[Tip #2] Create Content with the User First in Mind
In the previous tip, we had a look at the power of online content to attract high quality attention from users. We discussed how paid advertising is short term and content marketing is long term.
People pay attention to content, and you can either earn that attention by create good quality content yourself, or you can rent out user’s attention from other websites. When we rent out that attention, we call it paid advertising.
Now we understand that Content is King. We need to create high quality content to attract the attention of our target audience. Let’s have a look at how to go about creating content that strikes a chord with your users and gets their high quality attention.
A lot of people ask me: “Deepak, how are you able to write so much on your blog and not have any writer’s block?” The answer to this question is very simple, but it is difficult to practice. My answer is: “I create content with my user first in mind, and I focus on a single user.”
One of the reasons why people get “Writer’s block” is because it is very difficult to communicate via text to another human being without having that human right in front of us. None of us ever get “Talker’s block”. We don’t forget what to say when we are with people, in person. The conversation just flows.
To talk directly to your user, through the online medium, is simple but difficult. You need to understand and dissect the concept of human to human communication, to make the process easy. And that’s what we are going to do in today’s post.
Medium is Secondary, Users are Primary
When we are creating content on the digital medium, we are using a personal electronic device. The goal of the device is to communicate the content that you have created through time and space to another person who wants to consume your content. On the web, all of us are content creators and all of us consume content. The web connects us all, but the web exists because of us.
The technology is just a medium to transmit information. When you are talking to a person face to face, you still have a lot of technology that is working to make that communication possible. This technology has evolved over millions of years. The light in the room makes it possible for our eyes to see the other person, and for the other person to see us. The air in the room helps transmit the sound vibrations from the speaker’s tongue, to the listener’s ear drums.
It is easy for us to communicate in person with people because we really do not think about the technologies like the light, how the eyes convert the light into electric signals to the brain, the tongue, the ears and so on. It works in the background, and our mind focuses on the other person. We are looking at the other person and observing how he/she is listening and responding. If we put too much mental focus on the technology that makes the communication possible, we would lose focus on what we are communicating, to whom we are communicating, and how the other person is perceiving the “content” we are transmitting.
We put too much focus on the technology and the medium when we are creating content for users via the web. It is difficult because internet is just a few decades old. The medium hasn’t disappeared into the background, yet.
Just a few hundred years back, we did not even have the telephone to have a two way communication across space. Humans have evolved for millions of years on the planet earth, and our current species is only as old as 70,000 years. The last 3 decades of it is just 0.0004% of our species. It’s a very short time to get adjusted to the technology we use for communication, and that’s the hard part about digital marketing.
When creating content online, many marketers focus too much on the technology and the medium. People think too much about the right images, the right design, the format of the content and delivery of the content. Digital marketing technology enables all the bells and whistles in the communication, but as marketers we have to remember that the medium and the technology is just a means to communicate to the end user.
The medium doesn’t matter too much. In a face to face conversation, we still still say what we want to say even if the room is dark lit, and it’s a bit noisy in a public space. It doesn’t affect the communication THAT much. What matters is what you say. Yes, a better meeting room, with good sound insulation will enhance the communication in person, but we still communicate.
Similarly, when creating content on the digital medium, there are a lot of improvements that can be made on how the content is delivered and how it is consumed, but what really matters is what content is being communicated, and to whom it is communicated.
As you grow as a digital marketer, your focus will become near 100% on the message and not the medium. Your focus will be on the content and the user consuming the content. The technology and medium will disappear into the background.
Has My Idea Become Your Idea?
Right now you are reading this article on my blog, or as a chapter on my book. But the same concept can also be communicated to you in person when we meet at an event.
The same idea can be transferred to you via a PDF ebook, or a Kindle book, or a podcast. I could talk about the same concept on a video and post it on my YouTube channel where you are a subscriber.
End of the day, what really matters is – has my idea been transferred to your mind and do you get what I am saying? Do you now have the same idea in your mind? If that goal is achieved, then we have succeeded as marketers (or digital marketers).
Though I create content that is being read by tens of thousands of people on the web, I always write to one user in mind, YOU.
I create every post on social media, every YouTube video, every podcast, with one user in my mind. This user (YOU) is interested in the topic of digital marketing and learning more about it.
Every user / reader / subscriber is consuming my content alone, from behind the screens of their personal devices. People rarely read emails when another person is sitting right next to them. Email, and most of the other online communication channels are personal and user specific.
I conduct events, manage clubs and speak at conferences so that I can meet my audience in person. The more I meet my readers and followers in person, the more I understand who my target audience is.
As a digital marketer, it is important to meet your audience in person, at least a sample set of it, so that you know whom you are talking to, and what they are looking for from you in terms of advice and guidance. Do not underestimate the power of interpersonal interactions with your audience in the real world.
Online surveys, poll questions, and other ways to build customer avatars and user personas are extremely helpful to understand the needs of your audience, but with such market research, you will only ask questions based on what you know you don’t know. You are looking to find out the known unknowns.
However, when you meet your audience in person, you will start learning about a lot of things that you didn’t know that you didn’t know. Unearthing the unknown unknowns is very important – and that can be done only by meeting your audience in person. Because they are the reason why you are creating content from behind your screen. The digital mediums work because there are real people behind the screen, using it, to hear from people they want to hear from.
I have met young 19 year college students who have a fire in their belly to start an online business. I have met early stage startup entrepreneurs with frustration in their eyes because their digital marketing is not yielding results. I have met 60+ year old gentlemen, who don’t want to ignore digital marketing just because their life has passed them by. These are the things I can never learn with online surveys, questionnaires and spending time on social media.
I hope this tip helped you reframe your understanding of digital marketing and online communication.
Hundreds of new ways to market online will keep coming (and going), but all you need to focus on is the user. Understand and learn how to use technology and digital marketing tools, but do not lose focus on the user.
Do not get distracted by the latest and greatest marketing tool, or communication channel. If you are communicating the right thing, to the right person, at the right time, the medium disappears. You need to master the medium, and the medium disappears to make way for connecting with the user, for which the medium exists in the first place.
In a real world conversation, you don’t focus on the way your eyes work, the way your ears work, the light in the room etc. You focus on the person sitting on the other side – because you instinctively know that’s more important. As a successful digital marketer, you will consciously lose focus on the medium, and put your focus on the end user – not because you don’t know how to use the medium, but because you understand that the user is more important than the medium.
from Digital Deepak http://bit.ly/2HzHOsL