MackCollier.com

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Toolbox Saturday: Writing Better Headlines

One of the best skills you can learn as a content creator is how to write better headlines for your content.  It can be a blog post title, a YouTube video title, a title for your Twitch stream. The headline you give content is vital to grabbing attention and then letting people quickly know what your content is about, and why it is interesting.

When I first started blogging, I wrote horrible headlines.  I’m fair to middlin’ now, as we say in the South. At first, I would write my post, then when the post was done, whip up a short headline that basically summarized what the post was about. The problem with this approach is that the headline is often the only thing someone sees about a post when it is shared on other social media sites. So as sharing on social sites became a more important way to boost awareness for your content, I began to get more serious about crafting better headlines.

What you want to do with your headline is give readers the most interesting parts of the post so they are compelled to click that link and read your post. If you write a boring headline or one that simply summarizes the post, your content can quickly get lost in a sea of links on social media homefeeds.

Let’s look at a few post examples and then talk about bad and good headlines you can write for that post.

1 – You are writing a post on the last decade in college football.

Boring headline – A Brief History of Modern College Football

Great headline – Rising Tide: How Alabama and the SEC Have Dominated College Football For Over a Decade

 

See how specific the second headline is? The first headline is pretty bland, it gives you a general sense of what the post is about, but by adding specifics, you can spark greater interest. Also note that with the second headline, we are honing in on a story within a story; we’ll look at recent college football history, but more specifically how Alabama and the SEC have dominated. This will interest fans of Alabama and the SEC, but it can also interest fans of programs like Clemson, who may think their program should be talked about more.

 

2 – You are writing a post financial planning.

Boring headline – Creating a Retirement Plan From Scratch

Great Headline – The Four Things Financial Experts Say You Can Do Today to Increase Your Retirement Nestegg By Up to 500%!

 

Again, the second headline is much more specific and gives the reader a better idea of what content they will be reading if they click the link and go to your blog. With the first post, you really have no idea how in-depth the post will be or how helpful.  The second post tells you there’s four things you can do, and doing those four things can increase the amount you have for retirement by up to 500%.  A slightly less effective version of this headline could be “Financial Experts Say Doing These Things Could Greatly Increase Your Retirement Nestegg!” That’s better than the boring headline because it’s slightly more specific, but the ‘great’ headline is even more specific, so it works better.

 

Now, the one thing you don’t want to do is go overboard with your headline and make it too ‘interesting’. You never want to make a promise with your headline that your post can’t back up. There’s nothing worst than clicking on an amazing headline, then finding out that the post itself is an ad for a product or a post that’s completely different from what the headline promised. That’s the quickest way to ensure that I never click on your links again.

So when you’re writing headlines, look and post and ask yourself ‘why is this post interesting?  What’s the HOOK that will grab readers attention and make them want to click the link and read the post?’  Again, make the headline as specific and interesting as possible, but make sure your post delivers on the big promises that the headline makes. Do both those things, and you’ll see your content getting more views and more exposure!

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The Secret to Getting People to Listen to Your Idea

We are neck-deep in political season here in the US, and that means there are a LOT of political arguments happening on social media right now. I honestly haven’t checked Facebook in over a week and have no desire to do so. These arguments often follow a pattern, they focus almost exclusively on both sides talking about what they dislike about the other party or candidate. When an exchange centers on areas of disagreement, it should be no surprise that…a disagreement breaks out.

If you want someone to listen to and consider your idea, then you focus on what that person is passionate about, and then explain how your idea relates to their passions. Notice whenever I talk about the Buyer’s Journey, it always starts at the initial stage where the buyer is Unaware and I Don’t Care when it comes to your company. This is the stage at which you are building awareness.

As I always say, the key to building awareness with an audience that has no idea who you are, is to focus exclusively on that audience. If you are wanting to sell to customers, then you talk about the customers.  You talk about what’s important to the customers, what their passions are. That gets their attention, when they start to listen to what you have to say, then you talk to them about how your idea links to their passions. If someone can see how their passions are rooted in your idea, then transference happens. They will then become passionate about YOUR IDEA.

Let’s go back to political debates for a second. Most exchanges on social media don’t focus on finding a common passion, they focus on hate.  Here’s what I hate about your guy, here’s what you hate about my guy. If the exchange is focused on what both parties dislike about the other candidate, then that dislike will also transfer to the person they are talking to. I don’t like what you are talking about so as a result I don’t like you.

So in simple terms; If you focus on the things I like and am passionate about, I will like talking to you.  If instead you focus on the things I dislike, then in turn I will dislike talking to you.

If you want someone to listen to you, first listen to that person and learn what’s important to them, what their passions are, then tie your idea to those passions.

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Who is More Important; Your Employees or Your Customers?

I saw an interesting question on Twitter recently; Which comes first, you employees or your customers? I think this is an important point because so many companies are focused on better connecting with its customers, but your company also has to engage its employees in this effort. Your employees need to be involved and understand why and how you are engaging your customers. You need to give your employees ownership of the process so that they can be invested in the outcome.

A few years ago I was doing on-site training with a company’s content marketing team. We were discussing their daily workflows and as I talked to the team, it became obvious that they were getting very little feedback from management on their performance. Finally, one content manager lamented “I have no idea if what I am doing is making a difference”.

When helping companies build out brand ambassador programs, I always stress to the company that it should transfer ownership of the program to its ambassadors as much as possible. When the ambassadors have ownership, they have a vested interest in working harder to see the program be a success.

The same logic applies to your employees. They need to be given as much feedback as possible on their efforts so that they can accurately see and understand the impact that their efforts are making toward the larger goals for the program they are working on. A great example of this is how GE utilized its employees to help attract better candidates for open positions. GE’s employees were empowered to play an active role in the process and they understood the value of their contributions. Additionally, they knew that there was a clear benefit for them if they performed well, ie they would have better and more qualified employees to work alongside.

Additionally, the most employees who are invested in a program and who understand the value of that program, the more likely it is to enjoy success. Here’s another example; A few years ago I worked with a senior marketing manager and her team to put together a robust brand ambassador program for her software company. This was something that the product’s users had communicated an interest in having. The manager and team were fully engaged and saw the value in the effort.  Unfortunately, the CEO wasn’t completely sold on the effort. I worked with the team to create the framework for the program, and we presented it t the CEO. The CEO, however, only wanted to use the parts of the program that he saw as immediately and directly impacting sales. This, of course, completely diluted the value of the program, as all the components needed to be in place and working together to realize maximum value. Obviously, this was very deflating to me, as well as the manager and team, who saw this as a sign that the CEO really didn’t understand or appreciate the value that the team could bring to this effort. Needless to say, the CEO’s plan to move forward with a piecemeal approach didn’t work.

When you are designing your customer engagement programs, remember to engage your employees as well. Keeping your employees engaged and aware of what’s expected of them and how their contributions are making a difference, is vital to the program’s success. Your company should do everything it can to equip your employees with all the information and feedback they need to evaluate and improve their efforts. And perhaps most important, your employees need to be able to clearly understand how their efforts are making a difference and impact in the execution of the program. We all want to know that our work is valued and appreciated. By communicating to your employees and recognizing the value they create, you are giving them the incentive to become more invested in the success of your programs. And the more invested your employees are, the more likely that they will work harder and smarter to see your programs be successful.

So engage your employees first so that you can better engage your customers.

 

PS: Apologies for not having a post up yesterday. I have been dealing with a cold the last few days and decided to take yesterday off and rest. I’m feeling much better today! See you tomorrow!

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Marketers Now Prioritizing Customer Retention over Customer Acquisition

I started to include this story in yesterday’s Marketing Minute post, but it’s so important that I wanted to expand on it a bit. Research is showing that marketers are shifting from focusing on customer acquisition to focusing on customer retention. Some of this is attributed as a reaction to the pandemic, as marketers believe customer acquisition will be easier as buyers are seeking out sellers, especially online. But also, most of us are wanting a return to normalcy and are more likely to stick with brands we know and trust. This just stands to reason.

But the debate over customer acquisition vs customer retention is one of my favorite topics, because so many companies completely mismanage the acquisition of new customers. One of the key teachings in my book Think Like a Rock Star was the difference between how rock stars acquire new customers, and how most companies do.

In short, most companies attempt to acquire new customers via advertising, while most rock stars acquire new customers via their current customers.

Now would be a good time to review The Loyalty Graph:

For The Loyalty Graph, the x-axis is Brand Loyalty. At the left there is 0 Brand Loyalty, as you move all the way to the right, Brand Loyalty is at its highest levels. These would be your ‘Fans’.  The y-axis is Size of Market. At the bottom there is no market, at the top there is a massive market. Let’s look at each customer segment:

New Customers – These are customers that have bought from your company for the first time, or potential customers.  Their Size of Market is massive, but they also have little or no Loyalty toward your brand.

Existing Customers – These are customers that are currently buying from your company. Note that the size of this group is much smaller, but levels of Brand Loyalty have gone up slightly.

Some Brand Affinity – These are regular customers, who have some affinity for your brand. They buy regularly, they probably like your products enough to endorse them to other customers, even if infrequently. The size of this market again shrinks dramatically, but loyalty levels also rise.

Brand Advocates – These are your ‘fans’. The customers that love your brand, that buy your products constantly, that promote those products endlessly to other customers. The size of this market is very tiny, but their loyalty levels are at maximum.

 

What’s fascinating about this graph is to note that companies and rock stars focus on opposite ends of the Brand Loyalty axis.  Companies focus almost all their attention on marketing to New Customers, while rock stars focus almost all of their attention on Brand Advocates.

Why is this important? When you see that New Customers are by far the largest market, it’s easy to see why most companies focus on this group. But while the size of this group is massive, notice that New Customers have almost no loyalty toward your company. So most companies are literally marketing to a group that has no interest in hearing their message. This is why advertising is so expensive, because you are paying for the fact that your message is interrupting people that don’t want to hear that message. Also note that most companies spend little or no attention to their current customers and fans, who actually have an interest in hearing their marketing messages.

Now notice that rock stars focus almost exclusively on their Brand Advocates. Brand Advocates are by far the smallest market, but notice they have the highest levels of loyalty toward the brands they buy from. Also, think about what brand advocates do: They advocate for your brand. Brand Advocates acquire other customers for you! They promote your brand to other customers and encourage them to buy from your brand. And unlike New Customers, Brand Advocates WANT you to market to them! They are desperate to hear from your brand and have more contact with that brand.

So think of the contrast: Companies spend billions to market to a group (New Customers) who does not want to be marketed to. On the other hand, rock stars only attempt to connect with the group (Brand Advocates) that wants to hear from them!

Companies spend billions on advertising to acquire New Customers, rock stars market to their fans and let their fans acquire customers for them.

Which method is less expensive?  Which method is more effective?  Obviously, letting your current customers acquire new customers for you the better and smarter play.

So why don’t more companies do this? Because by acquiring new customers via advertising, companies have far more control over its marketing messages. This need for control over marketing messages shows that most companies don’t trust their customers to market to other customers. Rock stars completely trust their fans, and empower them to market for their favorite rock stars.

Interaction leads to understand, leads to trust, which leads to advocacy. Rock stars constantly interact with their fans, so they understand them, and trust them. Most companies have little to no interaction with their customers, so they don’t understand them, and don’t trust them.

Your current customers are your best available tool to acquire new customers.

 

PS: I want to thank everyone who is reading and subscribing and I appreciate all the kind emails as well! Yesterday’s traffic was up 32% versus last Monday, so thank you for your support!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Driving Customer Loyalty, Consumers Trust Ads Alongside Content

Happy Monday, y’all! Ready for another great week, if you missed it check out my blogging recap for September, traffic up 21%!

 

Interesting data from XM Institute on how customer loyalty is impacted by CX. In short, they found that a very good customer experience greatly impacts how likely that customer is to purchase from and recommend a company. “The vast majority of consumers surveyed who rated their experiences with 319 companies tracked as very good indicated that they would purchase more from the company (94%) or would recommend the company (94%). Some 9 in 10 (89%) would trust the company after very good CX performance, while more than three-quarters (77%) would forgive a bad experience after such an experience. On the other hand, just 13% of those studied who reported a very bad experience with a company would recommend it.”

 

 

More than a third of consumers say their trust in brands grows after seeing its content alongside news. Additionally, the study from IAB found that 84% of consumer said their trust in brands grew or was unaffected when viewing this content. The larger question I would have is how is trust in the regular news content affected by seeing ads inserted alongside the news content? Personally, I tend to view sites as less credible if they are constantly mixing in ads alongside news.

 

Great recap of shopping trends for the Holiday season from Adobe and Avantis. I agree that shoppers are desperate for a return to normalcy, but also will be looking for deals and want an order online/pickup in stores option. Covid is absolutely changing shopper and consumer behavior, and smart companies are tracking these changes and adapting their service, support and offerings.

There’s your Monday Marketing Minute, hope your week is off to a fantabulous start, see you tomorrow!

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Toolbox Saturday: Using Topic Buckets to Create Better Content

You’re at a conference (pretend it’s 2019 back when we went to conferences), and you’re leaving the breakfast area to go up to the 3rd floor where the session you want to attend is about to start. A guy runs on the elevator with you and you both are on your way.  He asks what your company does. Now what do you say?  What are the 3 or so things that your company does that you would mention to this stranger? What do you want your company to be known for?

Those are your topic buckets.  Those are the areas you should focus on when you create content. Typically it’s best to pick around 3 areas that relate to your company, that you want to be associated with your company.

For instance, I have three main topic buckets for my content here; Customer experience, customer service/support, and customer loyalty. I want every piece of content I create to touch on at least one of those areas or buckets.

By using this system it makes it much easier to not only create a content calendar for your blog, it also makes it much easier for you to focus your content. The more defined your content is, the easier it will be for your readers to understand what you are writing about AND it will be much easier for search engines to understand what content identifies with your site.

For instance, when someone asks you “Hey what’s a good site to learn about Chinese cooking?”, then you will point them toward sites or blogs that you know cover Chinese cooking.  When someone goes to a search engine and asks “How do I get started with Chinese cooking?”, the search engine will point that person toward the website that it thinks best answers that question. In other words, it will be a site devoted to Chinese cooking.

Topic buckets can also help you fill and set your content calendar.  Let’s say you have committed to writing three new posts a week on your blog. If you have three Topic Buckets you want to focus on, then simply write a post for each Topic Bucket, once a week! Bam, three posts a week!  You can follow this schedule and over time you can track the performance of the posts in each Topic Bucket.  You may find that the posts in one of your Topic Buckets usually perform much better than the other two. This is likely a sign that your readers want to see more from you on that topic.  So you can adjust your content schedule, maybe write two posts a week from that Topic Bucket, then rotate your third post between the two remaining Topic Buckets.

 

I love using Topic Buckets because I am all about anything that simplifies the content creation process. Anything that we, as content creators, can do to create good content, faster, I’m all for it! Hope using Topic Buckets helps you with your content creation efforts! Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!

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Why We Worry and How to Stop It

I think most of us can agree that one of the biggest sources of stress in our lives is worrying. For the most part, we worry about the future.  We worry about tomorrow. We worry about how we will deal with something that is either coming in the future, or that we suspect will happen in the future.

And that’s important to note, because often, we find out that what we were worried about happening, never did.

I recently linked to an interview that Kobe Bryant did shortly before he passed away. It’s a great interview on many topics, one of which was playing for legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson. Phil is known to be pretty quirky, and Kobe was discussing some of the ‘odd’ things that Phil would do during practices, teaching breathing exercises, having meditation sessions, holding certain poses to release stress, etc. Kobe said that at first he thought all this was crazy, but then he noticed that Phil had completely bought into these teachings, so he decided to give it a try. Kobe said that he eventually realized that what Phil was teaching the team was how to live and play in the moment. Don’t worry about what will happen in 5 minutes, focus on running and executing the current play to the best of your ability. Kobe added that if you watch Phil’s Lakers teams or his Bulls teams with Jordan, that they never get rattled at the end of the game. They are always focused on the moment and they don’t let what could come next overwhelm them.

These comments reminded me of what Alabama football coach Nick Saban says he always stresses to his players. He says that he tells his players that “every play has a life of its own” and to never look at the scoreboard. He teaches his players to execute each play to the best of your ability, then immediately drop it and go to the next play. By doing this, he’s teaching his players not to focus on the last play or what they need to do on the next play. Focus on THIS play.  Focus on the moment.

My uncle has a condominium near the beach, and every time I visit, I always look forward to walking on a nearby beach. It’s incredibly relaxing for me. In thinking about what Kobe and Saban said about ‘playing in the moment’, I realized that when I walk on the beach, I completely focus on the water.  Watching it come in, watching it go out. In other words, completely living in the moment. So I’ve been trying to do more of that in my day to day life, focusing more on what I can do today, versus worrying about what will happen tomorrow if I don’t do what I need to do today.

So that’s what I plan on doing from now on, focusing more on the walk on the beach, and worrying less about how I will get home.

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September’s Blogging Recap: The Relaunch

So let’s talk about what happened here in September. I committed to relaunching this blog and boosting my writing schedule for two main reasons:

1 – More of us are going to be spending more time at home, and more time with our desktops and laptops. Covid is changing work schedules, leading to many of working remotely, and for some workers, those changes will be permanent. More time spent with laptops and desktops means, in theory, that we will be reading blogs more.

2 – Distrust in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continues to grow. I honestly think that both sites will reach a point over the next few years where users will leave in droves. Additionally, both sites could be facing government regulation in the near future as they seem to be shifting from platforms to publishers. I think the migration from these sites will lead to an increase in blog readership.

So around August or so I decided to double-down on blogging. Looking back, I honestly should have made this move in May or so, but live and learn. I discussed this on August 31st when the blog relaunched, but I came back with a commitment to have 6 new posts a week. My only goal for September was to get 6 new posts a week up. A pretty ambitious goal when you consider that I had only published 12 new posts in the first 8 months of the year.

I met that goal, so for October the goal is to keep writing at the same pace, but also focus more on adding visual elements to the posts and work on implementing good SEO practices. Really for September I just wanted to prove to myself that I could meet the new posting schedule. I did, so let’s improve more for October.

Here’s what happened in September:

Traffic up 21.49% from August! I’m very happy with those results. As I continue to post more, search traffic in particular will grow very quickly and continue to push overall traffic levels up.

I started this blog in June of 2009. The traffic for the blog grew consistently every year. So much so that by early 2015, I was getting almost 1,700 visitors a day. The blog was starting to really take off. I decided in February of 2015 that I needed to get serious about the blog and take it to the next level. I made two changes; The first is I switched from ‘shared’ hosting to a dedicated WordPress host. This was a great move as it immediately cut the loading time for the site in half.

But the second change I made ended up having disastrous affects. Around this time, I read an article on an SEO site that said if you wanted to increase search rankings for your site, you should drop the www from your blog. For instance, instead of wwwDOTmackcollierDOTcom, have the site’s URL be mackcollierDOTcom. So I made this change, I switched it to mackcollierDOTcom. But what this article failed to mention was that this change should only be made if your site is NEW. Because making the switch screws with the SEO rankings you have already established otherwise.

Which, unfortunately, is what happened with this blog. My traffic for January of 2015 was 48,385. I made the changes in the middle of February of 2015, and my traffic started dropping immediately. Almost all of the drop was attributed to a decline in search traffic.  By April of 2015, traffic was already down to 36.481, and it continued dropping every month. for 5 years. By August of this year, I was averaging around 50 visitors a day, where I was getting around 1,700 a day in early 2015 before I made the changes. Needless to say, it was incredibly disheartening to see my traffic going down for 5 years, despite everything I was doing, and not know why.

So I really see this as my blogging ‘rebirth’, a chance to rebuild the blog to where it once was, and even surpass it. Yes, starting over sucks, but I’ve learned so much about writing and blogging that I didn’t know in 2009. So the process will be much faster.

I appreciate everyone who has read, subscribed and left me nice emails and comments on social media.

So the goals for October are:

1 – More emphasis on visual elements. I’ll have to dig back into Thrive Architect and see what I can come up with.

2 – More emphasis on good SEO practices.  This will mostly be on the backend and really won’t impact the actual content here.

3 – Traffic goal of 3,000 visitors. That would give me an average of roughly 100 visitors a day after averaging almost 80 a day in September.

 

Onward! Thanks again for reading and letting me know what you think, it is greatly appreciated!

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Marketing and Movies: Smokey and the Bandit

1977 was a great year for blockbuster movies. Saturday Night Fever, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and of course, Star Wars: A New Hope. Another top-grossing movie in 1977 was Smokey and the Bandit. Smokey and the Bandit had an all-star cast; Burt Reynolds, Sally Fields and Jackie Gleason. The movie centers on a Coors Beer run that two buddies (Bandit and Cledus) have to make in 28 hours, from Georgia to Texas, and back to Georgia.

But the scene-stealer in this movie wasn’t an actor, it was an automobile. The logistics of making a round trip from Georgia to Texas in 28 hours meant that Cledus (who would drive the truck hauling the beer) would have to drive faster than the speed limit to make the trip on time. Obviously, that meant Cledus needed a way to evade the police.

That’s where the Bandit came in. The Bandit drove a 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am. The Bandit would draw all the attention from the police to him, clearing a path for Cledus to drive unencumbered. Bandit is the perfect driver for a flashy and fast sports car designed to draw attention. In one scene Sally Fields’ character Carrie asks Bandit what he does:

Bandit: “I go from place to place, and do what I do best.’

Carrie: “What’s that?”

Bandit: “Show off.”

As you can see, Bandit’s Firebird Trans-Am was one of the stars of the movie. And its presence had an immediate impact on Trans-Am sales. “We could have our whole front line full with Trans Ams. It was a big car for us,” said Art Douglas, 61, of Jim  Douglas Auto Sales on Baldwin Avenue in Pontiac, which his father founded in 1975. “The movie made the car popular, really more with non-car people. I mean, that car was hot.” “When it all comes together with the actor, the car, the script and that moment in pop culture? For an automaker that’s better than advertising,” McElroy said. “When you hit that magic, and a car becomes a star, wow, it can really help sales.”

Most product placements, whether its in a movie or television series, really aren’t that effective. Typically, the placement is for a product that’s in the background and really contributes nothing to the plot or story of the film or show. Smokey and the Bandit was completely different in that the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am MADE the story. Without that automobile, there’s no plot. The Trans-Am made the story, and made it better, and made it cooler. This is what great product placements always do, the product plays a role, that isn’t forced, and makes the scene or larger show better.

Yesterday when I talked about the three types of content you could create for your customers, one of those types was ‘inspirational’ content. If you think about it, the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am was inspirational content. It showed us how cool it could be to own and drive a car like that. Note the above quote from the gentleman that owned a car lot when the movie came out, he said that the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am was a big hit with ‘non-car people’. In other words, people that didn’t really care about cars, cared about THAT car, because it had the ‘cool’ factor. Many of Apple’s products have that ‘cool’ factor due to impressive design and slick marketing.

So if your company wants to use product placements, or even if you want to sponsor digital content, think about how the placement or sponsorship can MAKE THE USER EXPERIENCE BETTER. This should always be the goal for your product placement or sponsorship. If it gets in the way, it gets ignored. But if it makes the scene, then it becomes ‘cool’ and desirable.

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Three Ways to Create Content That Connects With Customers

create contentIt’s really tough to create content that consistently connects with customers. Part of the problem is simply staffing; Most companies hand off content creation to mid or lower-level digital people. If they do a good job, they often get promoted into more marketing-oriented roles. So there can be a constant talent-drain happening for your content team.

One way to avoid this is to have good processes in place. Part of this is having a system for the type of content that you should be creating to connect with your customers. Today I wanted to talk about three different roles that your content can play. This will help you think about how you can quickly and easily create content that has value for your customers.

 

Be a teacher. Think about how you use search engines. If you have a problem, you’re searching for a solution, right?  Here’s some of the basic search terms you’ve probably used before:

“What’s the best way to…”

“How do I get rid of…”

“Which (product) is best to solve (problem)?”

 

Often, when we use search engines, we are really searching for the answer to a question or the solution to a problem we are having. So apply this to your customers; What problems do they have, and what solutions do they need?  Once you have those answers, then create content that answers those questions and provides those solutions! This not creates valuable content for your customers, but it also creates the content that search engines will serve up when other customers when they search for those same terms!

So how do you figure out what questions your customers have?  First, look at any feedback you are already getting from your customers. This could be emails feedback on social media channels, or even letters. Next, talk to your customer support team, and see what are the common issues that customers are having. Is there a certain product feature that many customers are having trouble understanding how to use? Is there a common complaint that customers have, and maybe you can create a blog post that helps explain the issue to customers?

Finally, look at product reviews, not just for your products, but also your competitors. For instance, if you see that reviews for a competitors product are constantly complaining that the competing product does not have a certain feature that your product does, then you should point that out in your content. But all of these types of customer feedback give you very valuable insights into how you can create content that helps your customers and which also helps address issues they are facing.

 

Be a storyteller. I am a sucker for case studies and ‘real-world’ examples. I love hearing how people ‘just like me’ are using a product or service and hearing how its helping them. This helps me understand how I could use the product or service as well, and its honestly a more effective way of selling and promotion than simply coming directly from the brand. The reality is, we tend to trust other customers more than we do brands. It is the central lesson behind my book Think Like a Rock Star.

So you can create content that showcases how your customers are using your products or services. This will help other potential customers better understand how your products work, and can also address concerns they have about your products. In fact, you can take customer feedback you get from creating content that teaches in the above example, and use it here. Let’s say you write a ‘teaching’ post that shows customers how to use your product in a particular way.  Sarah leaves a comment on your Facebook page saying thank you, and says that your post solved a problem she was having and now she loves using your product. You could contact Sarah and learn more about how she uses your product, then use her experiences as a ‘case study’ post to show other customers how your product helped Sarah.

 

Be inspirational. So we’ve talked about creating content that teaches your customers how to better use your products, and content that showcases how current customers are benefiting from your products. These are great ways to create engaging content for your customers, but these methods are focused on what’s happening today. What if you wanted to create content that shows customers how their lives or daily routines could be changed for the better, by purchasing your product? What if you could create content that could paint a picture for customers of how their lives would be better, if they owned your product?

Here’s an example of how this could work. I have always been a car owner. I hate trucks and SUVs, simply because when I drive one, it feels like I’m driving a slow tank and I’m gonna run over everything and hit every car. I love driving cars because it feels like I’m more in control, like I have better vision and they are just more fun for me to drive.

So I’m not in the market today for an SUV. However, what if you could paint a picture for me of what my life could look like if I owned your SUV? Let’s say you have an SUV you want to tell me about.  “Sorry, I don’t like SUVs, I drive cars.”

“Hear me out!” you say.  “This SUV is different”.

You then tell me about how your SUV has a dedicated wifi router in place, so it is in effect a ‘rolling hotspot’.  The SUV gives the driver a constant, high-speed internet connection. The center console comes with a laptop docking station and multiple USB ports. The back row of seats feature enough room to comfortably sit and the back of the driver and passenger seats have monitors for taking video calls. Finally, the roof has an attachment that allows you to install a green screen so you can create and record videos, with the included interior cameras. Basically, this SUV is a ‘mobile office’, that would allow me to do any of my normal business and content creation functions, no matter where I am.

Would that make me interested in your SUV?  Well…it wouldn’t hurt! By showing me how your SUV could help me perform most or all of my daily business functions even while on the road, that adds a great deal of value for me. If you can paint a picture for the customer via your content of how the customer’s life can be changed for the better TOMORROW by owning your product today, that gets the customer’s attention.

 

So that’s three ways you can create content that will connect with your customers.