One day, I helped a business owner write emails pushing people to her blog. (A solid strategy. If you haven’t done that yet, try it. It boosts your SEO.)
Anyway, as I worked, I paused to read some of her posts.
And was completely shocked!
The content is not great. The posts themselves are very short (about 200-300 words). And the messages in the posts seem (at least to me) to be basic information.
That wasn’t the shocking part.
What surprised me was the number of people who commented. 20-30 comments per post. And the “shares”. 100-300 “shares” for each one.
The writer in me was floored.
The marketer in me quickly figured out why her content was attracting so much attention.
It all came back to the business owner.
People LOVE her. (Side note: I love her, too. Sometimes, when I’m watching her videos, I struggle to stay awake. Because her voice is so comforting, you feel like you’re being rocked to sleep.)
They love her because she is 100% genuine. In every interaction (written word, video, in-person conversations) you can feel how much she cares about you. How anxious she is for you to succeed.
She’s not writing content to showcase her expert knowledge. She’s not creating content to boost her rankings. She’s not doing it to prove her offering is better than that of her competitors.
She’s doing it, because she cares about her community. And she knows them so well, that her messages (which are irrelevant to me – I’m not her target market) resonate with those she’s helping.
And, in doing that perfectly, she’s getting all the marketing benefits: likes, shares, traffic.
If you’d like to achieve the same results, here are my tips for you:
Know Your Prospects. This one comes up in the marketing world ALL THE TIME. But we kind of pass it off. I’m super guilty of this. I write well enough that my message can reach a huge range of people and they’ll nod their heads thinking, “Yeah, that was good.” But then they’re gone.
The goal is to write content so focused on your target that it speaks to their soul. And they’re compelled to share. Again, her content does nothing for me. But that doesn’t matter because I am not her target market. She doesn’t need to impress me. She doesn’t need to reach me. She shouldn’t care (at all) about my opinion.
Focus on Your Prospects’ Needs. This one has to come first. But it usually doesn’t. Oftentimes, I write because it’s Tuesday (or Thursday) and I’m committed to getting an email out to my list. Which is a good thing – we should be committed to our community. It builds trust.
But the best content I produce, or rather, the content that gets the most traction is the content that comes from genuine concern for my target market. When I am writing because I know my message will have an impact on them, it always produces amazing results.
Stop Overanalyzing. Former English teacher here. And all I can say is that if this woman was in one of my classes, and turned in a blog post she’d written, there would be big red marks all over it. Because these posts are not pretty. They aren’t well organized. Dismally punctuated. And more train-of-thought then well-thought-through.
Doesn’t matter. It adds to the impact of her pieces, because you can hear her voice as you read it. And you focus more on what she is trying to say than the eloquence with which she is saying it.
More and more, the content we read will be determined by the person who writes it. You are selling yourself as much as your solution. Be real. Be genuine. Be focused on getting results for your community and they will help you grow.
