It’s content marketing’s $64,000 question: “What does my company blog about?” No matter the size of the business, the knowledge of the staff or the access to resources, this question inevitably comes up. It makes sense, when you consider businesses who blog receive 55 percent more web traffic per month than those who do not.

Having a blog not only makes it possible for you to engage with and share content with your audience, it also allows you to educate prospects about your products and services as a means of priming the pump: When they are ready to buy, they think of your business, the one whose content they have encountered, whose website they have visited and whose products and/or services they are now familiar with.

(Image courtesy of HubSpot)

Successful Blogging Starts With Giving A Damn

The success or failure of your blog, however, rests on a decision you make—or choose not to make—well before you ever put words on a page.

You must decide to give a damn. You must be so committed to placing your prospects’ and existing clients’ needs ahead of your business’s needs that you use their goals as a beacon for any and all content efforts.

One of the dirty little secrets of content marketing is tactics and strategy alone don’t win. Yes, they help get the ball down the field, but tactics and strategy have to be guided by something.

That something is a commitment to…

• Better knowing your audience
• Better interacting with your audience
• Better serving your audience

The way to meaningfully get noticed is to care more about meeting your audience’s needs than the competition. Several months ago, while putting together a content strategy for a large health and fitness brand, I was asked “What about the blog? What should we blog about?”

The company was rebranding and adding a consumer blog to the website. I shared with the global marketing manager that the surest way to gain ground on the competition and build up good will with prospects was to deliver information that added value to the latter’s lives, and that meant putting them first early and often.

Instead of blogs about the company or its products, blogs would be written about people.

• “How Janet McMillan Prepares For A Marathon Less Than Three Months After The Birth Of Her Fourth Child.”
• Not “Ways Our Products Can Help You Prepare For Your Next Race.”

Which one would you read? The one that shows you the business gives a damn, right?

To win your customers over and score big in the content marketing race, commit to giving a damn before you do anything else.

Find out…

•  Who they are.
•  What they care about.
•  How your business can help them accomplish their goals.

Early on, this process is rather easy and simplistic.  Spend some time brainstorming about the people who would potentially be your customers.

Are they men or women? Where do they likely live? What income do they likely enjoy? Where do they spend the majority of their non-work-related time?

From there, you’d place yourself in their shoes, looking to discern what makes them tick: Family? Sports? Career? Travel? Etc.

(Photo credit: ShellyS via photopin cc)

Customers Are Waiting For Brands To Talk To Them, Not At Them

Keep in mind that this process is wholly iterative. You will refine and revise this approach with time and as you gather more information. The goal is to harness enough information for you to market intelligently to prospects.

So, when you sit down to write a blog the process takes shape naturally:

• Who am I writing this for?
• What are his/her needs?
• How can our brand make him/her the hero?

In the case of the fitness brand, the answers looked something like this:

• A 32-year-old mother of two girls
• The ability to train in her home
• By offering a low-cost exercise option that can be used in the home but stores easily and requires less than 45 minutes a day to get a training effect.

As you can imagine, blog content began to flow easily from team members.

• “How To Exercise For 3o Minutes A Day Without Leaving Your Home”
• “Ways To Get Your Before-Baby Body Without Leaving Home To Exercise”
• “Work Up A Sweat While The Kiddies Are Napping”

What began as “What should we blog about? took shape as Who are we talking to? What are their needs? How can we help them?” Your company can follow a similar outline. All it requires is that you you give a damn and drop the brand-first thinking.

What do you say? Ready to give it a try?