What’s the number one biggest stressor for each and every client?
Content!
“Who will write it? Who will edit? What about the content we already have??”
“Content” refers to the words, images, video, PDFs and other pieces of information you can add to your new website. Content is what gets crawled by the search engines. It’s what converts a visitor into a client.
Content transforms your site from a boring brochure into a relished resource!
Content is very important. Unfortunately, the importance of content might cause stress when it comes to gathering, writing, and editing content. Maybe a lot of stress.
Don’t worry. Content can be easy if you look at it from the right angle.
Good content is about telling your story. You do it every day. Your sales people do it for a living. Your employees do it when they are asked about their job or even just their day.
What’s your story? What differentiates you from your competition?
To tell a great story, you need to know your audience.
Buyer Personas
We’ve written quite a bit about identifying buyer personas. Whether you create actual personas or, at a minimum, have a good idea of who your listener/reader is, you are on the right track.
It certainly helps to have a visual to work with – an image of a client or at least a character you can have in front of you as you write, gather or edit your website’s content. With this visual, you can think about…
- What problems do you solve for her?
- How is your solution different?
- What action do you want them to take?
Forcing you to focus on your audience minimizes the tendency to write your content in French, with all the we, we, we’s!
A Good Story Has a Beginning, Middle and End
Of course a user’s experience on your site is rarely this linear. But, think of your website as a group of short stories…
In other words, the reader’s journey through your website can follow a number of different paths. What does each path look like to the reader? How can your story change as the user follows a certain path…
- Beginning: this is the first thing a reader sees – the headline, the image, whatever is there to grab their attention
- Middle: this is the meat of the story, the plot. This is where the story takes shape and leads the reader along. It should keep the her engaged.
- End: you should always know what this is going to be. Write your story with the end in mind. This is the action, the big finish!
Each page on your website is a new opportunity to tell your story. Not the typical History or About Us boring story, write the story that they want to read. The story that grabs them, speaks to their pain, and offers a new way of thinking.
Did you ever read a great book (or watch a movie for that matter) and come away from it changed somehow? This is your goal. You’re not writing the content to impress, or to boast. You are writing this content to move someone.
What moves your clients?
- Know your audience
- Understand their pain
- Write to this, always
- Move them to act
Boring content, the words that corporations churn out all the time, does nothing to move your client. You might not need to say any of that stuff.
Writing a story about a hero (the client), their struggle (pain), and how they overcame (your solutions), will simplify your content approach and force you to get to the point!
How can you help your client? What’s the story?