It's the never ending issue when you're blogging and posting on social media isn't it? Creating new content, and trying to figure out what fabulous information is lurking in your brain that you can pull out and share with your followers. Something that's going to be of value to them, hopefully inspirational, help them learn about your products and maybe become a customer one day.
Creating a editorial calendar is all well and good, but if you're not sure what your readers are interested in, then you're spending more time sharing ideas you're guessing they're interested in, rather than creating content you know they want to read. The result is lower engagement on your social media and you're left wondering if anyone really cares about what you have to say.
How do you create content that your readers are interested in? And ore importantly, content that is shareable and won't get stale quick?
Here are three tips on creating a never ending flow of content
- Ask your tribe! Sounds basic but this is so powerful. In my previous business, my most popular blog post by miles was based around a question a customer asked after I posed the question on my newsletter: “what would you like to ask me?”. Almost right away my inbox was filled with some great questions. I took the first question and created an epic blog post with lists, photos, suggestions and practical ideas. That blog post ended up being my most visited page on my website for years, and was pinned a ridiculous amount of times on Pinterest. Never underestimate the power of just asking.
- Keep a list your commonly asked questions. Different to the first point where you do the asking, these are questions that come up naturally on your Facebook posts, customer phone calls/meetings, emails and so on, which you would usually answer and then move on from. Then the question will get asked again, you answer it and move on yet again. If I asked you now what your most commonly asked question from your customers and prospects is, you might be able to come up with one or two questions or just as likely not to be too sure. If you did think of a commonly asked question, have you already created a blog post or a video on this? An easy way to keep track of these questions is to keep notes in a notebook or on Evernote. Make sure you enter these questions in every time someone asks you for help. Again, these questions are invaluable for you to be able to created awesome content for your blog or social media posts. You can start now by digging through your last ten emails from customers and prospects to find questions they've asked you which could be helpful for others to also know the answer to. You could of course create an FAQ on your website, but think about expanding on some of these questions into a blog post with images, infographics for Pinterest, or a video if it's something best explained visually. These are also great topics to do a Periscope on where you can get deeper into the discussion. Speaking of Periscope! Go back through your Scopes if you've downloaded them and take a look at the questions that you were asked by your viewers, you'll find a minefield of great ideas right there which you can use to create some valuable content with.
- Ask yourself some questions about your customers. What do they need to know in order to be able to use your product better? What do they need to know in order to feel comfortable in buying your product? What do they need to know to do their job better? What are some common misconceptions they have and what rookie mistakes do they make? These are all questions that will give you useful topics to write about. See what I did there? I know that my readers struggle with what to blog about and what to post on social media, so I created this blog post with some ideas to help with the process.
Now what? Now you have a jumble of questions what do you do with them? Sort out your questions into themes. You'll find by going through your asked questions that they will naturally fall into different areas of your business. These themes will be different depending on what you're selling, whether it's a product or a service and your particular business. Once you've collated and sorted your questions into topics and themes, you will find that some naturally go together. Depending on how in-depth the questions are, you may be able to answer a few questions in one blog post or one video. Some questions will be more complex, think about creating a series of blog posts or videos to answer those more complex questions.
So now you should have a bucket load of ideas to share on your blog or social media! Time to get all that fabulous content onto your editorial calendar and get posting.
Let me know if you found this helpful. I'd love to hear from you :*