The young man at the back of the ballroom in the Santa Monica, Calif., Loews hotel has a question he's been burning to ask, having held it for more than an hour as I delivered a presentation on why content marketing is invaluable for search.
When the time comes for Q&A, he nearly leaps out of his chair before announcing that he's asking a question for pretty much the entire room.
"How do I know what content I should create?" he asks. "I work at a small company. We have a team of content people, but we're typically told what to write without having any idea if it's what people want to read from us."
When asked what the results of their two blog posts per week was, his answer told a tale I hear I often: "No one reads it. We don't know if that's because of the message or because [it's the] wrong audience for the content we're sharing."
In fishing and hunting circles, there's a saying that rings true today, tomorrow, and everyday: "If you want to land trophy animals, you have to hunt in places where trophy animals reside."
Content marketing is not much different.
If you want to ensure that the right audience consumes the content you design, create and share, you have to "hunt" where they are. But to do so successfully, you must first know what they desire in the way of bait (content).
For those of us who've been involved in content marketing for a while now, this all sounds like fairly simplistic, 101-level stuff. But consider this: While we as marketers and technologists have access to sundry tools and platforms that help us discern all sorts of information, most small and mid-size business owners — and the folks who work at small and mid-size businesses — often lack the resources for most of the tools that could help flatten the learning curve for "What content should I create?"
If you spend any time fishing around online, you know very well that the problem isn't going away soon.
For small and mid-size business looking to tackle this challenge, I detail a few tips below that I frequently share during presentations and that seem to work well for clients and prospects alike.
