determining Value
The truth is, what you think is valuable may not seem valuable to others. Need a great example? Prancersice.
What is value to you could be either a huge joke to others or what you offer could be considered a waste of time. So, what is valuable to your customers/clients?
Well, you can always ask costumers what they want to know about and what information they need. That is a good start, but there are some other ways you can determine what valuable topics your audience is interested in.
Sales
When you or your sales people make a successful sale what are the things that people need to hear or see before they make a decision to buy? List these things out and put them on your valuable list for content creation purposes.
After you make a sale you can always ask customers what information you provided that helped them make a buying decision. This information is extremely valuable.
Questions by Potential and Current Customers
If you hear the same type of questions repeatedly then the answers to these questions are valuable to your audience. Add these answers to your valuable list and then determine different ways to provide this information to your various audiences. Some people like to read, some people like video and some just want a quick image or graphic.
Break down your demographics and provide them value in a medium they enjoy.
Social Networks
You can scan and monitor what people are saying to you, your competitors and similar businesses throughout the world. What is important to them and what questions do they have? List all this information and keep it. Also, make sure you make it clear what common questions you heard on social networks only so you know how to reach those social audiences later.
Complaints
Customer complaints offer you a lot of insight into what is valuable to them. Keep track of complaints and address them with your sales, management and marketing teams.
Find ways to fix the problems and discover ways to change or enhance your reputation through content marketing.
Surveys
Surveys are a great way to get some nitty-gritty information from your customers and even potential customers. I recommend a company that provides these surveys to help you reach out to customers, track interactions and accumulate data for you.
Putting It All Together
Once you have a good understanding of what your potential and current customers consider valuable you can start graphing out how you are going to reach different audiences based on their needs, learning styles and lifestyles.
Create content that is NOT repetitive, but still offers the same information in the formats that your different audiences will be open to receiving.
DO NOT create or offer anything that is not in some way valuable to your audiences. If you are constantly offering “nothing” people will stop even attempting to look at what you offer. Value is critical.
Melissa Fach has been in the SEO industry since 2007. She created her own agency, was the Managing Editor at SEJ, worked as an editor for Moz with their community team, she worked at Pubcon as the Community Manager for 5 years, and is an editor for SEMrush US Blog.
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