Every piece of content you create is like placing the next stepping stone that guides your prospects closer to you.

When they reach your side of the river and purchase your product or sign up to your service, all those important bits of content you’ve carefully placed have done their job.

The content has raised awareness of your existence, inspired interest in you and your offer and built the trust that has instilled the confidence to say “where do I sign?”

Content comes in all sorts of guises; your website copy, social media posts, emails, networking conversations, presentations, podcast (yours or as a guest as I was when I spoke about niching with Business Talks 2), even a little voice note sent via messenger is marketing content.

  • When you create content, you create opportunity for you and your business.
  • Sharing valuable content is your gift to your audience, which they appreciate and thank you for.

Engaging content is not measured by the number of likes or views of a post or reel. These are vanity metrics. This type of content has it’s place, but not in isolation.

You could say a measurement of engaging content equates to cash in the bank, which is a compelling reason to improve your content creation skills.

What is NOT engaging content?

Sometimes it’s easier to work out the positive when you first look at the negative, so here are some ideas about what is NOT engaging content:

  • Boring – an email that arrives with the subject ‘Spring Newsletter’ doesn’t inspire you to read it, which is such a shame because the content could be really interesting.
  • Too complex – acronyms and industry jargon are a real turn off and the wrong language creates confusion
  • Irrelevant – when the wrong message reaches the wrong person
  • Dishonest – misleading promises make me sick, unfortunately not everyone sees through them
  • No connection – If you don’t care one way or the other you just switch off
  • Salesy – Sales content has it’s place, but needs an excellent reason to buy
  • Arrogant – no one likes a big ego or to be talked down to
  • Directionless – a great piece of content can be wasted if it stops abruptly (unless the intention is to leave them hanging) and doesn’t explain what to do next

What IS engaging content?

To find the elements of engaging content let’s flip those negatives:

  • Interesting – the topic is relevant, important, thought provoking or entertaining
  • Easy to understand and consume – using your clients language with a conversational tone, lots of white space and headings so it’s easy to read
  • Targeted – purposefully directed to the receiver, addressing their problems, wants and needs, explaining the results they can expect and painting a picture of what they can achieve
  • Honesty, Integrity and Transparency – it’s authentic and trustworthy
  • Emotion, Empathy and Understanding – Story telling is a great content tool to draw your ideal client in. Emotions are piqued, then logic makes the decision
  • It’s all about your ideal client – Put yourself in their shoes. What do they need to see, read or hear?
  • Clear next steps – A call to action. What do you want them to do next? Send you a message, download your lead magnet, find out more…

If you don’t feel as though you’re getting the traction you’d like from the content you create, are there any elements from this list that are missing and can be introduced?

Or do you need to take a step back in order to start creating content that attracts dream clients?

The buck stops (or starts) with YOU

Do you have your marketing strategy right?

If you’ve leapfrogged over the strategy and dived straight into the content creation, this could be the problem.

Having your strategy right means:

CLARITY – Being super clear about WHY you do what you do as well as deep understanding of what makes your ideal client tick.

CONFIDENCE to share your thoughts opinions and ideas, and if you’re not confident, knowing the steps you need to take to break through the barriers that are holding you back.

CONSISTENCY, which means having a plan and sticking to it. One that works for you, that you’re comfortable with and is within your budget and the time you have available.

Clarity, confidence and consistency together helps you create engaging content that delivers dream clients.

Next steps…

If this is the missing piece in your marketing puzzle then I’d love to invite you to join my next Super Niched course. It’s 5 x 1 hour weekly workshops online, starting 2nd May through to 30th May.

Have a question? Then call me, Nicola, on 07565 382803,  email me.