Hacks in the art of content marketing

Unless you are living under a cave, you would have heard about founders of companies landing business deals by being active on Quora. The article is not about how Quora can help you in Content Marketing, rather about how producing high value content consistently can result in success. When you want to sell a product, persuade people to follow you or give you business, you should let them know who you are in the first place. One way to achieve it is through content marketing.

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Building your company’s brand is vital these days to stand out from the crowd. Before we see how quick content can be created, let’s see how you can find inspiration to create innovative content.

1. Question the status quo: This simple step could pave way for a new realm of thinking as well as finding new content to write about. There are always a lot of rigid rules in the present state of your industry that might need someone to question. Be that person.
2. Form a mastermind team: Napolean Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, insisted on the importance of a 'mastermind team', which is a team of highly motivated people. It's not necessary they belong from the same job or industry, but can encourage each other. Brainstorm your ideas with your mastermind group.
3. Offer fresh perspectives: If you can take a contrarian view against traditionally held beliefs by offering a fresh thought-process, you can be sure to grab a lot of eyeballs.
4. Interview people: This is always a people pleaser as people love to learn about the stories of others. Not only is it a way to gain new ideas, you can also leverage the reach of the personality you interview for your website.

Steps startups can use for developing and creating quick content:

Ape your competitors:

Tools like Buzzsumo help find the best content produced by your competitors. Once you get an idea of the most shared content, see if you can add more value to the topic or add a new viewpoint. If it struck a chord with your competitor’s readers, adding value to the topic will only enhance your credibility. Buzzsumo helps you filter content by date, content type, the number of shares on different social platforms, etc.

Target each of your buyer's personas:

Let’s say you have a product with a varying target audience, that can include a 15-year-old kid with attention disorder to a middle-aged person who has anxiety problems. Being clear about your buying persona will help you visualize who your customers are and what you are trying to sell. You can create content that is streamlined towards these two respective buyers based on your interactions with them. Not only will it answer the specific target audience, you get to address their trigger points and educate them about your product.

Review your competitor’s products:

Although this might be a tricky ground to tread on, if you can handle it gracefully you can get a lot of brownie points. You also get an opportunity to make your users understand why your product is better. If you don’t want to review your competitor’s products, then you can take products that are relevant to your industry and review them.

Interview the founders of the products you reviewed:

Building up on our earlier point, if there are products that you loved in your review, share the link of the review to the founder of that business. Get friendly with them and offer them a chance to be a part of your blog by featuring in an interview. Most often than not, you will get a positive response, which will shapeyour next piece. In fact, interviews are the best way to get traction on your blog as people who are interviewed will share your content with their readers, hence opening up their network as well.

Write more about your struggles than successes:

Now, isn’t that counter-intuitive? The more you open up to your readers about your struggles, the closer you get to their heart. Show a step-by-step process on how you got to where you are, include the struggles, the learnings and experiences that were a part of this journey. Don’t brag, know when to toe the line. Don’t be too much self-effacing either, maintain a balance.

Pro-tip: Find 15-20 influencers in the area that you want to write about, get their opinion on a question, use it to structure your article. This works pretty well too.