4 Steps to Creating Great Content Marketing that Resonates with People

Content Marketing: you’ve heard about it. We do it. But how does it work? There’s a lot that goes on behind closed doors to create original content for your company to help make a connection with someone. Believe it or not, no words ever get written without learning about your customer’s needs.

I won’t go so far as to say you can’t begin content creation without knowing your target audience because technically, you can do whatever you want. But I will say it’s not the recommended path to high-quality content creation that drives results. For a more in-depth understanding of how to create great content that resonates with customers, here are five steps.

Research

How do you know the types of people you need to reach or what it is they actually need from you without doing research?

In order to paint a picture of your ideal customer to develop original content around, do research and collect as much qualitative and quantitative data as possible. The information you find should give you a pretty solid idea of what your customer base or target audience looks like and what they need or want.

Segment

Based on the information discovered, now is the time to separate your data into different categories. This will help narrow down the different types of information and the people receiving it. In doing so, you’ll better be able to identify the types of people you may want to connect with over others. This goes a long way into helping narrow down the focus of your content.

Identify

Now that you’ve filtered and sorted all of your information, you’re now ready to identify some very specific interests, career and home status, and other identifying information that will tell you exactly who these people are and what they have an interest in. The more detailed you are with identifying specific things about someone, the easier it becomes to create custom content they can connect with. Just keep in mind, not all information is going to be useful to you. Perhaps Tommy’s big hobby is collecting snow globes, which does nothing to help the direction of your content (unless you sell snow globes.) Finding out that Jenny, and other small business owners like her, routinely search for ways to save time and money through technology – well, that could be important.

Create

Finally, you have all the information you need to create great, original content that will help draw people in. However, you’re not done quite yet. The final thing you want to make sure you do is stop to think what you would want to know if you were the customer. This allows you to step into their shoes and avoid creating content that isn’t suited for them or comes across as unauthentic or uninspiring.

Not every piece of content has to evoke a physical or emotional reaction in the sense that people everywhere now know your name – this isn’t ‘Cheers’. What every piece of original content created should do, at the very least, is hold the attention of the reader and get them to at least think about the information you’ve provided.