The primary purpose of content writing, content publishing and content marketing is to first, engage your prospects, and eventually, convert them. The biggest challenge, according to the graph published on this link titled “Create content that pulls prospects in” is creating a constant stream of engaging website material. This is the pie chart (I have recreated it to make it look more neat on my website)
The challenges, according to the levels of difficulty are
- Producing the kind of content that engages prospects/customers: 41%
- Producing enough content: 20%
- Budget to produce content: 18%
- Lack of buy-in/vision from higher-ups inside your company: 12%
- Producing a variety of content: 7%
- Budget to license content: 1%
Well this is a revelation that the budget constraint is just 1% of the challenges faced while executing a content marketing strategy.
Coming back to creating engaging content for prospects and customers.
In order to produce engaging content you first of all have to clearly define what is “engagement” vis-a-vis your business. How do you want to engage your customers and clients, what would that engagement mean and eventually to what it will lead? Then you start producing content accordingly. There are two key issues here that are highly crucial in order to produce engaging content:
- Relevancy
- Regularity
Your content has to be relevant in order to engage your prospects
Content marketing entails sending out content to your prospects on an ongoing basis. Now, sending out content doesn’t mean that they are automatically looking forward to it. They need to want it. Why would they want your content? It solves their purpose. Nobody is interested in hearing from you for sheer love except for your mom or your smitten girlfriend or boyfriend. You have to deliver them content that solves problems. You have to deliver them something that entertains them, informs them, and encourages them to remain in touch with you and engage in conversations whenever desirable.
But how do you deliver relevant content when different people have different tastes?
For that you have to properly understand your audience (your prospects). Why would they want to hear from you? Step into their shoes instead of assuming that they would like to hear from you anyway (because your product or service is so great). The relevancy of your content depends on
- The product or service you are marketing
- The format of the content people prefer in your market
- The regional/indigenous preferences
- The pressing needs of your readers/visitors
Once you have these things sorted out you can create relevant content for your market.
You need to publish content regularly
Just as quality and relevancy is important the regularity of your content publishing is vital too. You need to be constantly visible only then you can become familiar to your visitors. When you publish content regularly it gives everybody a reason to talk about it and consequently, maintain a buzz around it.
With the right mix of relevancy and regularity you can create engaging content that encourages your visitors and your friends and followers on social networking websites to engage in conversations with you and establish long-term relationships that eventually may turn into business partnerships.