Many content marketers know that they need to put out content that their customers believe in, adds value to their audience, and helps build their brand equity. But the task of even coming up with great content is a challenge in the first place. So the question is: how do you make content that your prospects and customers really resonate with? Here are some solutions that you can use.
1. Create Multiple Customer Profiles
You have to understand that you are not your customer. You have to really dig deep into their demographics, their needs, their problems, their wants, and their situation. You also have to understand that your customer isn’t just a single entity. In most case, they’ll consist of multiple types of personas. That’s why it helps to create multiple customer profiles and use it as a guide when you create your content. You’ll find that you’ll need to go into content topics that sometimes appeal to the larger broad audience and sometimes appeal to specific groups.
2. Opt for a Fast Loading Web Host
What good is great content if your website takes too long to load? Many of your visitors and customers will abandon your website if loading times are too long, especially if they are on mobile devices. If you suspect the problem is your web host, you’ll want to transfer your website to a better service provider. But if you are already on a great web host and don’t want to transfer your website to a new one, then you should opt for a CDN service. This is a type of service that will host your files across multiple servers all over the world for faster performance.
3. Back Up Your Content with Facts
When you make a claim or a bold statement, it may be hard for your customers to believe in your words. But that skepticism can easily be overcome by backing up your words with cold hard facts. You want to use quotes, data, figures, examples, charts, and trends within your content to show that what you’re saying is actually true. There are many resources nowadays that can help you find important data in your market or industry. All it takes is some extra work to dig through the data to find something that’s relevant to your content topic.
4. Add Valuable Resources to Your Content
While many website owners do not like to link out to other sites within their content, it’s actually helpful to do so. You have to first understand that you cannot provide everything that your customers need. Even if you don’t provide helpful resources, they’ll go seek out what they need on their own. It also shows your customers that you genuinely want to add value to their lives. This will result in them believing in your content and your agenda, especially if they were skeptical before.
5. Demonstrate Your Authority and Experience
Sometimes you have to prove to your audience that you know what you’re talking about. To do this, you want to demonstrate your authority and experience. Show people how you’ve made a positive impact on your customers. Explain past projects that you’ve worked on. Obviously, you don’t want to make it over the top and try to boast about your accomplishments, products or services. You can easily incorporate these elements into your content while still adding value to your readers. It’s all about integrating these facts when relevant and tying it into the topic you are writing about.
6. Use Customer Experiences and Case Studies
Another way to create content that is believable is to use customer experiences and case studies. You can do many different things such as interviewing your customers, asking customers to submit their content, and getting people to post their feedback in the comments section. Case studies work well too because you can dissect each aspect of a successful experience. Readers are also getting a behind the scenes look into what’s happening which can attract a lot of readers.
7. Weave in Real Stories that Customers Can Relate To
Stories have been used to communicate important things from the moment we are born. That’s why they are a powerful way to communicate with your customers. There are several factors at play when you use storytelling within your content. First of all, stories imply that an important point will be made to the reader by the end. Second, stories are memorable because they are more personal and engaging. Finally, stories are filled with emotions which make it easier for readers to relate and absorb the information. What’s really weird about stories is that they are rarely questioned unless the story is too over the top.
8. Ask Your Customers What They Want and Need
The obvious thing to do when you start creating content is to research content topics that are popular and has performed well with your target audience. But very few content marketers take the next step which is asking their prospects and customers what they want and need. All it takes is a simple survey and you’ll be given hundreds, if not thousands of different topics to write about. When your readers’ requests are answered through your content, they’ll start to believe you actually care about delivering value.
These are a few of the many things you can do to make your content believable. You need to understand that content creation isn’t just about publishing mediocre content on a regular basis. There is so much that goes into creating content that adds value and resonates with your target audience. The content marketers that understand this often see far better results than competitors that take shortcuts and don’t put enough emphasis on quality.