Good quality content is critical when trying to attract prospects and enhance your image as experts in your field. However, creating content is time consuming and can also be expensive so it’s important that you focus your efforts on developing content that will help you achieve your goals. Generally, the goal of any piece of content is to move people along in their relationship with you towards the point where they buy something from you. If a new piece of content doesn’t do this then producing it is likely to be a waste of your time.
Here is a list of things to think about when considering ideas for content generation and how you might use such content in your marketing strategy.
- Does it help your readers accomplish their goals by providing them with the information that they are expecting to find?
- Does the title of the material reflect accurately what the content is and is it designed to attract the right people to the content?
- Does it anticipate your readers’ needs?
- Is it based on a good understanding of readers’ goals and behaviours?
- Does it give the reader the option of seeing more information if they are interested?
- Are there obvious and clear ‘next steps’ that someone can take once they’ve engaged with the content?
- Does it move someone along the path towards becoming your customer (or deepen your relationship with existing customers)?
- Is it appropriate for your business and its goals?
- Is it sustainable? Can it be created and managed without huge cost or time investment?
- Does the content have a clear and specific purpose that it can be evaluated against?
- Does the content speak to people using their language rather than your language?
- Is it clearly written?
- Is it organised in ways that make it easy to use?
- Is the language used consistent?
- Is the tone appropriate for your brand and for your audience?
- Is it concise?
- Are the facts up to date? Still correct?
- Is the content time-sensitive and, if so, how will you know when to remove it?
- Can it be used in multiple different ways and ‘sliced and diced’ into different media (for example a single blog post could then be used as the basis of multiple social media posts, an in depth research report could be repurposed into a series of standalone blogs)
If you’re struggling for content ideas you might find our Implementing a successful content development strategy on demand webinar to be useful.
