If you’re looking for blog content, the best place to start is by thinking about what your ideal customer is likely to want. That’s why it’s so important to have a clear picture of what your ideal customer looks like.
Once you have a clear picture of your ideal customer, here are some of the things you need to consider:
Content
It’s pretty obvious that your ideal customer should drive the content you create. However it can be one of those things that’s a lot easier said than done. When you’re creating your content, try to keep in mind things like
- The language your ideal customer uses
- The terms they will be using to search for your products or services
- What will they want to know about your industry
- What type of content are they after? Listicles, case studies, facts and figures etc
Format
Use the format your ideal customer responds best to. For example:
- If your ideal customer responds to images use infographics and images to get your message across.
- Or, if your ideal customer responds to video, use video blogs.
- If your ideal customer is particularly time poor, consider a podcast or audio blog that they can listen to while they’re doing other things.
- When your ideal customer prefers the written word then a text blog is best.
One note on that is that if you have time (or can outsource it) it’s definitely worthwhile combining more than 1 of these methods. For example on a video blog add a transcript so people who don’t have time or inclination to watch the whole video will be able to read it. On a text blog, add an audio file to allow people to listen to the post at their convenience.
Platform
Selecting where to host your blog should again be driven by how your customer likes to receive information and which platforms they’re most likely to be very active on. There’s no point having a blog on one platform if your users are on another – although some platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are great to share any format of post on. Just add the post on the speciality platform your ideal customers are mostly likely to use and share the post to as many other networks as possible.
- Images: There are a lot of platforms that suit images, some of the more popular are Pinterest, Tumblr or Instagram
- Audio: Podcasts can be hosted on platforms such as iTunes or SoundCloud
- Video: There are several video platforms, the most popular are YouTube and Vimeo
- Written: Many sites host text blogs, the most useful for you will probably be WordPress, Blogger (both of which also host other post formats) and possibly even LinkedIn if your ideal customer is a business professional.
One of the easiest ways to do all this is to let the queries you get from customers drive your blog. Every time you get asked about something, add it to your list of blog topics, include the response to the customer in your notes and you’ve got a blog post half written – it’s that easy.
If you’d like some more ideas, check out my previous posts on blogging.
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