Know What You and Your Audience Want
Content creation might seem like a challenging task but the right mindset can help you achieve your goals. After the frills and fluff are taken out of the picture, you are left with content, usually text, that needs to convey your message or sell your product efficiently. The challenge is only furthered when you are trying to use keywords to effectively pull new clients or visitors to your website or to read your copy.
This being the case, there are some simple guidelines that you can follow to make sure your copy is appropriate and productive.
Determine the Purpose
What is the point of the content you are creating? Are you trying to inform the audience? Entertain them? Sell a product or service? No matter the reason for the content, pinpointing the primary purpose will make the rest of creating the content a much simpler undertaking.
Although figuring out the purpose of content seems inherent in whatever is being done, taking a few moments to clarify the point will ensure the project stays on topic and tone. Diving headfirst into digital content creation can easily yield an ineffective or inconsistent copy. All too often an article will begin as advertising copy and develop into an opinion piece or, worse, no longer be attempting to sell the product.
The more specific the purpose the better. Instead of, “The purpose of this content is to sell products,” you should go with, “The purpose of this content is to sell 20% more product to existing customers and to raise readership by 10% before the end of the fiscal year.”
Set Goals
When making content or working with a content creator, set goals that will help you figure out how much work needs to be done and by when. These goals should obviously coincide with the purpose of the content as conflicting goals will produce conflicted results. If the purpose is to increase sales or readership by 10% within a specified amount of time, the goal for the final product should not exceed that allotted schedule.
Likewise, goals should be realistic and measurable. One massive goal will be soon dismissed, but if a schedule is applied and intermediate goals are established, the work will be small steps versus an all-out sprint at the end.
Who Is the Audience?
Answering this question will have the biggest impact on the content over any other aspect. If you are looking to create content that sells a service to help senior citizens buy low-cost life insurance, there is no advantage to be gained through referencing hip colloquialisms or trendy subject matter. Similarly, if your target audience is a young, tech-savvy crowd and you are trying to gain readership for a blog or column, explaining each acronym might make your content seem laborious to read.
The audience can be easily determined through four simple questions:
- Where are they located? Know what nation[s] your target audience lives in, whether they are in urban or suburban areas, if they own or rent their home, etc.
- What is their age group?
- What is the gender most likely to look for your content?
- How much money – or time – do they have to spend on your product/content?
Once the purpose, goals and audience are established, it is finally time to create the content.
