I hear this question constantly. From current and potential clients, from peers, from other bloggers during #Blogchat. It seems we are all chasing the same unicorn: How do we get more people to read our content?
The short answer is, you write about your audience. You help your audience make the connection between your products and services, and their lives. How is your service going to help their business be more successful in 2017? How is your product going to help the average customer live a happier life?
Unfortunately, many bloggers feel the need to sell themselves, especially business bloggers. They feel the need to sell their products and services, because how else would you know to buy their products and services if you don’t know about them?
While this can make sense to the business, the reality is that it is a complete disconnect to your desired audience. You have to make the case for why your business creates a product or service that’s worthy of their attention. And you do that by creating content that’s focused on the customer. You do that by creating content that focuses on the connections between your products and services, and the lives of your customers. You help them understand how your products and services fit into their lives, and make their lives better.
Watch this video from Steve Jobs. This is a very short talk that Steve gave his employees when he first returned to Apple in the late 1990s as CEO. He talks about how Apple’s marketing and messaging had gotten off course, and the talks about how Apple could correct that problem so that it created marketing messages that made an impact with its customers. At the end he plays the first commercial that is relaunching Apple’s brand effort, and notice that the entire point of the commercial isn’t to talk about Apple and Apple products. The commercial talks about Apple’s customers. It talks about the type of person that would buy an Apple product. The underlying message is obvious “If you’re this type of person, then maybe Apple is the company for you.”
How will your customers know if you are the right company for them? Your content should speak to them and make the case for why and how your company’s products and services fit into their lives.
The best advice is to find your audience and to write for them, which means to write what you are passionate about. But in reality this is very hard to do, if we all follow that, there will be 100 authors in the world 🙂
Hello, Mack. Thanks for a great post. I think that the best way to make people read your content is to write about the things they are interested in, Good content should solve people’s problems. And of course, as Gary said, it is crucial to writing about your passion. If you don’t do it, you won’t last long in the blogging industry!
Thank you a lot!