Do you want to create content that motivates your audience to take action? If so, I have the solution for you. Discover how to craft compelling, authentic content that inspires your audience to act and achieve their goals.
Creating great content is not just about addressing pain points but speaking to the symptoms of a problem your best clients might not even know they have, in order to compel them into action.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Engage in rich content production that sparks action from the audience.
- Reach out to audiences by addressing their problems in a language they understand.
- Create content that not only drives action, but sets the stage for your clients with good expectations of the workload ahead.
- Forge a trusting relationship with your listeners by guiding them along a captivating quest.
On this episode of The Know, Like & Trust Show, we delve into solving one problem that leads to the realization of other problems, also known as the “symptom web.” Good content creation involves acknowledging the existence of other symptoms, creating a feeling of possibility, and we share how it’s not always effective to target customers with pain point marketing. I leave listeners with a challenge to inject their content with their authentic voice.
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Highlights in this episode:
- [00:00:52] The author has been thinking about the concept of becoming a legend for over a decade after reading a quote on a friend’s website. Great quotes make us feel something.
- [00:04:19] Noticing subtle discomfort and the feeling of forgetting something.
- [00:06:38] Don’t address pain points, focus on symptoms. Good content helps solve unknown problems. Difficulty in grabbing attention for unknown problems.
- [00:09:51] Personality-driven marketing can lead to building trust and addressing their symptoms.
- [00:14:45] The podcast discusses adding authenticity to content.
Every business out there needs content. Whether for your website, blog, or social media, content marketing is how you attract potential customers and keep existing ones engaged. The process is how you move strangers into true believers–those 1000 true fans every business strives for. The question is, what separates good content from great content? In this article, we’ll explore the difference and why it matters for your marketing strategy.
What is the Difference Between Good and Great Content?
Definition of Good Content
Good content makes you feel something. Good content is informative and engaging. It gives your audience what they want and need in a straightforward way. The grammar is correct, and the spelling is accurate. Good content holds the reader’s attention, but it might not leave a lasting impression.
Definition of Great Content
Great content goes beyond what good content does. It’s not only informative and engaging but also unique, memorable, and thought-provoking. Great content resonates with your audience, evokes emotions, and creates a possibility. It’s work that stands out and addresses the symptoms of the pain your audience is in right now. It leaves a lasting impression and inspires your readers to take action. In short, good content makes you feel something, but great content compels you to do it. Great content turns that feeling into action.
Learn the Difference
The difference between good content and great content is in the details. Great content focuses on the user experience, while good content is more concerned with informative value. Great content is hard to create and takes more effort, while good content can be produced quickly and easily. You can find good content anywhere (and soon, even moreso, now that AI is a regularly-used tool), but great content is rare and leaves a lasting impression.
Key Takeaway:
Good content makes you feel something, but great content compels you to do it. Great content turns that feeling into action.
Why is Great Content Important for Your Marketing Strategy?
You want your content to evoke emotions and make your audience feel they can relate to your business. Great content resonates with your audience, evokes the right emotions, and gets your audience interested in your business.
And you can only do this if you know which emotions TO evoke.
Great content needs to go above and beyond good content. It needs to be unique, memorable, and thought-provoking. Knowing which problems to address so that your audience begins nodding their head and self-selecting into your world is the key to moving from good to great. It’s the reason your audience will begin to share your content with others–even when it’s not a perfect fit for them. (“Hey, you really need to be following Britney Gardner…” should be your favorite phrase, with your own name!)
How to Uncover Hidden Problems Your Audience Faces
One of the most essential aspects of compelling content marketing is understanding the problems your target audience faces, even when they don’t always realize they have those problems.
The issue most creators, online service providers, and content-forward businesses face is their best clients don’t always realize what their problem is. If their problem is a few steps deeper than they’re acknowledging, creating content that solves that problem won’t resonate with them. The issue is, your best clients know something isn’t quite right. They know something is missing, but they might not be able to articulate it. And if they can’t voice it, how can they see content and realize it’s meant for them?
Pinpoint the Exact Problems Your Content Consumers are Facing
Good content is hard when you haven’t grasped this idea yet. Trying to create content that not only makes people feel something but also compels them to act is the goal! First they’ll listen, then they’ll understand, and finally they’ll apply–but we’ve got to get them listening first.
Are you ready to learn how to pinpoint the exact problems your content consumers are grappling with? Ones they don’t even realize they have? I’ve discovered the secret to accomplishing this, and it involves speaking to the symptoms rather than the pain itself.
The answer is The Symptom Web. Every problem has a laundry list of associated symptoms, and you’ll want to start addressing those symptoms in your content callouts.
For example: in my mid-20’s I had a few years of random tension headaches that were intensely painful. I figured out the hard way, if I could slam a bunch of caffeine through green tea and dark chocolate right away, they weren’t as bad–but I didn’t always have those items on me when I needed them. I endured them for over a year with no relief the handful of times that year. I casually mentioned this to my chiropractor, looking for a supplement I could carry with me that had the same quality of caffeine and antioxidants I found in tea and chocolate. Instead, he showed me a simple stretch I could do each day–and do a lot as I felt the headache coming on–that ended up relieving me of the headaches entirely.
It never occurred to me learning a stretch would solve this problem. I was looking for the wrong solution. He not only solved the symptom (relieving the pain), he solved the pain as well. If I’d seen a social media post for stretches I should do every day to be healthy, I’d have scrolled right on past.
Key Takeaway:
Great content helps your best client solve a problem they didn’t even know they had.
How The Symptom Web Can Help
As a content creator, connecting with your audience on a more profound level is your ultimate goal. The secret to achieving this? Get one step ahead by identifying the problems they don’t even know they have! With this insight, you have the opportunity to help and inspire your audience, improving their lives.
The Symptom Web is a tool that can help you create great content. This tool allows you to identify your audience’s pain points, needs, and wants, allowing you to create content that resonates with them. By using The Symptom Web, you can create content that goes above and beyond what your competition is producing.
Identify a symptom, help your audience solve it, and then acknowledge there are other symptoms!
Set Up Good Expectations With This Kind of Content
This opens your audience up to a feeling of possibility–and sets them up to have a great working relationship with you when they take the next step because they’ll understand there is real work involved and not a simple button that makes the problem go away.
Using a template like “If you ___ but you still don’t ___, can help you identify the missing piece or solution that your content should address.
This approach humanizes your content and allows you to connect more deeply with your audience, heightening your marketing strategy’s effectiveness. It means your audience is more likely to return or keep reading and choose to move along the know-like-trust pathway with you.
How to Create Great Content?
Understand Your Target Audience and Create a Personality-Driven Marketing Strategy
You can’t create great content if you don’t know your audience. Understand who your audience is–your best client–and create a personality-driven marketing strategy that speaks to their needs and wants. Use data and analytics to keep refining your approach and make sure you’re producing content that resonates with your target audience.
Create Actionable Content
Great content needs to be actionable. It should lead to something: a sale, a conversation, or engagement. Make sure that you’re providing clear calls-to-action in your content and guiding your audience towards the desired action.
Execute a Great Content Marketing Strategy
To create great content, you need a great content marketing strategy. Your content strategy should include the types of content you’ll create, the platforms you’ll use, and how you’ll measure success. It’s a comprehensive plan that guides your content creation efforts and keeps them aligned with your overall marketing goals.
What Elements Makes a Piece of Content Great?
Beyond moving from feeling to action, beyond following the listen-comprehend-apply steps, great content needs to hit the high notes on a few other digital marketing nodes to make your content excel beyond your competition–and cut through the noise.
Quality Content Creation
Quality creation is a must-have for great content. It means ensuring the content is well-researched, covers the topic extensively, and is written in an engaging manner. Attention to detail is essential, and great content is always polished and error-free. You’re writing to real people, yes, but those real people want to know you’re paying attention.
Strong Headlines and Attractive Visuals
Great content needs to be noticed, and strong headlines and attractive visuals are how you do that. Your headlines should be captivating and accurately describe the content’s focus. Your visuals should complement the content and make it more attractive and exciting to read.
Keyword Research and Great SEO
Great content must be found, so keyword research and great SEO are essential. Make sure your content uses relevant keywords throughout your content, meta descriptions, and URLs. Pay attention to on-page optimization, backlinks, and other factors that affect your content’s search engine rankings.
How to Measure the Success of Your Content?
Track Your Visitors and Subscriber List
The first metric to track the success of your content is the number of visitors and new subscribers. These metrics tell you how much traffic your content generates organically and how many people are interested in your business.
Look at the Perspective of Your Visitors and Adjust Your Strategy
The second metric is to look at your visitor’s perspective and adjust your strategy accordingly. Analyze how visitors are interacting with your content, where they’re dropping off, and what content is retaining their attention. Use this information to adjust your content strategy and create more great content that resonates with them. We’re designing a journey of content, and if you see people veering off that path, there’s a reason. New content should address those gaps.
Do you need an easy, at-a-glance way to measure your content?
Creating great content isn’t easy, but it’s essential for your business’s success. By understanding the difference between good and great content, learning what makes content great, and executing a great content strategy, you can create content that resonates with your audience, inspires them to take action, and makes a lasting impression. Start producing great content today and see the difference it can make for your business’s growth.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. What is the “symptom web”?
Answer: The “symptom web” is a term used by Content Strategist Britney Gardner to describe how solving one problem can often lead to the realization of other problems, creating an open loop ripe for content topics.
2. How can acknowledging the existence of other symptoms help in creating good content?
Answer: Acknowledging the existence of other symptoms can help create a feeling of possibility and is a key component of creating good content that makes the audience feel something.
3. What is the challenge with pain point marketing?
Answer: The challenge with pain point marketing is getting clients’ attention if the problem isn’t something they’re aware of. Good content can help solve problems that clients didn’t even know they had by addressing symptoms that the customer is experiencing, which will get their attention. This challenge is especially relevant for microbusinesses and service providers that solve complex issues with thoughtful solutions.
4. What is Britney’s proposed template for identifying gaps in content coverage?
Answer: The speaker’s proposed template involves identifying what the client’s best client is doing well and comparing it to what the client has not yet achieved, then identifying the missing piece or solution to the problem. If you ____ (a good thing your best client is doing/has), but you still don’t _____ (a desire or goal they haven’t achieved), then the missing piece is _____ (the thing you do to solve this symptom).
Music by Michael De La Torre. Thanks, Mikey!
