You’ve written a piece of content you’re proud of. How can you make sure it resonates with your audience?

1 Know your audience

Before you create any content, you need to have a clear idea of who your audience is, what they want, and how they consume content. You can use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, surveys, and feedback forms to learn more about your audience's demographics, interests, behaviors, and pain points. You can also create buyer personas or user profiles to represent your ideal audience segments and tailor your content to them.

2 Define your goals

Once you know your audience, you need to define your goals for your content. What do you want to achieve with your content? Do you want to educate, entertain, inspire, or persuade your audience? Do you want to increase awareness, generate leads, boost conversions, or build loyalty? Your goals will help you shape your content's tone, style, format, and call to action. You should also set measurable and realistic key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your content's performance and impact.

3 Choose your format

Depending on your audience and your goals, you need to choose the best format for your content. Different formats have different strengths and weaknesses, and appeal to different types of learners and consumers. For example, blog posts are great for providing in-depth information, videos are great for showing how-to instructions, podcasts are great for sharing stories and opinions, and social media posts are great for sparking conversations and engagement. You should also consider the devices, platforms, and channels that your audience uses to access your content.

4 Craft your message

The core of your content is your message. What do you want to say to your audience? What value do you want to provide them? How do you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors? Your message should be clear, concise, and compelling. You should also use the language and tone that resonates with your audience. Avoid jargon, slang, or technical terms that might confuse or alienate your audience. Instead, use simple, direct, and conversational words that convey your personality and credibility.

5 Optimize your content

After you've created your content, you need to optimize it for your audience. This means making sure that your content is easy to find, read, watch, listen, or share. You can use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve your content's visibility and ranking on search engines. You can use headlines, subheadings, images, videos, bullet points, and white space to improve your content's readability and scannability. You can use captions, transcripts, alt text, and meta tags to improve your content's accessibility and inclusivity. You can also use social media buttons, hashtags, mentions, and questions to encourage your audience to share and interact with your content.

6 Test and improve your content

Finally, you need to test and improve your content based on your audience's feedback and behavior. You can use analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to measure your content's performance and impact on your KPIs. You can also use A/B testing, user testing, or focus groups to compare different versions of your content and see which one performs better. You can also ask your audience for their opinions, suggestions, and testimonials to improve your content's quality and relevance. You should always be open to learning from your audience and adapting your content to their changing needs and preferences.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?