Quality content means relevant content. When content is relevant to your audience, it’s way more likely that your audience will:
- See your content in their search results
- Read your content
- Interact with and share your content
- Respond to your calls to action
How do you make sure your content is relevant to your audience?
The first step is to get to know your audience. Find out what their interests are, what challenges they are facing, and what type of words they use to frame these in.
You can get to know your audience by:
- Conducting online polls and surveys
- Holding interviews in person or via the phone
- Interacting with them via social media
- Using online analytics tools to determine popular search queries, most viewed articles, most interactive social posts, and so on
The second step is to start creating content that meets the audience needs you uncovered in the first step. While you create your content, think about:
How your audience likes to consume content. Do they like to read articles, watch videos, listen to podcasts, or something else? And do they prefer to use mobile devices while on the go, are they likely to be seated behind a computer when they discover your content, or do they frequently switch between devices?
The words and imagery you use. What will resonate with your audience? Which words and which images will make your audience feel like you are talking directly to them? Which keywords do you need to target to show up in the search results?
How you address your audience. Try to write as if you are writing to a single person – this makes your message more personal and therefore more engaging.
The questions your content needs to answer. What pressing questions do the people in your audience have? And how can you answer these questions in a way that satisfies your audience while differentiating your content from all the other content that’s already out there?
By keeping these points in mind throughout your content creation process, you can make sure that you meet the needs of your audience and that you create something that is valuable to them.
How do you help your audience find the content that’s relevant to them?
There’s no point in creating content without a proper plan for how you’re going to get it to the people you’re creating it for.
It’s likely that you’re already using some of the most popular methods for sharing content with your audience. Here are some tips you can use to increase your relevance with these methods:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Write good meta descriptions for blog posts and web pages
- Include synonyms of your target keywords in your content
- Look at the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to see how others are answering the same questions you are answering, and see how you can fill the gaps and add more value
User intent is an important factor in search engine rankings, so it’s worth taking some time to find out what people are searching for and how you can produce the best resources to answer their questions.
Social Media
- Use relevant hashtags
- Write short, catchy, and descriptive headlines that aren’t clickbait
- Use paid promotions to reach people who belong to your target market, but who don’t already follow you on social media
- Send emails to a relevant segment of your database, instead of spamming your whole database every time you send an email
- Use interesting and descriptive subject lines that encourage readers to click
While these tips are only the beginning, they will certainly increase your chances of reaching the right audience with your content.