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#ContentCircus 2-2-21 Recap: How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Marketing Strategy

Last night, we had another great conversation at #ContentCircus on Twitter, this time discussing How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Strategy. Let’s jump into some of the key takeaways:

When you start creating buyer personas, you want to define who the persona is. For that, you need customer data. If you work for a business, your sales, marketing and customer service teams should be able to help you define your ideal customer. If you have a retail business, you and your employees that are in regular contact with your customers can give this information. If you are still uncertain who your ideal customer is, you can create a persona for who you would want this customer to be.

 

After collecting demographic data about your persona (age, gender, occupation, income, education), you want to move on to addressing the personas pain points. What are the issues and problems they face every day, that you can address via the content you create? Giving customers the solutions to their problems is a wonderful way to create content that drives sales, and loyalty.

 

https://twitter.com/chippermuse/status/1356791739323940868

When creating content for your personas, you want to be aware of where the persona is currently getting information, and which sources it trusts. You also want to know what type of content they prefer. Do they want to read long blog posts on their desktop, or do they want to see short videos on their smartphone? By understanding what type of content they want and from what sources, it helps you tailor content to meet the expectations of your customers.

 

Finally, when you are creating your personas, you want to define where the persona is in the Buyer’s Journey. We discussed creating content for each stage of the Buyer’s Journey back in December at #ContentCircus, here’s the recap post for our conversation. Additionally, you want to define the persona’s role in making purchasing decisions within their organization or household. Can they authorize purchases independently, or will they need approval from their boss or spouse?

 

So that was our discussion last night at #ContentCircus of How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Strategy. If you want to join the next #ContentCircus, it happens every Tuesday night at 7pm Central. Just follow the #ContentCircus hashtag. Next week’s topic will be Winning Strategies For Content Creation on Twitter! See you then!

 

Bonus: I wrote about How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Marketing Strategy here yesterday. In that post I also added the persona for Sarah, to give you an idea of what a persona looks like so you can better understand how it can help your content creation efforts.  Here it is again:

 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: US Adults’ Digital Usage Up, Facebook DAU Down, Clubhouse’s ‘Oprah’ Moment?

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you’re ready for an amazing week as we say goodbye to January and launch into February! Here’s a few stories I noticed to get your week off in the right track:

 

eMarketer has found that US adults spent an extra hour with digital content in 2020. Now my first thought was, workers that typically commute to work stayed at home in 2020, so they gained back an hour of time right there. This is all about understanding and focusing on the changes in your customer and client lives as more of them are now working from home. This, and all indications point toward an increased appetite for digital content, and that creates opportunities for your company, if you know how to leverage them.

 

Ironically, as the above eMarketer study finds that US adults are spending more time with digital content, comes this story from Social Media Today that found that Facebook’s number of Daily Active Users in the US was actually DOWN in 2020. Count me in that group, over the last few years I’ve gone from checking Facebook a couple times a day, to now maybe checking a couple of times a week. Most of the time I now spend with Facebook is with Facebook Groups that are devoted to marketing and business. I think we will see core user usage metrics fall or stagnate for both Facebook and Twitter in 2021.

 

My timeline this morning was all abuzz with Elon Musk popping into Clubhouse. Probably 75% of the tweets in my home feed were about this. When celebs use a social media platform, it brings a lot of extra eyes to it, and Musk’s popularity is white hot right now, and that will definitely benefit Clubhouse.

 

That’s it for this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute! Hope you have a wonderful week and don’t forget to check out #ContentCircus tomorrow night on Twitter at 7pm Central! This week we will be discussing How to Create Buyer Personas For Your Content Marketing Strategy! It will be a great discussion on a very valuable topic! Tomorrow post will be on the same topic, so see you back here in 24 hours!

 

Oh wait…let’s do one more! I thought this story from The Hustle about the illicit trade for the world’s most expensive fish was interesting, but click through and check out the photos of the fish.  Yeah, I know, $300,000 for a fish is completely bonkers, but look at those colors! The fish themselves are absolutely gorgeous!

 

Ok I’m done, see you tomorrow!

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#ContentCircus 1-19-21 Recap: How Do You Create Content When Your Business Is Closed Due to Covid

We had another fantabulous #ContentCircus on Twitter last night on the topic of How Do You Create Content When Your Business Is Closed Due to Covid. I wanted to share some of the takeaways. For further reading, check out yesterday’s prep post:

 

So the problem that a lot of content creators are having now that their business is closed or limited to the public, is that they aren’t sure how to adjust the content they create. My advice is to focus on content that goes ‘behind the scenes’ or ‘backstage’.  Content that gets into how your business is run, why it is run the way it is. We talked more about this last night:

 

 

Focusing on such content does two things: It appeals to our love of nostalgia, but it also helps educate customers on how long your business has been around. And even if your business isn’t that old, creating content from the owner’s point of view is still helpful, It helps the customer understand who the owner is and why the business is so important to them.

 

This type of ‘under the hood’ content is great for educating the customer on the product creation and packaging process, and for helping them appreciate its value. Obviously, you don’t want to give away any proprietary secrets or anything of the sort, but you can give customers a better sense of how your business is run. That helps establish your expertise as well as create trust with your customers.

 

When creating content that focuses on your employees, you just want to give your customers a better sense of who these people are.  You can talk about what they like about working for you, which products they enjoy making. Or even give them a chance to talk about themselves, their hobbies, how they are adjusting to covid, etc.

 

And finally, just as you created content that highlights your employees, you can create content that showcases your customers. Focus on your most loyal customers, give them a chance to share their story. And that’s another point worth mentioning:  If you’ll notice all four of these areas of content are really dealing with storytelling. Telling the story of the history of your business. Or the story of how your products are made, or the stories of the people who make them, the people that buy them. So don’t think of this as new types of content that you will ditch once your business fully reopens, storytelling is a wonderful art to learn and it leads to amazing content!

 

So that was our #ContentCircus for last night. You can check out the entire conversation here.  Hope you can join us next Tuesday at 7pm on Twitter for the next #ContentCircus!

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#ContentCircus 1-5-21 Recap: How to Audit Your Content

We had another fabulous #ContentCircus last night on the topic of How to Audit Your Content. The last two weeks have really taken off, I appreciate everyone’s participation and sharing their smartitude. Here’s a link to the transcript from Hashtracking. I wanted to highlight some of the great points made during the chat:

 

Readability is a big area to address when doing a content audit. Anything you can do to better organize your information and make it easier for the reader to understand key concepts, is a good thing. Honestly, a lot of this comes down to simple stuff that we can all do, and #ContentCircus participants had some great suggestions:

 

After I’ve addressed readability, I will then move on to editing the actual information in the post. Is any of it outdated and needs to be removed? Is there a new case study or research study I have found that I can add? Also keep in mind as I add or remove material, I am still addressing readability, that carries over throughout the entire process.

 

Next we moved onto discussing using the proper search keywords and phrases during your content audit. Luckily, #ContentCircus community had many helpful suggestions for keyword research tools!

 

Next, we covered adding visual elements to your audited content. Note that as we address things like font size for text, headings and subheadings, now adding visual elements, we are (hopefully) making it easier for the reader to process information. That’s what we want. The easier it is for our ideas to flow to the reader, the more likely they are to understand those ideas, and their impact.

 

Finally, we talked a bit about Calls to Action. Whenever you audit your content, you should add a Call to Action that encourages the reader to take some next step based on who they are, their intent, and what action you want them to take.

 

So that was our first #ContentCircus chat of 2021! We had a wonderful discussion on auditing content, and I hope you can join the next #ContentCircus, which is every Tuesday at 7pm Central, on Twitter! Just follow the #ContentCircus hashtag!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Podcasts Thrived in 2020, Year’s Top Search Terms, Fast Food in Pompeii??

Happy New Year, y’all! Welcome to 2021! Time to turn the page and start into a new year and I am ready for it! I bet you are as well! Before we get to today’s Marketing Minute, tomorrow night’s #ContentCircus will discuss how to do a content audit. It’s a process I’m going through now, and we will be discussing tomorrow night at 7pm Central on Twitter. Additionally, I will have a VERY robust post up here tomorrow on my process for auditing content. It will tie in nicely with tomorrow night’s #ContentCircus, so look for that as well. As they say in the circus, on with the show!

 

This surprises me a bit, but podcasts continued to have remarkable growth in 2020. Downloads surged by almost 50%, and spending on podcast ads hit a whopping $780 Million! There was some concerns that growth of podcasts might slow in 2020 as we spent more time at home, and less time driving to work. But the stellar growth of the format in 2020 proves that we love listening to our podcasts, and not just while driving to work.

 

It’s always interesting to look back at the top search terms for the year. As expected, most of the terms revolved around the pandemic and how it has impacted our lives and daily workflow. One of the big topics I’ve talked about here the last few months is how customer behavior will change as a result of spending more time working from home. I think the shift in search term usage reflects that.

 

Ok, it’s hard to restart from a nice Christmas break, even for the Marketing Minute! I thought this discovery of an ancient ‘fast food stand’ in Pompeii was absolutely fascinating! And look at the artwork on the site of the stand! It’s two thousand years old! I can just imagine this being in the corner of a bustling market, where patrons could go and get a hot meal while shopping.

 

That’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! See you back here in a week, and be back tomorrow for my post on how I audit my content, then we will discuss at #ContentCircus tomorrow night at 7pm Central on Twitter!

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#ContentCircus 12-15-20 Recap: How to Create Content For Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Last night we had our second #ContentCircus chat, and our topic was How to Create Content For Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey. We had a wonderful discussion and I wanted to share some of the key takeaways.

For buyers who are Unaware, your content should focus almost completely on the customer. Think about it, you are trying to connect with buyers who do NOT know who you are or why they should buy from you. Why would you try to sell to such a buyer? Your content should focus completely on the buyer, what’s interesting and relevant to them. Figure out how your product or service fits into the lives of your buyer, and create content around those intersection points.

Once you move buyers to being Slightly Aware of who you are, then you create content that helps these buyers understand how your product or service fits into their lives. You create content that illustrates how you can solve problems for them, or help them in some way.

When you reach the Interested stage with a buyer, it’s finally time to SELL them on your product or service. These buyers are doing final research before they decide on which product or service to buy. So they want detailed content that talks about the products or services they are considering purchasing. This is the ONLY stage where you should directly sell via your content.

When the buyer is ready to make a purchase, the only job your content has is to show them how to complete the sale. No need to keep selling them, the buyer is ready to buy.  Just take their money!

Now, what about after the purchase?  What type of content should you create then?

 

Another great #ContentCircus comes to a close! Here’s the transcript so you can read all the tweets. The first two chats have focused more on strategy and tactics for the more senior content roles like Chief Content Officer or Director of Content Strategy. Our next #ContentCircus on 12-22-20 will focus on our favorite content creation tools! This will be more helpful for Content Marketing Managers and Content Strategists who are more directly responsible for content creation.

Thanks again to everyone for joining, see y’all next Tuesday for #ContentCircus, and back here tomorrow!

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#ContentCircus 12-8-20 Recap: Where to Post Content

Last night we had our first #ContentCircus chat on Twitter! #ContentCircus happens every Tuesday night at 7pm Central, and we discuss a variety of topics, focusing on content creation, strategy and execution.

Our topic for last night was ‘How to Decide Where to Post Content’. One of the things I always try to do with all my content; whether it’s a post here or a Twitter chat discussion, is I want you to think strategically about the actions you are taking. If you have a sound strategy in place that guides your actions, that means you get better results, with less time and resources required. Thinking strategically about your content creation efforts will be a topic we will revisit often at #ContentCircus.

We had a great discussion last night and I wanted to highlight a few of the wonderful points made by participants:

I loved Becky and Paul’s answers here because they cover two important areas to consider when deciding where to create content. In general, it’s always best to create content that will connect with your desired audience. If you are a business, this is current and potential customers. But Paul makes a great point as well: If your goal is to build awareness and establish thought leadership, then you may want to post on sites with an established audience. Creating long-form content on sites such as LinkedIn and Medium has become popular in recent years because it can ‘fast-track’ your efforts to gain exposure and build an audience for your work. I think this approach can absolutely work, my caveat would be as your exposure grows, try to steer that audience’s attention back to platforms that you own, such as your blog or website.

 

This has always been a pet peeve of mine: Companies and content creators who try to create content for too many channels. It’s always better to focus on FEWER sites and channels, not more. Content creation is a bit of an art, and you can achieve better results when you focus your efforts. I love Becky’s point about focusing on fewer channels, and after you nail down your efforts there, then you can experiment with new sites or channels. I’ve seen so many companies burn themselves out on content marketing over the years by trying to do too much in too many places. Start with fewer sites, nail down the content creation process, then once you are seeing the results you want, experiment with new sites and channels. It will simply take time for your content creation efforts to gain traction, so grow slow and grow smart.

 

Social media channels are not ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to content. Every channel is different with a different audience and its own expectations for the content there. The culture on Reddit is not the same as the on Twitter or the one on Line. It’s important to know the differences between the userbase for each channel.

 

So those are a few of the fascinating discussions we had in #ContentCircus last night.  Here’s a transcript of last night’s #ContentCircus, hope to see you there next week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Buyer Personas, Online Food Sales Spiking, #ContentCircus Debut

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you had a great weekend and are ready to close out 2020 with a bang! Here’s a few marketing and business stories I found that I think you will like:

 

One of the themes I’ve been focusing on is how buyer behavior has changed in 2020, how your business can adjust, and what opportunities are created by the changes.  Bazaarvoice, a former client, has found that 42% of US shoppers, and 43% of European shoppers will be changing how they buy food and beverages. That means more online sales, and retailers are adjusting their ecommerce offerings to meet the increased demand. Now, this creates two scenarios that I want you to think about: If your company sells food and beverages, how can you make the purchase and delivery process more frictionless for customers? Remember that shoppers will pay for convenience. And secondly, if more shoppers will be buying food and beverages from home, that means they won’t be spending that time leaving their house to shop for food. What will they be spending that extra time on, and is there an opportunity for your company to take advantage of that additional time that shoppers will have? Could they spend that extra time with your products and services? Something to think about!

 

Buyer personas are so valuable to your marketng and content creation processes, but few companies use them and use them well. This very in-depth article from SEMRush walks you through the process of creating your own buyer personas. Well worth the time to improve your efforts to identify, and create a digital experience that connects with your ideal customer.

 

I am thrilled to announce that tomorrow night at 7pm Central will be the debut of #ContentCircus! This will be a weekly Twitter chat focused on content strategy, creation and execution. Think of it as a natural evolution of #Blogchat, but focusing on all content channels, not just blogs. Please join us, a recap will be posted here on Wednesday if you can’t make it!

 

Thanks so much for reading, I will see you back here tomorrow!