If you were to gather today all the content produced in the world including Nigeria into a room from 2003 downwards. All the paintings, art, records, letters, novels, fiction writing and more. Every single thing combined into one box.
And we were to ask ourselves the question, How long will it take for us to replicate that boxed content?
Well the answer according to Eric shmidt, Co-Founder of Google.com is 48 hours.
We create more content in 2 days than our ancestors were able to create in 6 years.
We have done an excellent job.
But while we haven’t necessarily dropped the ball on producing content, we have been doing a rather poor job on producing quality information.
So there are a lot of haystacks out there, and it is important that your brand stands as the tall and sharp needle it can be.
How do you create content that stands out? How do you separate yourself from the millions of other people producing content out there?
The answer relies on simplicity and proper implementation.
“Your content must answer your client’s or customers most pressing questions”
That’s it, if you want to drive engagement, relevance and optimization on your content, it all starts with providing the best answers to your customers most pressing questions.
Don’t waste time on Youtube videos that showcase “how to stand like a cat” although it might be interesting and fun, if it’s not the answer, then you should stop writing or producing.
That’s the simple answer to standing out in a crowded room. But you probably have a deeper question, you are probably wondering, How?
How do I stand out in a crowd? How do I make my content relevant to the questions my customers are asking?
Well we have listed for you the step by step solution to building your content:
Step 1: Know what your customers are asking:
Producing exceptional content that stands out begins with knowing the questions your customers are asking. There are various ways to approach this and get the questions your customers are asking –
- Enquire from your customers through email: When we were about launching our newest digital marketing product, we asked part of our segmented email list for their opinions on our services, this way we collated relevant information that helped us launch our service successfully.
- Go through sales staff repeatable process: You need to know what questions your sales staff answers to everyday, especially the repeated and pressing ones. Put all the questions into a black journal for records and reference when creating your contents.
- Have your customer care copy (CC) you when they answer an enquiry from your clients: You would build inspiration on creative writing tips to help answer your customers pressing questions.
- Optimize your contact us queries for content: Scan through your contact us queries from customers to understand their needs, motives, desires and questions. Build on the most pressing and reasonable queries and work your content around that.
Once you have your data sources, start looking for similarities and correlations that stand out, from there list of frequently asked questions. That list will help you build a map that will sequentially guide your customers through the stages of their buying journey.
Step 2: Keep it valuable when answering questions:
Once you have the list of FAQ’S ready and prioritized, it’s time to produce valuable content that will address the questions generated from the list.
When creating valuable content make sure you cross check among the following points:
Content is valuable and informative – Your content is a solution to people’s problems; you’re not trying to lure buyers to buy products through bait and switch methods. To be king of content marketing, your content needs to stand out, be valuable and be the answer to people’s questions.
Quality Content: Your content needs to dive in-depth into the minds of your readers. For that, it needs to be of high quality, entertaining and easy to read.
Step 3: Optimize for People
When you create content that people engage with, like and share, search engines move you up above the rack. While optimization for search engines and SEO, best practices are very important, creating content that people engage with is the ultimate prize.
Think about innovative ways to make your blog posts very interactive, you can use videos, photos and also investing resources that makes your visual content pop up.
Step 4: Stop Creating Content
Just stop creating content and start creating answers to the questions your readers are asking.
Your customers aren’t thinking, Oh I have to consume an article of Prada shoes before I make the decision to buy a pair. No they are thinking, Are these shoes durable? Do they have the right sizes for me? Can they ship to Nigeria?
In order to get ahead of the crowd you need to be answering these questions in every post you make, only then do you stand the best chance of beating the swarm of posts out there and standing out as an exceptional content producer.
[bctt tweet=”In order to get ahead of the crowd you need to be answering these questions in every post you make, only then do you stand the best chance of beating the swarm of posts out there and standing out as an exceptional content producer.” username=”vibewebsolution”]
To summarize, we have created a bullet point checklist that you can follow below, when posting content on your website or blog:
10 Characteristics of Best Answer Posts
- They’re focused on one specific problem
- They provide social proof with social share count buttons
- They include great visuals & video
- They break it down step-by-step
- They showcase real-life examples, storytelling to boost reader understanding
- They’re informative and entertaining, not one or the other
- They’re serialized to keep audiences in a state of anticipation
- They follow a format that resonates, but with new content each time
- They’re timely, deep resources
- They make a big promise in the title, and actually deliver in the content.
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