Why (and How) to Create Content with User Intent

SEO has been the pillar of online marketing since long. But ask the founders of Buffer, Moz, Hubspot, etc. and they will contradict with this statement. Yes, it was once a big plus to promote with the best researched keywords, but not today.

Today, Google and other search engines do more than 10,000 trials on modifying and developing new algorithms that help provide the most direct and easiest solutions available to user queries. Which means, search engines are more than likely to take away a chunk of your traffic in the coming months.

SEO is Good, Content is Better

Agreed, SEO helps, with targeted keywords, meta data, well-built landing page and perfect call-to-action. But Content helps even more, because it exposes the human side of the brand, encouraging visitors to engage, subscribe and eventually, turn to customers.

Even better, consistently good content promotes brand mention, creates loyal followers and brand evangelists. And, with the evolution of semantic search and knowledge graph and what not the lean answering machines are going to come up with, good Content is and will be the King for a long time.

What is User Intent? How to find it?

User Intent, put simply, means what the audience seeks. Its broadly divided into three categories, User Navigation, User Search, and User Transaction. You can discover your audience’s intent by helping them learn, laugh, be amazed. You’ll find out their interests, their connections and their online buying behaviour.

Research your audience.
What does your audience talk about in their day-to-day life? What search terms they use? What do they buy online? Look at their posts, tweets, comments, shares, check-ins, and photos. With the right tools, you can get a goldmine of data for a single user.

Get the search terms.
Use Google Webmaster or weblogs and analytics to see what terms people use in getting to you. Don’t limit your find to “search volume” count. Find the long-tail keywords your audience is using. Also, find if your user is tagged on to a specific area. Spy on your competitors with tools like SEM Rush to find out what they’re bidding on.

Optimizing web pages.
If you understand what the user seeks, you can easily modify the landing page or other pages to meet their needs. Your landing page content should be engaging, drawing the audience and converting them.

Power Users

Who is a power user? One who has lots of fans, is very much active on social mediums and people follow what they say. These are power users. You start writing for your audience, but eventually you’ve to write for your power users. Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin advocates to write for your Influencers, who are already reaching out to your broad base of fans.

Better Content Strategy

So, it all circles back to stage one. You have to create better content that meets audience needs, answers their queries and makes their lives easier by some extent. With user intent at your fingertips now, you can craft better content plans that’re suited for your audience.

Let me give you some cues.

If your brand is about self-expression and advocating then you should try to market with pictures, vlogs or a YouTube channel.

If your brand’s about community, welfare or culture, then it should build a blog with awesome articles.

If you’re an association, institute or firm that’s into research, then build great slideshows, reports and guides.

Once you've found out about the user intent and shareable content apt for your brand, then here are a few ways you can find them.

Content Sources

Google Alerts. Nothing is as simple and rewarding as the good old Alerts. Just set your keywords and get daily/weekly suggestions to your mailbox.

Twitter Lists. You can create lists — of loyal fans, of industry influencers and as many you can like. Share good content if its relevant to your audience. Show them love and they’ll keep retweeting your tweets regularly.

Swayy. This is one magic tool that understands what works for you, what has the potential of being shared more, and then readies it for you. Rarely have I found out a post that doesn’t fir to my preferences.

Klout. This is another simplistic tool to share content you like. Just set your preferences and you’ll get mostly good suggestions. Klout also has this magical algorithm that determines your social influence score. So the more you’re active, the more your score is!

Feedly. One of the best content sources around, this lets you search with keywords and provides good results. Why graze through a list of RSS feeds? Just put your keyword, hit the search button and there you’re!

Researching user intent also gives a benefit of finding out exactly where most of your target audience is. It’s futile to put your efforts on every social network, email marketing and a business blog as well. For example, everybody of us likes Facebook but if your major audience (not the number of fans, but the audience which engages with you) is not on Facebook then its no use spending time and resources on it.

Now you’d be wondering how you can consistently create compelling content that fulfills the needs of your audience. It’ll get monotonous after some time, right? No! There are different types of content you can create and share.

Types of Content

Visuals.
Pictures and Videos are, no doubt, the most shared content on the internet. Don’t believe? Look at how BuzzFeed videos fare on Facebook, or how Kim Kardashian breaks the internet, or how cat photos get so much love on Instagram.

Infographics.
They might not like to read a 1000 word-long article on the history of beer. But a beautifully designed infographic will definitely attract a lot of eyeballs. Its also proven — a picture with the right colours and content will appeal more than a long text post.

Humour.
There is so much tension flowing around these days. People would definitely like to have a giggle or laugh while looking at a post. A deftly crafted post with some good humour, tailored for your fans, works most of the times.

Behind-the-scene.
Users will love your brand more if you show them your human side. And showing them your workplace, team’s photos will make them believe you.

Quotes.
Everybody likes some inspiration on a Monday morning. If there is some relevance, you can share nice quotes now and then.

How-To Tips.
Nowadays no one like a sales pitch. What they like, is a post or video that guides them to perform a task.

Events.
People will love you even more if you participate or stage an event and share posts about it. A live contest or Tweet chat corresponding with the event often does wonders for your brand.

Reports.
If you are a research-based firm, a nicely made report is apt to be shared. Better, make an infographic or a video for it. An article showing numbers and tables doesn’t always interest the fans.

Contests.
The young audience loves them. Stage a good contest with some attractive rewards and you’ll see your brand mention rocket upwards on that social network.

Third-party Shares.
Every other day, you can share one piece of content from a fan or influencer that’s relevant to your audience.

I have given you 10 content ideas and there are only 7 days in a week! Choose what types of content are relevant for your brand, make a content calendar, and start creating some love! Just remember, positivity breeds positivity. Hope outweighs Fear by leaps and bounds on the internet. Make sure your posts are positive and encouraging.

So figure out what your target market is looking for, leverage the information, and craft a better content strategy. Gone is the era when you created content for the search engines, now you create content for the people.

Are you considering user intent while creating content marketing strategies?