Creating quality content won’t solve all the barriers to visibility, but it will definitely help you get the attention of your target audience, writes Grace Hallen of Brandpoint
Working in communications comes with the age-old struggle of fighting to get your content seen. And in a sea of new content appearing every single day, it’s no wonder brands are finding their messaging is getting lost in the crowd.
In The 5th Annual JOTW Strategic Communications Survey for 2022, standing out from the crowd was one of the top challenges for communications professionals. And it makes a lot of sense. But can communications pros overcome that challenge?
The answer is simple: yes, by creating high-quality content that provides value to your target audience.
Quality content means knowing your audience and personalizing your messaging to meet your audience’s needs. By understanding what they’re searching for and providing them with answers to their questions, you’re building up your credibility and increasing your brand relevance while giving them educational resources that are actually useful.
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The crowded media landscape
As we know, the media landscape is extremely overcrowded — and it’s only getting busier each day. And with the metaverse lurking on the horizon, there are going to be so many more channels for content to live on, and so many more spaces to compete for views.
As a response to the crowd, consumers are starting to push for simple, relevant and easy-to-digest pieces of content that feel personalized to them. Think about your recent digital experiences. The ones that are meaningful are the ones that feel personal and answer the questions you’re asking. When companies can understand their audience, this type of engagement takes place. We know attention spans are shorter than ever before, so getting your point across and adding value are two of the most important things to remember.
Personalizing content is also key to standing out. Consumers want the content they view to be tailored to them.
How can you provide quality content?
The number one way to create quality content is to understand your audience. One of the best ways of doing that is through social listening — learning what your audience is searching for online, how they feel about your company and what their needs are. By studying this information on a consistent basis, you’ll be more informed about what kind of content will resonate, what kind of keywords and hashtags to use and what platforms attract your audience.
You’ll also need to measure your content to understand what’s working and what’s not. A great way to do this is by measuring content engagement and informing your content strategy based on what content is performing well and getting lots of traffic. This will be a big tell as to if you’re successfully addressing your audiences’ pain points.
Make sure you’re staying consistent — from the style to the voice and even your posting schedule, you need to be consistent, timely and relevant. Make sure you’re addressing what’s important to your audience and not saying something just to say it. If you’re not part of a conversation, don’t force it if it doesn’t add value to your audience.
Speaking of adding value, creating content that is informative and educational is one of the most crucial things to do. This is related to understanding your audience and what they’re looking to get from viewing your website or social media posts. If you’re providing them with new, interesting information, chances are they’ll come back for more and start to trust you as a reliable source of information.
Add paid social to your content strategy
Paid social media is a great addition to your content strategy because you can narrow in on your desired audience and AB test to see what’s resonating with them. It gives you another channel to target your audience and figure out what type of content they want to see.
Partner your paid social media with your organic social strategy to get a bigger picture of results. If something performs well on organic social, it might be worthwhile to throw some money behind it and see if you can draw in more engagement. Think strategically about how to partner the two layers together.
Creating quality content won’t solve all the barriers to visibility, but it will definitely help you get the attention of your target audience.
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Grace Hallen is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Brandpoint, a content-first digital marketing agency. Grace creates content for the firm and manages its social media channels.
Editor’s Note: A version of this post first appeared as sponsored content in audio format on the Hanson and Hunt podcast: 169: Demonstrating real value, one-word tweets, dressing down for the job interview. I heard the response and, through Arik Hanson, invited Grace to submit her ideas as a guest post here. The ideas expressed are solely those of the author.
Please read these guidelines if you are interested in contributing a guest post.
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