What’s Your Content Purpose and Goal?

As mentioned in the last lesson, one of the reasons many people claim that they have trouble creating content is that they don’t understand who they are creating their content for and therefore they have trouble understanding why they’re creating it.

Every piece of content you create needs a reason for being, otherwise, you’re wasting your efforts. Let’s look at some common reasons you need to create content.

To narrow down the purpose of any type of content you’re creating you want to ask yourself a few questions.

Who Are You Creating the Content For?

Use your audience persona, or a customer persona to help you focus yourself on the content you’re creating. The content you create for people on your list will depend on how they signed up for the list, which freebie they downloaded, which product they purchased, and what your goals are for that list segment. The content you create for the audience you have that has never purchased or converted in any way will be different.

Where is The Content Going?

Where you’re publishing the content makes a big difference too. If you’re publishing it on your blog it will be different than if you’re sending it via email. A blog post can be very long, while an email shouldn’t be. Also, the page it’s going on your site is important too. Is it a blog post, part of your about me page, or another page? What is the purpose of the page it’s going on or the list it’s going to?

What Are You Trying to Communicate?

When you sit down to create the content ask yourself this question and start brainstorming the answers. That way you can keep looking at that as you’re creating the content. Try to keep it to one topic instead of spreading it too thin. You should have one overarching message you want the viewer to take away from the content you’ve created.

How Does the Content Fit with What You Have?

Before creating any new content, you should always go through the content you already have so that you can find out what you’ve already published about that topic. You may be able to take bits and pieces of content you’ve already created to make it into something new. If it’s totally new content with a totally new angle how does it fit in with what you have and make it better?

What is The Goal of the Content?

Every bit of content you publish needs a point. Do you want to educate, inform, inspire or engage with your audience or a combination of these options? When you think about the goal of the content you will have an easier time creating it to do what you want it to do.

What Do You Want Viewers to Do?

Finally, you want to know exactly what you want your viewer to do once they’ve consumed the content. You need to remember the call to action throughout the content, especially at the end by directing them in what you want them to do by telling them what to do. Don’t hint, don’t just put a sign-up box at the end, instead tell them what you want them to do.

Once these questions are answered you’ll have a much better idea about the direction to go with every piece of content you create because it’s going to fit in with your overall “big hairy” goal as well as the goal you have for the individual piece of content such as list building for example.

So we spoke about the purpose let's talk about the goal.  Every piece of content you create should have a goal.

When you know your goal it makes content creation simpler.

By understanding what your goals are for each piece of content that you create the process just get easier and easier. Understanding the goal will help you create the right content for the person you’re creating it for as you’ll better be able to guide them toward the actions you want them to take.

Let’s look at some potential goals that you might have for the content you create and publish.

• Brand Awareness – Some content that you publish needs to be to get more people aware of your brand. The types of content that can do this range from publishing books, webinars, and even blog posts. If this type of content goes viral then that’s even better. This content is not created to necessarily make sales, but it probably will. At the end of this type of content, you’ll ask your audience to like, comment, and share.

• List Building – Some of your content should be devoted to list building if you have your business. List building is the one way you have online to create an asset for yourself that can go with you no matter what happens to the technology you currently use. This type of content may consist of a freebie (lead magnet) of some kind plus a landing page and sign up form.

• Engagement – Most of the content you put on social media will be to increase engagement between you and your audience but also your audience with themselves. You might use surveys, questionnaires, and discussion starters for this type of content.

• Driving Traffic – Traffic driving content will consist of both on and off-site content. You may guest blog for someone who serves your audience, or you might pay an influencer to mention your site and drive traffic to it with a gift for their readers. A great way to drive traffic is to host an affiliate contest too. Providing content for them is also part of your content creation needs.

• Generating Leads – The best way to get leads is to use list building strategies such as giving away a freebie or hosting a webinar. The key is to ensure that the freebie is really something only your audience will want and that the webinar is on a topic only your niche audience needs to know about.

• Making Sales – If your goal is to make sales, ask for the sale. This may be done with a blog post, an article, or a sales page. Either way, the content should focus on benefits over features and then ask for the sale. Ask them to buy right now by providing an easy way to do it.

• Improving Customer Retention – If your people stick with you, once they buy from you, it’s imperative that your follow-up series via your autoresponder is well thought out. This is where segmentation can help tremendously.

• Making Repeat Sales – Depending on what type of things you sell, you may want them to buy more of it, or you may want them to buy something else. The content you send to them via email will help guide them toward that end.

When making a goal for the content you create it’s best to choose only one goal for the content so that your audience knows exactly what to do once they consume the content.

Here's you exercise:

Define the purpose of each piece of content you created in your content plan. If you didn't download the weekly content plan be sure to head over to the Facebook group and download it. I placed it as a weekly schedule to allow for easier delivery. After you know your purpose make sure you know the goal of the content for your audience.

(If you still haven't joined the Content Challenge, you can do so here.)

Some of you have mentioned need a website.  If you are in need of a website, let's schedule a session and get you started.

Until Next Time.

Stand Out Be You,
Tequila