Category: content strategy

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Why you need to understand what your audience needs

Photo by Julie Grant Photography

Getting to know your audience is a fundamental part of marketing your business. When you understand what your audience needs, you can create marketing that speaks to them and lets them know you understand them.  The alternative is bland marketing that doesn’t connect with anyone.

Here’s why you need to know what your audience needs and how it’ll help your business.

Products and services

Sometimes, the services you offer depend on your qualifications and experience. For example, you won’t get far without professional credentials if you provide legal advice or treat someone’s bad back. In other industries, there might be more than one way for you to help your customers. Understanding what your audience needs allows you to tailor what you offer.

A range of products and services will also cater to customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

The buyers’ journey

Every potential customer who comes across your marketing will be at a different stage of the buying journey. They might need what you offer but want to know more about you before parting with any cash. Maybe they aren’t sure what they need, or they have an idea but want to try a low-cost product or a DIY version of your service to test it out. But, on the other hand, they could find you and sign up immediately because you’re exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Creating different types of content lets you meet people at whichever stage they’re at.

Who needs your business most?

When you’re planning your marketing, it helps to think about the kind of people who need what you offer. For example, you’ll only need me if you have a business or create content for other companies. You’ll mainly talk to parents and grandparents if you sell baby clothes. Will your service be a great fit for someone who’s cash-rich but time-poor, or is it the opposite way around?

Technically, you could sell to anyone, but when you work out who is most likely to need what you offer, it’s easier to create content that hits the spot.

Who do you want to work with?

If you run a service-based business and work one-to-one with your clients, your life will be a lot less stressful if you get on with your customers. Of course, you might already have worked out what type of person is most likely to need what you offer, but you can still tailor your marketing to attract people you’ll enjoy working with.

For example, I mainly work with small business owners, and there are a lot of those about. I use relaxed language in my marketing but also mention my kids and my former career as a solicitor. It combines to attract people with the same approach to life as me.

How will they engage with you?

Finally, ask yourself what your audience needs to do to get in touch with you. Can they quickly buy your products when they finally sit down at the end of a busy day? Do they need to send you a message, email you or click a link to book an appointment? Thinking about how your customers spend their daily lives can help make it easier for them to buy from you.

Do you want to create content that speaks your customers’ language? I can help with that. If you’d like a chat to find out how it works, you can book a call here.

You can also sign up to receive monthly emails packed with useful content writing and marketing tips using the form below.

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How your business life can give you content ideas

The image shows me at my desk, recommending that you use your business life to develop new content ideas.
Image by Julie Grant Photography

You know your business inside out and back to front. It’s all so familiar that it can make you blind to the possibilities that your everyday, day-to-day business life can offer when it comes to creating content ideas. If you’ve ever struggled to come up with new ideas for your marketing, you might be surprised at how many are hiding in plain sight. Here are just a few.

Answer your FAQs

What questions do your customers ask all the time? If you’ve never written any of them down, start now and answer one at a time in your content. They work well because some people won’t contact you to ask a question, but they will Google it. You can give a short answer in social media posts and a longer one on your blog. If you have an FAQ page, start there or build one as you create more content.

Listen while you network

If you go to networking events, listen to what the other attendees talk about. What are their challenges, and how could you help? I love doing this at face-to-face events, where you might overhear other people’s conversations. I know my granny would disapprove of me eavesdropping, but it works.

Tips

Sharing tips can work in two different ways. Pro tips let you share your expertise and help your customers when they need to DIY a task, so you build trust. You can also make your existing customers feel looked after and appreciated by sharing a tip that helps them get the most out of their purchase.

Share your favourite resources

Sharing some of the resources you use every day has different benefits depending on who your customers are and how much experience they have. For example, a crafting business can help new learners by giving them a beginner’s guide, but you can also show more experienced crafters that you know what you’re talking about. If you offer a service, sharing professional resources lets your audience know that you take your work seriously.

Case studies

Case studies are brilliant because they tell your future customers about people you’ve worked with before and the results you’ve achieved. You can lift stories from your day-to-day life and use them in your marketing. Ideally, get permission from the subject before you write about them, but you can also write anonymised versions if that isn’t possible.

What can new customers expect?

This might seem ridiculously obvious, but good content can sometimes be as simple as describing what happens when your customer first contacts you or walks through your door. If someone isn’t contacting you because they’re nervous and don’t know what to expect, this kind of content can help to give them peace of mind.

How to find the right person

If there are lots of different businesses that do what you do, the choice can be overwhelming for a new customer. You can help them by talking about things to look out for or questions to ask at the first meeting. Use your insider knowledge to help your audience avoid common pitfalls, or let them know what credentials to look for, and they’ll start to trust you.

Do you want to develop new content ideas and create engaging marketing content? I can help with that. I create content that speaks your customers’ language. Book a call to find out how it works.

You can also sign up to receive monthly emails packed with useful content writing and marketing tips using the form below.

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How to come up with new content ideas

Coming up with new content ideas
Image by Julie Grant Photography

There comes the point in every small business owner’s life when you think you must have talked about your business from every possible angle. How can you come up with new content ideas when your audience has heard it all before? But, of course, you might be at the other end of the scale, trying to get started but wondering what your audience wants to hear about.

The good news is that there are many ways to develop new content ideas, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. So please read on for my five favourite ways to come up with new topics.

Have a brainstorm

I know that brainstorming sounds like your worst corporate nightmare, but it doesn’t have to be. Just write down everything you can help your customers with, then break the significant subject areas into smaller topics. For me, writing about blogging can include topic ideas, structuring your content and writing tips. Each has its own more minor topic; the main thing to remember is that you don’t have to write War and Peace. Smaller nuggets of information are always more digestible.

Get new content ideas from social media

Spending time scrolling social media can be research if you do it right. If you’ve ever avoided posting something because you think it’s too obvious other people’s posts and the comments can help you to find the right level for your audience. Social media research lets you see what questions people are asking; you can comment with an answer and turn it into new content.

Ask the audience

Answering FAQs is a great way to create content, as you can share the answers on multiple platforms. If you’ve got an idea for a subject you’d like to cover but aren’t sure what your audience needs to know, ask them. Your questions can be new posts in themselves; they’ll also give you fresh content ideas to use later.

You can ask for help on your own channels and in groups to help you build your profile.

Update old posts

Updating old posts means you don’t have to develop a new idea from scratch. This is an excellent approach if the original topic is still relevant to your audience, but some of the advice has changed. You can create a new post to replace the old one or write a post supplementing the original content. This gives new followers information they won’t have seen before while also offering something fresh for people who’ve been with you for a while.

Think about what you’ve learned

Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before. All your content needs to be tailored to your future customer’s needs. This means that you only need to know more about your subject than they do. For example, you might already know you want to write a blog but not know how to get started, so that’s what I talk about. Think about what you’ve learned to get to this point and talk about that – it could be more than you think.

Do you want to develop new content ideas and create engaging marketing content? I can help with that. I create content that speaks your customers’ language. Book a call to find out how it works.

You can also sign up to receive monthly emails packed with useful content writing and marketing tips using the form below.

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How thinking about seasonal marketing can help you plan your content

Seasonal marketing leaves in a line.
Photo by Designecologist: https://www.pexels.com/photo/leaves-hang-on-rope-1389460/

If I told you to think about the seasons when you plan your marketing content, a whole host of obvious ideas might spring to mind. Or they might not. Maybe your business doesn’t have obvious seasons or perhaps you’ve done every topic you can think of to death. Seasonal marketing doesn’t have to be about Christmas or encouraging your customers to book their summer holiday. Here are some obvious seasonal marketing ideas along with a few that take a sideways view.

Special occasions

A special occasion like Christmas or Easter gives you a great focus for your marketing if you offer related products or gifts. In a broader sense, you could treat the whole wedding season as one big special occasion. It’s always worth thinking about how you can relate your product or service to a special occasion in a less obvious way. You could offer financial advice for the school holidays or promote noise-cancelling headphones before your relatives descend for Christmas (or is that too harsh?).

Spring

Seasonal marketing for spring might feel like an easy job if you’re a garden centre or if you can help people with their spring cleaning as you can share hints and tips that will help your audience even if they don’t buy from you. You can also find ways to talk about outdoor activities, particularly if your business is related to travel. Talk about what’s available in different areas, even if you don’t earn anything by promoting them. You can also share stories about environmental issues and how you’re doing your bit.

Summer

If I’m being optimistic, summer could equal sunshine but it’s also weddings and school holidays. You can talk about fun in the sun, wedding fashion and last-minute holiday deals but think about taking a different approach too. Lots of working parents struggle with school holiday juggling every year. You might be able to offer activities but what if you could support them with getting a better work-life balance?

Could your content include screen-free ways to entertain children or what to do if you hate hot weather?

Autumn

I love Autumn because it’s the start of the rugby season and it becomes socially acceptable to stay indoors.  It’s about finding the balance between being cosy inside and getting outdoors. Autumn also brings Hallowe’en and bonfire night, two of my favourite festivals. You can use scary stories in your marketing without talking about ghosts. Share the things that could go wrong if your customers don’t ask the right questions when they’re choosing a service provider. Fireworks are about light triumphing over darkness – how do you help people overcome adversity?

All this and I haven’t even mentioned how you could educate your audience to channel that back-to-school energy.

Winter

Have you ever read ‘The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe’ where the witch made sure that it was always winter but never Christmas? Christmas makes winter bearable because it’s all about fairy lights and family time. Then you’re into January and a diet of broccoli and water. The symbolism of a new year is great, but I reckon that good winter marketing needs to acknowledge the fact that people need cheering up. It’s freezing outside and dark by teatime. Offer your audience a new start if they want it but give them something to alleviate the gloom too.

Do you need some new ideas for your blog and seasonal marketing? I can help with that. Book a call here and let’s have a chat. You can also get 50 blog topic ideas you can use in your business today by snaffling a copy of my book here.

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Resources to help you come up with new blog topic ideas

Image shows a woman at her desk trying to think of new blog topic ideas

It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking about starting a blog or have been doing it for ages, we all dry up sometimes. You think you’ve said everything you could possibly say that would interest your audience or every topic that comes to mind seems too obvious. (The truth is, it’s only obvious to you because you work in your business all day, every day and you know it all.) How can you come up with new blog topic ideas? Even more importantly, how can you come up with them without spending hours doing it? Here are some great resources that will give you lots of new blog topic ideas fast.

Do the groundwork

Think about your business and the main topics you’re going to talk about. Mine are content marketing, blogging, content writing and copywriting. Yours might be different products or services. Start with the big topics then break them down. For me, that would look something like breaking blogging down into topic ideas, writing style and structure… you get the idea. Then think about what’s going to interest your customer. This is the longest part of the process, but it will help to tune your brain into the kind of topics your audience will enjoy so you’ll come up with ideas more easily in the future. If you want an easy way to come up with topics that will appeal to your audience, my book ’50 blog topic ideas for your business’ has fifty of them (in case that wasn’t obvious).

Use Google

There are technical ways that you can use Google to come up with ideas, particularly if you’re getting into finding keywords for ads. However, there is a quick and simple way to do it too. When you start typing a search into Google it gives you suggestions for ways to complete your search. I did a search for ‘blog writing for…’ and this is what it looked like:

You can do the same thing. Start your search with one of your key phrases and see what comes up. It’s a bit of a blunt instrument but it could give you some quick inspiration when you need it.

A useful website

Enter a keyword or phrase into Answer the Public and it will show you what searches people have made which include that word. It includes a whole host of things including questions and even an alphabetical list of terms. It doesn’t show you which ones are frequently asked questions and which ones have only been asked once, but you could find an interesting question that you can answer in a blog post.

Here’s what it gave me when I searched for blog writing:

Ubersuggest

Neil Patel is a content marketing god. Virtually any search you make about marketing will give you something from him on the first page of Google so it’s fair to say he knows his SEO. Ubersuggest is a free tool (there is also a paid version) that lets you see what people are searching for. It also gives you the numbers on search frequency and how easy it would be to rank for that phrase if you’re trying to improve your SEO. I searched for blog writing and here are the results:

Even if you aren’t getting deeply into SEO just now, it’s a good way of seeing what phrases your audience is searching for.

Do you need some new ideas for your blog and content marketing? I can help with that. Book a call here and let’s have a chat. You can also get 50 blog topic ideas you can use in your business today by snaffling a copy of my book here.

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Need some new ways to repurpose your blog?

Repurpose your blog for fresh new content
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

When you repurpose your blog, you take it from being a series of lovely informative posts on your website to a content generating machine. No, I’m not exaggerating. When you’ve gone to the effort of writing a blog post (or getting someone like me to write it for you – https://www.kirstyfrancewrites.co.uk/packages/) why not make it go as far as you can? I’ve written about this before but, as with all things in marketing land, there are other methods that you might not have considered yet. Here are my top 5 favourites.

Create Reels

You don’t have to dance or point to create a good Reel. They can just be good fun. Using your blog as a starting point makes it easier to come up with content ideas. I’ve done a few myself and follow Virginia Kerr for inspiration. You can do tips to camera but if you absolutely don’t want to show your face you can use images too. They’re being rolled out on Facebook as we speak so it could be a good time to give it a go.

Inspire your podcast

If you’re pushed for time the idea of starting a podcast can feel a bit overwhelming. On the other hand, if you’ve already started one you can repurpose your blog and use it for topic ideas. A lot of people who don’t have much time to sit and read will listen to podcasts or audiobooks while they’re out walking or folding laundry. (That’s me if you couldn’t tell.) Do a solo chat about your subject or invite a guest to offer their perspective.

Write a new blog

If your audience really loves reading blogs or you just need new ideas, look to your old blogs for inspiration. If you’ve written a post with 5 tips, choose one and go more in-depth. For example, if you’re a florist with a blog post about choosing flowers for your wedding, one of the tips might be about seasonality. That could be a whole post by itself. I’ve mentioned headline writing in loads of blogs but I’ve never written one that’s just about headlines. I’ll get round to it eventually…

Repurpose your blog into a presentation

A blog post is designed to educate and entertain your audience, as well as building your authority. If you wanted you could turn it into a training session. I’ve written a series of blog posts about how to start writing a blog and delivered training on it too. If you’d rather hide under a rock than deliver training, you can still repurpose your blog into a shareable presentation. I’ve just started investigating using SlideShare for LinkedIn – if you have any tips, please let me know!

Create an infographic

This is one of my favourites because it appeals to the visual learners. It means that you could attract a whole new audience who love graphics and won’t necessarily read a blog post. Take the main points from your blog post and use them as headings. You can add a bit of extra information too. The best part is that you can use it as an image within the blog post itself as well as sharing it on social media.

Would you love to use some of these tips to repurpose your blog but don’t have a blog to do it with? I can help with that. Take a look at my blog writing packages or book a call here and let’s have a chat about how I can help you.

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4 easy steps to help you plan your marketing for 2022

A planner that will help you plan your marketing for 2022.
Photo by Bich Tran from Pexels

When the Christmas scramble is over it’s time to turn your attention to a shiny new year. (If you’re really organised the best time to plan for the new year is before your Christmas marketing even starts.) If you plan your marketing on the hoof and never feel as if you’re quite on top of it, I’m here to help. Here are my 4 easy steps to help you plan your marketing for 2022.

Map your services to subject areas

This might sound like I’m stating the bleeding obvious, but your content needs to talk about stuff you want to sell. The key is to cover relevant topics in a way that shows your expertise but also lets your customers know that you understand them. You can keep things really broad at this stage and come up with general subject areas. For me, this part of the plan includes blogging, website copy and content marketing. Once you’ve come up with those, start to think about the challenges that your customers face that you can help with. Shifting your focus to the things that your audience care about will help you to come up with topics. Which brings me to…

Break the big ideas down into smaller topics

Within every big subject area there will be loads of smaller subjects. If you’re a beauty therapist one of your key areas might be skincare. Your audience will have different needs depending on their skin type, individual problems or even the time of year. Break them all down into the smallest topics you can think of. If you’re writing content for December your customers might be looking for Christmas gift ideas, ways to protect their skin in the colder weather or how to look after their skin during Christmas party season when they’re wearing make up more often. The narrower your topic, the more likely it is to be useful to your audience.

Choose a monthly focus

Marketing is pointless if it isn’t consistent. (You’ve probably heard me say that before.) We learn by repetition and studies suggest that someone needs to see your message at least 7 times before it sinks in. When you choose a monthly focus for your marketing it means that every piece of content sends the same core message. Even if your followers don’t see everything you share, the message sinks in and they understand what you offer. It also makes it easier for you to plan your marketing each month because everything comes back to the same central focus. It also means that you can use my next tip much more easily.

Repurpose your blog

A blog is a wonderful piece of content because it’s endlessly reusable. You can take each blog post and break it down into individual tips to share on social media. You can use each tip more than once, creating different types of content. That could include image posts, stories, Reels or other kinds of video just for starters. Look at your analytics to work out what your audience likes and try out new things to see what reaction you get. It saves you time because you don’t have to constantly plan new marketing content or write new words for each individual post. Don’t worry about repeating yourself because no-one sees everything you share.

Would you like to create a new marketing plan and brand-new content? I can help with that. Just click here to book your no obligation chat.

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How you can start creating evergreen content

Creating evergreen content means making something worth reading.
Image by Suzy Hazelwood via Pexels

It’s all very well knowing that you want to include evergreen content in your marketing. (If you don’t know what evergreen content is or why you’d need it, start here.) The real question is, how do you start creating it? Read on for five quick ways to help you get started.

Know your audience

When you start creating evergreen content, it’s important that you know who you’re writing for. The normal rules of getting to know your audience apply, but when you’re creating evergreen content, you need to go a bit further. Identify the beginners in your audience and what they need to know. Experts will look for the latest news and updates and that’s not what evergreen content is about. Write for the newbies and you’ll be heading in the right direction.

Keep sharing

Evergreen content is great for SEO because it’ll turn up in Google searches for ages after you wrote it. That doesn’t mean you can ignore it completely (sorry). Give it a little boost every so often by resharing it on your social media platforms. You could also include this kind of content in a welcome sequence for new email subscribers. It can work as an introduction to your area of expertise and will help new subscribers understand the work you do.

Creating evergreen content: format ideas

There are a few kinds of content that lend themselves really well to this. If there’s a topic that most of your audience want to know about or questions that you answer all the time, start there. Here are a few examples.

Frequently asked questions

If you already have a FAQ page on your website, you’re off to a flying start. If not, start thinking about the questions you get asked all the time when people first get in touch. These are the kinds of questions that they’ll be typing into Google as well. You can even improve your SEO by linking to these posts from your FAQ page so visitors can head there for a bit more detail.

How to guides

When it comes to creating evergreen content, these are a classic. They’re ideal if you do the kind of work that your audience might want to DIY to start with. My version of this is a series of blog posts that show you how to write your first blog post. (If you’d like the full series straight to your inbox you can sign up here.) Create a guide that walks your readers through a topic step by step and you’ll have created a resource that’s useful for both new and existing visitors.

What to expect

Most people don’t like trying new things. I know that sounds pessimistic, but it’s true. You might have loads of potential customers who aren’t booking because they’re scared what might happen if they do. The best thing that you can do is to talk about what they can expect when they contact you. What happens at the first consultation or after they fill in that contact form? This is different from an FAQ; people won’t ask because they’re worried about looking stupid. Put their fears to rest by telling them what to expect.

Are you ready to start creating evergreen content? I can help with that. Just click here to book your no obligation chat.

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Evergreen content: what is it (and why do you need it?)

Evergreen content blog header - with literal evergreens!
Photo by invisiblepower from Pexels

If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘evergreen content’ you might have written it off as a bit of a buzzword. You might have heard it described as ‘cornerstone’ content in those SEO guides too. The thing is, if you haven’t got to grips with evergreen content yet, you’re missing out. It’s incredibly useful and could save you a heap of time. So what is it and why should you care? Read on…

Evergreen content stays relevant for longer

Evergreen content got its name because of its resemblance to evergreen trees. It might not look at home covered in fairy lights at Christmas, but it does last for ages. This kind of content doesn’t talk about current news, trends or even a particular season. They’re the sort of posts that your audience could find any time, for years to come, and they’ll still be helpful and relevant. It’s the difference between talking about panic buying petrol and how to maintain your car between services.

It’s great for SEO

Evergreen content is great for SEO because it covers the kind of topics that people search for time after time. You could write a blog post about how to soothe a screaming baby now and new parents might still be finding it in 2031. Posts about current affairs or new trends will get you website traffic in the short term (which is still a great thing). Evergreen posts will keep going for longer. Your figures might drop a bit, but they’ll keep going, quietly working away in the background to bring you new visitors.

It has wide appeal

The key thing about evergreen content is that it generally isn’t for experts. Someone who’s experienced in your field already knows the basics so will only be looking for updates. Evergreen posts work better for people who need a beginner’s guide to a topic. This is great for you because if you’re an expert working with non-experts, it’s an opportunity for you to share your knowledge. Your visitors might learn from you and do a DIY version, but they’ll still remember you as the expert who helped them when they’re ready to pay someone else.

Some examples of evergreen content

If you like the sound of this evergreen lark and you’re starting to think about topics, here are some ideas. In every industry there will be perennial subjects that never go away. Your audience could be interested in time management, parenting skills, how to write their first blog post or questions to ask a new supplier. When you come up with an idea, ask yourself whether anyone will care about this in five years’ time. If the answer’s no, you might still have a great idea for a post, but it probably won’t be evergreen.

Keep it updated

It’s tempting to think that once you’ve created your evergreen content you can just ignore it until the end of time. Sorry, but that’s not how it works. While the posts will definitely stay relevant for longer, it’s still worth checking in on them from time to time. Attitudes change and while your advice might be spot on for a few years, it won’t necessarily stay that way forever. A quick read through every year or so will tell you if anything needs updating to extend the life of your content.

Are you ready to start creating evergreen content? I can help with that. Just click here to book your no obligation chat.

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What can creating a blog do for your business?

The benefits of writing a business blog

When it comes to business marketing there’s always a lot of chat about blogging. Some people will tell you that writing a blog is pointless because no-one reads them anymore and others will tell you it’s essential. It won’t surprise you to hear that I recommend blogging to most people. (There are a few exceptions.) Writing a blog is only pointless if the customers you’re trying to talk to won’t read one. I’d be hard pushed to find an audience that would never read a blog. But when you’re a busy business owner who’s short on time, there might be better methods depending on who you’re trying to reach. There are lots of reasons why blogging is an effective marketing tool. Here are just a few of them.

It can bring you more website traffic

You might do most of your marketing on social media, but ultimately you want to attract people to your website. A link to your blog post is a great way to do that, mostly because it’s offering useful information and not just trying to sell something. When visitors arrive on your website you can engage their attention with more information about the ways you can help them. Social media is full of posts from their friends and other businesses which will all make them wander off and get distracted. That won’t happen on your website.

It helps you turn traffic into leads

Building a following can be incredibly difficult. Social media algorithms make it easy for your posts to disappear from followers’ newsfeeds if they don’t engage frequently. When you write a blog you can use it to encourage readers to stay in touch with you. That could be by including something as simple as a sign up form for your mailing list so you can email them. I know you still run the risk of vanishing into an overstuffed inbox but it’s still an improvement. If you talk about specific products or services you can also direct visitors to your shop or a contact form if they’re ready to talk.

Your blog can be evergreen

Unless you have followers who are in the habit of scrolling through all of your page content, social media posts have a fairly short shelf life. Of course, the advantage of this is that you can reuse old posts as long as they’re still relevant. The downside is that those posts aren’t going to show up when someone asks Google a question. With good SEO a blog on a topic that’s relevant to your audience could still be found in a search years from now. If there are key questions that your audience always ask, write a blog and it could keep bringing you a new audience in the future.

You can recycle your blog

I’ve talked about reusing your blog before but you can go beyond recycling it for social media. You can use it as a lead magnet (also known as a freebie) to encourage people to sign up for your mailing list. That could be a tips post that helps them achieve something, or even a list of your favourite resources. If you’ve got a series of posts that you can put together to make something more substantial, you could even turn it into a paid product. When you’ve put time and effort into creating a blog it’s worth considering what else you could use it for.

If you’re ready to start a business blog but would rather hand it over, I’m here to help. Click here to find out more about my blogging packages. If you’d rather just have a chat, you can book your no obligation discovery call here. Or, you could just sign up for writing and marketing tips straight to your inbox every month, using the form below.