What are the best practices for creating engaging and relevant content for your audience?

From a business-to-business perspective: ASK your clients and potential clients and business partners what THEY need. Yes, you will actually have to talk to people. What kind of support do they wish they had? What services can't they do in house? What can't they "afford to do" on their budgets? Do they need: sales collateral? statistics to put in a proposal? custom packaging? Go beyond providing content - give them a share of your industry experience that can make their life easier. Be the extra hand, the behind-the-scenes helper that makes them look good to their boss. That's always worked for me.

Understanding your audience is crucial for effective content creation. Data helps uncover insights, but a test and learn mindset is vital. Each audience is unique, and best practices may not always work. Iterate, adapt to trends, embrace creativity, and foster continuous improvement. Tailoring content creates meaningful connections.

Hey there! Crafting top-notch content isn't rocket science, it's about listening to your audience and delivering value. Here's the skinny: ?? Listen: Understand your crowd's interests and challenges. ?? Quality over Quantity: Deep-dive, valuable content beats shallow quick-fixes. ?? Storytelling: Weave narratives that captivate. ?? Authenticity: Be real, relatable, and human. ?? Visuals: Engaging images and videos are memory glue. ?? Engage: Make it a conversation, not a monologue. ?? Call to Action: Give a clear next step. Now, go light up the content world!

Consider your organization's overall business objectives and your department's current objectives when defining the goals for a specific content campaign. For instance, is your organization prioritizing awareness and customer growth or revenue during the current quarter. Understandably, revenue is usually a top priority. But there may be other factors at play. Maybe your organization has experienced a run of bad PR from which they need to recover. What about your department? If you're an email marketer, are your subscription rates strong or are you still in the list building stage? How do your goals align with those of your organization's other marketing, sales or revenue teams? Build your content around your desired outcome.

Content calendars are a great tool for planning and organizing content so that you have a regular cadence of content that aligns with your goals. And while calendars can guide your content and schedule, they should remain flexible. If relevant newsworthy topics or trends pop up, the plan should be adjusted to incorporate timely content.

Add experimentation to your content, titles, call to actions, images, and test different tones and verbiage to see what engages better with your audience.

1) Voice search optimization: Given the increasing popularity of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, incorporating long-tail keywords, natural language, and conversational phrasing into content can enhance its relevance for voice search queries. 2) Conversational AI integration: Integrating conversational AI elements like chatbots or virtual assistants can boost engagement by providing interactive and personalized experiences. Leveraging advanced language models like ChatGPT4 discreetly enhances content interactivity without being detectable by conventional tools.

In regards to promotion and distribution, you can easily boost any content through paid advertising on social media. Yet paid amplification is only half the battle. How far you will reach will depend on the content itself, including its message. It's best to ensure you have good organic amplification through content optimization beforehand- whether that's A/B Testing, or doing a test campaign with a smaller ad spend. You can save a lot of cost by experimenting with content styles, before going all in on the content that may or may not perform best. Typically, short hand video or interactive content will perform higher than static content like images or text, but it also depends on who your target audience is and which platform is used.

Try asking your audience... Survey on-page or in follow-up email flows... "Did you find what you were looking for?" "What else would you like to see here?"