How Can You Improve Your Content Marketing to reach a wider audience?
Content is the lifeblood of business.
It informs customers of what they need to know to make a purchase decision. It reassures them that their decision is a wise one.
For content to serve its beneficial purpose in your business, however, it has to reach your potential customers.
So often it gets no farther than the website or blog or social media platform where we post it.
What does it need to reach a wider audience?
If your focus is just on completing something you can post on your website, blog or social sites, you can easily fall into merely stringing words together without regard to the value it will have to whoever reads it.
Ever finished your content, said to yourself, “Whew, I’m glad I’m done with that,” and hurriedly posted it? That’s a warning sign that you’ve just banged out a piece of worthless junk.
Think of it this way: The purpose of creating lead generating content is not to solve your problem by giving you something to post, but to solve your readers’ problems.
Determine what social media groups, blogs and forums they visit. Then monitor those sites to see what frustrations and hopes they express. If you have phone or personal contact with your customers, draw out their thoughts and feelings.
If your ability to converse with customers is limited (such as by having contact with them only through an impersonal online interface), ask friends or relatives who you feel understand the needs of your audience. And while you’re at it, work to break down that impersonal interface so you can interact with your audience more naturally.
If you want to communicate effectively with them, you first have to let them communicate with you.
If there is nothing that you feel is worth the few moments it would take you to send an email to a friend with your content attached – nothing you feel that friend would be glad to receive – why would someone else take the time to share it?
We all like to feel like heroes. We like to feel appreciated. We like to have others look up to us. So, if you want your content shared beyond the confines of where you’ve posted it, you need to make sure it makes others feel like heroes for passing it on.
Is your content helpful enough to pass this hero test? If not, work on it until it does.
As of July of 2015, the average post reaches upper level readers in 21 industries and nine countries – 45% of readers include not only manager level, but also VP- and C-level executives.
Facebook enables highly targeted promotion of your content with such features as their history with your business, life events and recent purchasing behavior. Twitter enables you to engage in conversation with individuals in your audience and find the influencers and amplifiers who can share your content over their own networks.
Used properly, social media platforms enable you to reach your audience on both a broadcast and individual basis.
These are the influencers and amplifiers – or, as Seth Godin calls them in his book Unleashing the Ideavirus, the “Sneezers.”
Sneezers spread insights that they like through their large social networks to the networks of those who are on their network and on and on, like an epidemic. Having your content spread by these Sneezers is the Holy Grail of promotion.
Don’t think, however, that that Holy Grail is available to just any content. Think of the content you’ve seen shared by the top influencers in your industry. What does it have in common? Insights that are truly outstanding.
It has to take hold and “infect” him or her with insights that change something in the way that person sees his or her problems, struggles or hopes.
If we wish to spread our content to wider market, it must first be capable of transforming something in the way our audience sees their lives.
It informs customers of what they need to know to make a purchase decision. It reassures them that their decision is a wise one.
For content to serve its beneficial purpose in your business, however, it has to reach your potential customers.
So often it gets no farther than the website or blog or social media platform where we post it.
Write with a purpose
Don’t just create content, create content to generate leads. It’s a difference in mindset.If your focus is just on completing something you can post on your website, blog or social sites, you can easily fall into merely stringing words together without regard to the value it will have to whoever reads it.
Ever finished your content, said to yourself, “Whew, I’m glad I’m done with that,” and hurriedly posted it? That’s a warning sign that you’ve just banged out a piece of worthless junk.
Think of it this way: The purpose of creating lead generating content is not to solve your problem by giving you something to post, but to solve your readers’ problems.
Listen
Take an active interest in what your audience is doing online.Determine what social media groups, blogs and forums they visit. Then monitor those sites to see what frustrations and hopes they express. If you have phone or personal contact with your customers, draw out their thoughts and feelings.
If your ability to converse with customers is limited (such as by having contact with them only through an impersonal online interface), ask friends or relatives who you feel understand the needs of your audience. And while you’re at it, work to break down that impersonal interface so you can interact with your audience more naturally.
If you want to communicate effectively with them, you first have to let them communicate with you.
Be share-worthy
Ask yourself honestly whether your content is shareworthy, in other words, that someone you know would thank you for sharing it with them.If there is nothing that you feel is worth the few moments it would take you to send an email to a friend with your content attached – nothing you feel that friend would be glad to receive – why would someone else take the time to share it?
We all like to feel like heroes. We like to feel appreciated. We like to have others look up to us. So, if you want your content shared beyond the confines of where you’ve posted it, you need to make sure it makes others feel like heroes for passing it on.
Is your content helpful enough to pass this hero test? If not, work on it until it does.
Make the most of social media platforms
Social media platforms can expose your content to wide sharing. If your content applies to business interests, LinkedIn is a highly receptive platform.As of July of 2015, the average post reaches upper level readers in 21 industries and nine countries – 45% of readers include not only manager level, but also VP- and C-level executives.
Facebook enables highly targeted promotion of your content with such features as their history with your business, life events and recent purchasing behavior. Twitter enables you to engage in conversation with individuals in your audience and find the influencers and amplifiers who can share your content over their own networks.
Used properly, social media platforms enable you to reach your audience on both a broadcast and individual basis.
Finding influencers and amplifiers
Ultimately, your goal for reaching a wider audience for your content is to find and influence people who have wide audiences of their own.These are the influencers and amplifiers – or, as Seth Godin calls them in his book Unleashing the Ideavirus, the “Sneezers.”
Sneezers spread insights that they like through their large social networks to the networks of those who are on their network and on and on, like an epidemic. Having your content spread by these Sneezers is the Holy Grail of promotion.
Don’t think, however, that that Holy Grail is available to just any content. Think of the content you’ve seen shared by the top influencers in your industry. What does it have in common? Insights that are truly outstanding.
Conclusion
In all the talk that is done about viral marketing, it’s strange that marketers never deal with the disconnect between viruses that cause illness (an undesirable thing) and the viral form of marketing that spreads content far beyond what the marketer could do on his or her own (a highly desirable thing).- Perhaps that is why so many marketers see reaching a wider audience through viral marketing as a wished for, yet unattainable, goal. We lose sight of what that viral element has to do in order to spread itself.
It has to take hold and “infect” him or her with insights that change something in the way that person sees his or her problems, struggles or hopes.
If we wish to spread our content to wider market, it must first be capable of transforming something in the way our audience sees their lives.
This is a guest contribution by Ethan Dunwill he is an entrepreneur and contributing blogger for several websites. He is business-savvy and loves to share his knowledge. You can connect with Ethan via Twitter profile or visit his personal blog.
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