Creating content management strategies for your online business is an important step in building a connection with your audience that will help you get more traffic, leads and sales.
If you're totally lost when it comes to writing content that resonates with your audience and struggling with what to write that will keep them engaged, this article will help you understand first, what content management is and how when implemented it will help you build a thriving online business.
The Dilemma is Knowing What to Write
The goal is to have your ideal customers coming back week after week for more great content. But that's not what happens in many cases. Many entrepreneurs struggle with writing, posting and distributing their content to the right people until they understand a few of the things we’ll cover in this article. So keep reading for ways to connect and build an audience of people who can’t wait to read your articles and consume your other content as well.
We should start with a definition of content. According to Wikipedia, content is the information and experiences directed at an end-user or audience.
It is delivered through different media including, the Internet, movies, television, radio, phones, audio, books, e-books, magazines, and live events.
Content management is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.
A content management system is a set of automated processes that may supports the import and creation of documents and multimedia material, and the identification of all key users and their roles.
If you're a one man show, you have responsibility for the entire process. This can be overwhelming by itself.
Next, ask a few questions. For example, when you’re creating content for your audience, are you creating great content, boring content, or content that is totally invisible to your audience? Do you get likes, shares or engagement when you post your content to social media?
Now if you’re anything like me, you might have been baffled if you’ve heard phrases like “content is king”... Number one, what does that even mean?
How you might ask, do I make my content king? Soooo, the answer to that is, it depends... on your audience.
Have you heard the term “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” It’s so true…and a little ambiguous, just like “content is king”. It would be great if people just spoke in plain English, but this is the deal... no one is going to spell it out for you, because it really IS a little ambiguous.
So we’ll attempt to break this down. Let’s start with a definition of content.
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Creating a Content Management Strategy That Connects with Your Audience
It's up to you to find ways to make your content likeable. It's not enough to just write. You have to write the "right" thing. Then you have to get it posted so that it appears in front of the write audience.
Circulation (content management) brings content to everyone and helps spread it to reach even larger audiences. Most people, when they’re provided with information, go through a process where they encounter the content(information), interpret it, and if they like it, they share it with other people. If they don’t like it or it doesn’t matter one way or the other they don’t share it.
Your content has to strike a chord with the beholder (reader, consumer) or it falls flat on the ground and is never seen again. That might be a little dramatic, but you understand what I mean.
If you're not getting results it could be the content itself, or the content management strategy that is not working to get your information in front of the right audience.
So as I stated earlier, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. You may consume content, like an article or a TV show that you absolutely love. I may encounter that same content and turn the page or switch the channel. Because we are all unique individuals, we are interested in different things.
Understanding Your Audience is Key
So once again in our marketing journey, we need to have a clear understanding of our ideal customers, our target audience when we are creating content. We should also realize that some will like what we create and others, not so much. But that’s OK, because as we also learned earlier, that everyone is not our target customer.
Our Latest Podcast Episode: Season 1 Episode 11
When writing for an audience of people you want to do business with, it’s important to do your homework. Researching keyword trends, answering audience questions, tapping into related current events and industry news, and understanding the kinds of things your ideal customers are looking for helps you create content that is “king”.
Because it’s the thing that motivates most people to take action, you should think of ways to make your content speak to problems, agitating the problems people in your niche are having, and providing your solutions.
Other content ideas include ideas, entertainment, news, and other types of content your audience needs to make their lives better.
You might scoff at entertaining your ideal customers, but consider this… there are people who spend every waking moment online, whether they're at home, on the job, or waiting in line for a latte. (Unfortunately, this sounds like most people these days.) When these people are bored, they want an entertaining distraction ... and that's where your hilarious, quirky video comes in.
Finding Your Writing Voice and Your Audience
Think of your writing style and the images, audio and videos you might include in your content to make it stand out and grab the attention of your audience whether they are being serious or they need a little comic relief.
If your audience is fun-loving and peppy and depending on your topic, a monotone article with no pictures will put them to sleep. If you have people in your audience who are avid readers, they are used to straight copy that is really descriptive and leads the reader through a complicated topic. They may handle single spaced content that has a limited amount of pictures like a champ.
For most people, you want content that is positive, bright and full of easy to navigate information that helps them accomplish their goals with a little humor sprinkled in when needed.
That’s why it’s important to go through the steps outlined in my customer and product analysis workbooks. Upon first glance the work may seem overwhelming, with all those questions. But until I answered those questions, I was always guessing what my audience wanted.
And the goal in building a business is to eliminate as much guessing as possible. In the beginning you may do more guessing. But as time passes, you should be learning more and more about your ideal clients.
The workbooks provide you with the questions you should answer about your ideal customers and clients. And once you’re done, you’ll have no problem creating content that is king in their minds. And making your ideal customers happy in the world of online marketing is what really matters.
Content Ideas That Get Results
Here are a few ideas of the types of content you can create for your audience. Be sure to create content that follows your prospect through your sales and marketing process (funnel) from beginning to the end.
So for example, at the beginning of the funnel you might create brand awareness, in the middle of the process you’ll want to make sure your ideal client understands the benefits and features they will get when they are evaluating and comparing your product to the competition.
And at the end of the funnel, you will want to follow up to make sure you customers likes their products. During follow up, you can present offers to upsell your customer with a complimentary or higher value product or service.
Video: Suggested Tools Designed to Make Content Management Easier
Use a WordPress plugin like Nelio Content, that contains an editorial calendar and social media features. If you're a one man show, this plugin could make your blogging life easier. I've recently started using it and so far, I love it. Learn more about it in the video above.
We will create video demos soon that cover this plugin and others with details about how they work to improve your website.
Create content in the formats below... content your ideal customers will love. Distribute these content types using Nelio Content to your email list, blog posts, your website, videos, audio, and social media. It's important to mix things up and keep your content fresh and interesting:
- Product Review Posts - These are reviews of products your ideal clients are looking for. People find these to be very helpful when they are looking to make a purchase. These kinds of posts are a great way to get someone into your funnel when they are almost ready to make a purchase. They coincide well with buyer intent. For this to work, you your audience will need to feel that you know what you’re talking about (authority) and they have to trust you in order to pull out their wallet and buy from your recommendation.
Reviews are also great for affiliate offers for the same reason. The goal is to do an honest review of a product you’ve actually used. If it’s a video review, show the product in your video if possible and tell viewers or readers the pros and cons of a product to help your ideal clients make a buying decision. If you’re selling the product, give them a link to make a purchase. If you will receive a commission if someone buys the product, you have to state that in the review, whether it’s in an article, podcast episode, or video. In these kinds of posts you give an honest review of the products or services you have used. Keep in mind that there’s a thin line between an honest, quality review of a product, versus a commercial or advertisement. Be sure to stay focused on the review, and answer questions your ideal customers might have about the products.
For example, what the product is, how it’s used and whether it worked to help you. If there are problems, be sure to state those as well. The main thing with these kinds of posts is that people have to trust that you will tell them the truth.
- Engagement Posts - The goal of this post should be to motivate readers (or viewers) to take action. These posts (all posts) should of course be something your ideal customers are interested in. You can talk about something controversial and ask them to take a poll at the end of the article or video. You can also ask them to take a quiz, survey, enter into a contest or take action to receive a freebie.
These kinds of posts can help you gather great insight into what your ideal customers want. Make them fun and interactive, and be sure to have a call to action at the end. - News / Announcements / Trending Posts - What’s going on in your industry, community, the world that would be of interest to your ideal clients. Are they thrill seekers, do they love the latest gossip and celebrity news or do they want the facts and only the facts. Share relevant news, announcements and updates that they would love to know about.
- Promote Your Blog Posts - This should be one of the primary things you do with your email list and your social media posts. Promote your blog posts to your audience so that they will know what you have to offer. Don’t only promote your recent posts, recycle some of your evergreen posts as well to mix it up and keep people coming back to your blog.
- Contests and Competitions - Periodically have a contest or challenge with prizes that will motivate your audience to take some sort of easy action. For example, you can have contests that ask readers to submit and vote on something like a photo or short video to get the opinion of the audience or community. The photo or video with the most votes wins a prize. There are lots of contests you can have to make your post fun and entertaining.
- Tutorial Screenshot Posts - Screenshots are a great way to share what is on your screen with your audience. These screenshots are good for tutorials and how-to posts. You can walk someone through a process or show them how to do something like make something and show a screenshot for every major step of the process. You can also use screen capture software to do screen share videos that are really good for product reviews, demos and tutorials as well.
- Infographics - Infographics are large images that provide data or some specific information about a topic. They are very informative and shareable.
When you make it easy for readers to share infographics, and they are informative as well as visually appealing, they can be shared by a large number of people. If that happens they can be a great source of traffic to your site. Tools like Canva, Powerpoint (PC) and Keynote (iOS)are great tools you can use to create infographics.
- Personal Photograph Posts - If you have a travel, craft or cooking related blog, taking personal pictures and videos and posting them on your blog is a great way to have unique content that can be enjoyed and shared by your audience. Just make sure to get permission from anyone who is shown in your photos.
- Workplace Behind-the-Scenes Posts - This is a great way to showcase your business with a nationwide or global audience. Your audience can feel like they are right there with you in your office or facility through pictures and videos that you use to demonstrate a process or the creation of products.
- Polls - Have a burning question? Ask your audience for their opinion and post your responses. Someone else may have the same question as you and they can get the answers from people in your community.
- Questions - Have a Q&A session on a live video, a post or a pre-recorded video that discusses frequent questions asked by your audience. This is something you can do on a regular basis as questions come in.
- Motivational Quotes / Memes - This is a great way to share fun, motivational quotes and memes on your site. These are very popular on social media and can result in some additional traffic to your site.
- User-Generated Content - This goes back to the engagement contest post types. Ask your audience to submit photos, videos and anything that can be viewed quickly. Have users vote on the one they feel is best. Another way to use user generated content is to request guest posts for your audience, and interviews for your videos and podcasts. Audience participate is a great way to get regular feedback from your community.
- Stories - Stories and testimonials are another great way to get feedback from your audience that can be used to provide social proof. A word from a customer you’ve helped goes a long way.
- Live Streams - This is a great way to build rapport with your audience. It gives your audience a time that they can connect with you and ask questions.
Remember content is one of your products. And when it comes to your business, it's important to make the shift from consumer to supplier of high quality content.As a business owner you cant afford to sit back and wait for someone to supply you with things. It's your job to supply your ideal clients with your most important product... content.
There is no one size fits all content marketing strategy that works for every business. Its' up to you as a business owner to determine the kinds of content that works for your audience. Remember to mix it up and create the kind of content that results in feedback and participation from your audience.