3 Surefire Ways To Come Up With More Engaging Content

These days, content is becoming a more and more important part of marketing programs for all kinds of businesses. Content is simply the information and advice you put into your blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, and other social media. You can also offer content in the form of articles, brochures, and white papers, which prospects and customers can download from emails or your website.

Here are three guidelines to use to generate the kind of content your target audience will go for.

1. Don't be afraid to make it personal. Your expertise is built on your own experience. Your successes, failures, risk-taking, false starts, and experimental efforts have all given you valuable insights. And, hey, they're unique to you! You can tell a very compelling story through a first-person account of an experience you had and the lessons you learned from it. Here are three thought starters:

• My biggest mistakes. Make a list of your mistakes and note the valuable lessons you learned from each of them. Every one of these mistakes can be its own story. Did you develop a marketing campaign that absolutely bombed? Why did that happen and how are you making sure it won't happen again? Showing readers how your mistakes gave you new insights can be very illuminating.

• Lessons from successes. What are the lessons learned from the successes you, others in your industry, and your clients have had? These success stories can make very engaging reading.

• What I know now that I wish I'd known then. Make a list of the things you wish you'd known starting out. What experiences have changed your understanding of things? How did those experiences do that? It's great to start a story with an anecdote from your life and what it taught you.

2. Keep up with the news. Scan a variety of news sources for things happening in your industry that are relevant to your target audience. Has research uncovered important new information? Are there governmental policy or regulatory changes that have been put in place or are planned? How is technology changing things? Check out the companies and leaders making headlines in your industry. What can your readers learn from the wins and losses being reported?

3. Ask around. Phone colleagues and clients and ask them to tell you about the biggest challenges they're facing. Make a list of them all, and then search the web for news stories on these and similar ideas. If a topic has been well covered, try to think of a fresh angle on it.

Above all, let your content bring out your unique voice. Share your personal experiences. Use specific examples. Let your readers get to know you and they'll keep coming back for more of your special insights. Here's to your continued success coming up with compelling content, as you keep putting together your best year ever.

Let us know what you think. Have you noticed a change in your followers as your content has improved? What kind of content are you interested in reading? Have you read something that has stuck with you?


This information was provided by Danene Strand (NMLS# 442493) with Veritas Funding.