Another way to make content creation easier is by understanding what your content goals are for everything that you create.
If you know your goal(s), that will help you create the right content for your audience as you’ll be able to guide them toward the actions you want them to take.
Here are some goals that you might have for the content you create and publish:
Brand Awareness
Some of the bigger companies out there, such as Nike, are instantly recognisable, even if all you can see is their logo. You recognise the shape and the colours and associate them with the company. You also know instantly what they do.
That’s brand awareness.
If you’d like your company to build a recognisable brand, then that should be the goal of at least some of your content.
The types of content that can do this range from books, webinars, and even blog posts. If this type of content goes viral then that’s even better.
This content is not necessarily created to make sales, but it probably will, and at the end of this type of content, you’ll ask your audience to like, comment, and share.
List Building
Some of your content should be devoted to list building.
List building is one of the most important things you can do to grow your business, and the one way you have online to create an asset for yourself that can go with you no matter what happens to the technology you currently use.
If Facebook or Pinterest disappeared tomorrow and you based your whole business on the traffic you got from there, you’d be in trouble, but if you had a mailing list, you’d still have an audience to market to.
List building content may consist of a freebie (a lead magnet) of some kind, plus a landing page and sign up form.
Engagement
Most of the content you put on social media will be to increase engagement between you and your audience, but you also want to encourage your audience to interact.
You might use surveys, questionnaires, and discussion starters for this type of content. You could also host a Twitter chat or build your own Facebook group to encourage people to talk.
Driving Traffic
One of the biggest content goals businesses have is driving traffic. Without traffic, you have no leads, no sign ups to your mailing list and no engagement.
Traffic driving content will consist of both on and off-site content. You could:
- Guest blog for someone who serves your audience.
- Pay an influencer to mention your site and drive traffic to it with a gift for their readers.
- Host an affiliate contest (providing content for them is also part of your content creation needs).
- Run a giveaway or a competition
- Pair up with another related business or three and offer a joint prize or bundle at a low price.
- Use your email signature to link back to your lead magnet and your site (which also builds your newsletter).
- Run a challenge like this one and ask people to share.
The possibilities are endless!
Generating Leads
The best way to get leads is to use list building strategies such as giving away a freebie or hosting a webinar.
The key is to ensure that the freebie is really something only your audience will want, and that the webinar is on a topic only your niche audience needs to know about.
Making Sales
If your goal is to make sales, ask for the sale. That sounds obvious, but so many people don’t do it.
You can do that with a blog post, an article, or a sales page. Either way, the content should focus on benefits over features and then ask for the sale. Ask them to buy right now by providing an easy way to do it.
Improving Customer Retention
If you want people to stick with you, once they buy from you, then your follow-up series via your autoresponder must be well thought out and full of targeted, helpful content.
This is where segmenting your mailing list can help tremendously, as you can focus your content on different parts of your list. For example, there’s no point in sending emails about the huge discount you’re offering on a product to someone who already bought it.
Making Repeat Sales
Depending on what type of things you sell, you may want your audience to buy more, or you may want them to buy something else. The content you send to them via email can help guide them to make those purchases.
When choosing content goals, it’s best to choose only one goal for each piece of content you create so that your audience knows exactly what to do.
Action Point!
A bit of an easier day today. Just start thinking about how you can choose a content goal for everything you create from now on. And if you already have content, perhaps look at rewriting it to guide your audience towards your chosen goal.
As always, drop me a comment below if you need any help.
That’s it for Day 7. Tomorrow, we’re going to be looking at where you can post your content, and then after that, we can look at scheduling, and bring together your content marketing plan.
Don’t want to wait? Prefer to get all of the 30-Day Content Marketing Challenge posts in one place, so you can work through at your own pace? Here’s a link to all of the challenge lessons: https://creativeblueberry.com/30-day-content-marketing-challenge-catch-up/
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