Creating high quality customer-centric content is an integral part of a company’s efforts to establish itself as an expert in its niche, gain consumer trust and ultimately increase conversion, sales and growth opportunities. To achieve these results, companies need to ensure that their customer-facing content is authentic, consistent, and engaging. Below are 12 expert recommended strategies to help you get there.
How can companies ensure that their customer-facing content is consistent, engaging, and authentic? What strategy can you implement?
1. Focus on added value
Regardless of your chosen business model, original and effective content is still king. High quality content should add value to people’s lives instead of taking up their money and time. If the content focuses too much on getting someone to buy a product, it takes away the essence of the content. Instead, focus on solving readers’ problems by answering their questions. – – Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz
2. Really understand your audience
The key to creating customer-centric content is knowing your target audience. Some business owners think they can guess what type of content their users are trying to see, and it rarely works in their favor. Instead, research your customers across multiple platforms and create content that directly addresses their goals or weaknesses. – – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
3. Create a style guide
The key to content consistency is creating a style guide that all of your authors can refer to. You can create a document with clear instructions about the tone to write, your target audience, and examples of good content. If your team has clear guidelines to follow, they can design their content to provide a unified front for your audience. – – Blair Williams, MemberPress
4. Run with information overload
The most effective customer-facing content that is always engaging and authentic to your consumer is educational content. Run with information overload first so they understand your positioning as an expert in this niche. The consumers who are genuinely interested will always be preoccupied with list-style articles and content. – – Laura Egocheaga, Viral growth media
5. Have a content calendar
By creating a content calendar and planning your content ahead of time, you can get a bird’s eye view of what your content will look like. It gives you an idea of how your blog or social media visitors see your posts. You can see if your content looks cohesive and fix things like themes, titles, and other elements that don’t match. – – Syed Balkhi |, WPBeginner
6. Include your target audience in the content
Engage your customers and audience in your content creation strategies, be it with videos, infographics, long-form content, or a conversation on Twitter about what will benefit them most. To make your content valuable to your audience, include your audience. Be specific and remember to tag attendees and accurate comments. – – Matthew Capala, Alphabetical
7. Collect user feedback
Gathering user feedback is a surefire way to gather authentic information from your customers about what works and what doesn’t in your strategy. Regular hearings from your audience are required in order to continue developing strategies, products, and content that will convert. Create customer surveys and ask relevant questions to improve your current operations. – – Stephanie Wells, Formidable forms
8. Get input from team members
I think the best way to ensure that your customer facing content is consistent, engaging, and authentic is to have it read and review by multiple team members first. You will miss a lot of opportunities with just two eyes on the content (the author and the editor). We have a system that allows at least five people to review and refine content before it is published. – – John Turner, SeedProd LLC
9. Add engagement options
Companies looking to create consistent customer-centric content should consider what kind of engagement options they can add to their posts. Consumers like to engage with brands more than ever. So adding a comment section to your blog posts, asking questions in your articles, and even adding gamification elements can greatly improve your traffic and conversions. – – John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC
10. Carry your brand message across platforms
Make sure your brand messages are consistent across platforms. This includes online and offline marketing, your workforce, your thought leadership, and your personal brand. You have to be consistent to be authentic. – – Maria Thimothy, OneIMS
11. Make an emotional connection
To create engaging content, it’s important to create an emotional connection with your audience. Many brands can create content for their audiences. However, if they can’t connect with them on a deeper level, the audience will go to another place where they can meet that need. People want to invest in brands that are important to them and that care about them. – – Jared Atchison, WPForms
12. Be yourself
Be the face of your company and be you. Without going too far, give your opinion and stand behind it. Make sure your voice is consistent across all channels, including social media. Be real, be honest, and be authentic. Authenticity is the way to go, and not many other brands are realizing this. So it’s definitely a way to stand out from the competition. – – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance