I totally get it if you’ve experienced content creation fatigue. Who am I kidding–we probably ALL have! You’re likely either creating content for a lot of places OR are feeling guilty because you published your last post a few weeks (or months!) ago and haven’t posted anything since because you simply don’t want to compete with the noise. Either way, you probably feel like you just can’t win.
You’re probably familiar with the saying “content is king”. But guess what is even more important? Making sure that your people actually WANT to read your content. The truth is, there’s nothing new under the sun. Many people spend SO much time trying to be innovative with the hope of creating something totally unique. However, your job is not to be a unique snowflake, but to create content from a place of purpose and strategy so that you don’t waste time and energy on something that won’t matter. There are millions of pieces of content that never get read or watched or listened to. Why? Because they are not created intentionally.
Related: How to create content effectively without it taking over your life
Today I want to give you 3 tips for creating content that people will actually care about.
1. Refine what “adding value” means
Chances are you know a lot. Probably so much that you sometimes unintentionally overwhelm your audience with your expertise. I know, it’s a thing. I remember asking my husband to read what I thought was one of my most well written and informative blog posts, and he was not into it AT ALL. Not only did he find it, well, boring (how dare he!), he found the information itself too intimidating because he couldn’t picture himself implementing it.
I was discouraged, to say the least, but that experience made me realize one thing: I was trying to add value by ”proving my expertise”. In other words, I was kind of showing off unintentionally, rather than creating content with my audience in mind and giving them what THEY need from me.
Action step: Be mindful of how you present your content. Sure, you know your stuff, and that’s a GOOD thing! I don’t want you to devalue what you can bring to the table. But I’m encouraging you to keep your content actionable and easy to digest. Give your audience quick wins. Making them feel confident, not overwhelmed, is key. This is how you leave a good impression and maintain readership.
2. Grab people’s attention
Now that you know how to approach giving your content value and making it easy to understand and take action on, the next step is to make sure you have a really good attention-grabbing hook/title and an opening paragraph that sparks curiosity.
A few ways to get someone’s attention:
- Use a curiosity statement such as “There may be a way you can (desired solution) …”
- Use a metaphor or analogy
- Ask a specific question to spark interest
- Use a quote
- Share a relatable experience
- Describe how your audience is likely feeling at that moment, like what I did for this blog post
3. Survey your audience
One of the best things you can do for your content creation process is to ask people what THEY want to see from you. Remember when I said that we tend to immediately resort to high-level teaching points when writing content? Well, what your audience actually expects from you will probably surprise you.
If you have the bandwidth, I highly recommend getting on a call (you can do it in Instagram DMs too!) with a few people and asking them what type of content/topics would be helpful for them. That way you will get a better understanding of what people are going through and be able to create content that serves their specific needs.
You can also send out a survey to your email list. I usually get quite a few of these towards the end of year, but there is really no right or wrong time to survey your audience. Open up Google Forms and plug in a few specific questions that will make your content creation process easier and better!
There you have it friend! Which one of these tips are you going to implement in your content strategy? Leave a comment below!
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