This is the third blog post in a series of posts where I try to establish a standard for marketing in general. I introduce the topic in the first post: Online Marketing 101 [Beginner’s Guide] where I try to simplify great marketing into four different characteristics.
- The Practical Guide to Relationship Marketing
- The Practical Guide to Value-Focused Marketing [this post]
- The Practical Guide to Consistent Marketing
- The Practical Guide to Being You in Marketing
In this post, we will explore both the “why” and the “how” of providing significant value with our content. Let’s jump in!
Why should we offer value?
Value is a measure of quality within our work and applicability to our audience. When we offer value through our content it does the following things for our business.
It makes you an expert in your field
When you go through all the research and work required to create, present, and share valuable content, you quickly gain the skills and knowledge of experts in your field. The more you focus on providing the most up-to-date and helpful information, you can build a reputation for sharing things that actually have an impact on the lives of your readers, furthering your expertise in different areas.
It provides deeper impact for your audience
At Build Your Stampin’ Site, my mission is to help creators
We all have unique skills, talents, and perspectives, that when concentrated on serving the needs of your audience can be extremely powerful.
It’s attractive in today’s world of content overload
There are millions of blog posts published each and every day. It is likely that we are creating content that will compete for reader’s attention and that only the most useful and valuable content creators will be seen.
I love the feeling of finding a blog or website that publishes solid content that I know I can consistently count on and that the content will benefit (impact) me in some way.
We want to be that for someone else: the creator who creates content that excites, motivates, and positively impacts their audience.
How do we offer value?
Now that we have covered the “why” behind providing quality and value-focused content to our readers. I want to share a few practical applications that we can use to consistently create helpful material.
#1 – Do your research
This is so important. If you want to become an expert in your particular niche (could be a concept, a technique, a topic, etc.) you MUST do your research. Knowing what is common knowledge in your area is the starting point for you to build upon.
Knowing and understanding various views or perspectives around a given idea is crucial to create balanced and truly helpful content. When writing content, doing research on what your audience really needs is also very important. When you do this, the ideas for different writing projects become more clear.
By doing your research, you are also becoming better and more in tune with the content you are creating.
How can you implement research into your development process to enhance the usefulness of your content?
#2 – Go the extra mile
The next practical application is to “go the extra mile”. We have all heard the insightful saying:
The extra mile is rarely crowded.
There are many variations of this quotation
This is very true, if you feel overwhelmed by the number of competitors creating content similar to yours, stick with it – dig in deeper trying to find new and exciting ways to write and share your content.
When we take the time to create what I like to call “next-level content”, there becomes little to no competition on many of your content ideas. This type of content is attractive to readers and will keep them coming back to learn, enjoy, and experience your work.
How can you “go the extra mile” in your content? Do you think it will help with removing some of your current competition?
#3 – Make it useful
The true mark of valuable content is its USEFULNESS. If we continually create content that is not useful to the majority of our intended audience, we are failing to supply value-focused marketing and we will begin to lose readership.
I try to answer the question: “Would this be something I would be interested in reading?” and “Would this be useful and helpful to me?” If the answer is yes, great! if not, go back and edit the post until you feel the post is truly helpful.
Are you creating truly useful content? What changes can you make to ensure that your content is impactful to your readers?
#4 – Teach your audience something
This is the primary way I try to bring value to my audience. Teach something! I believe we are all good at
One of the mottos at ConvertKit (the email service provider I use and love) is:
Teach everything you know.
ConvertKit
Teaching your audience something they don’t know, or even better explaining a topic so that it is clearer, is the ultimate way to bring utility to your content.
What is the ONE thing you can teach your audience? Is teaching a big part of your content?
#5 – See it from your reader’s perspective
Empathy is defined as: “Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and condition from their point of view, rather than from your own.” (Psychology Today)
When we deploy empathy to develop the perspective of our readers we become much better content creators. I’m not writing content only to write it, but so that it could be read, understood, and utilized.
A great way to get started with this is to simply ask your audience what they think about your latest blog post or video. This will give you a great starting point to better understanding the perspectives of our audience.
Do you write or create content with your audience in mind, trying to understand your work from their perspective?
This guide was simply an overview of practical steps to optimize your value-focused marketing efforts, online.
I want to hear from you! Comment below describing your experience with these principles: Is there one that has helped you grow your business? Is there one that you struggle implementing into your brand? What tools or content would help you grow in these areas?
More resources on this topic –
Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too by Gary Vaynerchuk
