How do you stop yourself writing endless Content with Minimal engagement?

Bryan Smith
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

Many Marketing teams that work within our clients often voice the same issues with me when we chat — and with the growth of Content as a real driver for engagement (not just for SEO, but that’s for another time!) comes the standard ‘bolt on’ process when a Company plans to scale up:

“Can anyone in Marketing do this?”

In all honesty, some or most (especially within the talented teams I’ve met here) probably could, and why would they not want to try? There’s limited repercussions as we know the odds of striking viral Gold are firmly stacked against us AND it’s such an in demand skill nowadays that once you write one post you’re obviously entitled to add ‘Content Marketer’ on your LinkedIn Profile and CV to add a few extra $$$ in your next venture ;)

Yet once the first article is done, the second will be firmly expected afterwards…..as will the next, and the next and when this happens it quite easy to forget what the aim is — Content should be used not just to engage but to Solve a Problem. It’s easy to write and the chances are you know who your audience is and what your brand is (if not, maybe put your hand back up at this stage), but how do you know what people’s problems are?

This is where I suggest Keyword Research.

Yes, it’s predominantly used within SEO (Meta, Anchor Text, etc) and works well in tandem, with PPC/SEM agendas but it also gives you massive amounts of data on what the General Public are actually searching for — and the chances are that a very high volume of these searches are tied to a problem that someone has, so why not use this for a better focus in your Content Strategy? It’ll not only serve as an extension of your brand but it’ll also go some way to building trust with your potential customers, which as we all know is key at the early stages of a lead generation or sales process.

I’ll make an example:

Now you can get pretty easy keyword Research data from Ahrefs, SEMrush or ‘Keywords Everywhere’ (I use all, but Keywords Everywhere is free and is really good as Chrome Extension). And let’s say you’re writing Content for your company which happens to be ‘Wealth and Asset Management’

We can see (thanks to the data from Keywords Everywhere) that there’s approx 70 searches per month asking exactly this question — good for starters.

Now let’s have a look at the SERP’s:

Now I’m not suggesting that EVERYONE is going to select the Forbes article, but I am because I usually do so for references in this space as the text tends to be more personably written and it’s easier to digest (fully IMO here). So who wrote this Forbes article anyway?

Ahhh of course! It’s not a Reporter offering a helping hand in the murky space of Financial & Investment terms — it’s actually the President of a Wealth Management Company.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that — but if we think about the process this article now has excellent traction and both Russ Alan (the Author) and RA Prince (his Company) stand a far better chance of you trusting them with your potential Business and there’s every chance you’d refer this article to someone you knew asking the same question……which would yield the same affirmations, all from building Content based on solving a problem or answering a question, no matter how vague.

Not for me! For you, thanks for reading! And please do get in touch if you had and other questions about Building Content Strategy.

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