Professionalism is your content──Experiences from participating in the Content Hacker Reading Club (CHRC1)
Ken, the author of this article, is a motivated student in Content Hacking and loves learning copywriting and marketing-related knowledge. Thank you for authorizing “Content Hacker” to reprint. Thank you hereby.
In the First Content Hacker Reading Club, everyone studied the content marketing introductory book “The Power of Content” together. All the students here have their own areas of expertise. These expertise can be converted into content, and content can be used to answer consumer questions and generate trust, thereby achieving progressive sales.
Therefore, to engage in content marketing, you must first have a heart that is willing to share, and don’t worry that your secrets will be copied by others. But after your unique skills are made public for free, will it affect your original business? The answer is no. Even if a chef makes his recipe public so that everyone can understand the ingredients and steps, others still won’t be able to cook it to the level of a chef.
From my study of this book, my understanding of content marketing is that content marketing is a “marketing method” that uses “content” to “resonate” with target audiences. The definition of content marketing in the book is exactly the marketing technique of using content to attract target customers to the website so that they want to request further information and purchase products or services.
Source of eye-catching content: Experts and users’ opinions
For example, boys who ride motorcycles almost always change their own oil. However, changing the engine oil is very troublesome and will make your hands dirty and greasy, and the waste oil is not easy to dispose of by yourself. Most people are often willing to spend a little money and ask a professional motorcycle shop to handle it for them, saving time and effort. However, there are many motorcycle dealers on the street. If you can first understand the reviews of motorcycle dealers on the Internet, you can increase the [sense of trust] of netizens (https://www.contenthacker.today/2017/12/2017ghst-inbound-marketing-forum-summary1.html).
This kind of evaluation automatically and spontaneously generated by car enthusiasts is the so-called [user generated content (UGC)] (https://wiki.mbalib.com/zh-tw/UGC%E6%A8%A1%E5%BC%8F), which is part of content marketing.
Another kind of attractive content is [tips sharing] (https://www.contenthacker.today/2018/02/5-tips-for-writing-catchy-titles.html) written by car dealers themselves. The content is very broad and is not necessarily limited to the technical aspects of car repair. Sometimes a troublesome incident with a customer, or the process of painstakingly helping a car owner solve a difficult car problem, can be turned into a good piece of content. Putting it on the Internet, when people in need can search for this article, it will also increase their trust in the car dealer.
Content marketing is not limited to text. Videos, online seminars, presentations, and instruction manuals are all included in the scope of content.
But before generating content, we need to consider that usually our own expertise is not in picture and video production, and these can be outsourced. But only you know your expertise, vision, technology, and experience best, and even advertising companies cannot completely replace them. If we develop the habit of writing articles in text and put them on the official website or blog, we can also achieve certain content marketing results.
Continuously generate content and accumulate content marketing energy
Another way to play content marketing is to continuously create information related to your own products or services.
For example, the content produced by businesses selling electric cookers does not directly emphasize functions, but provides recipes to teach consumers how to make good meals. In order to change the dishes and whet the taste buds of their husbands and children, mothers search online for braised lion heads. What a coincidence. The cooking techniques provided by this website are so simple that you only need to use an electric pot. Do you think mothers will want to buy an electric pot from this website so that they can cook a few delicious dishes for their families? Housewives often visit this website to learn how to cook. The text and videos (recipes and cooking processes) on the website become content marketing tools.
Sell immediately, let customers come to you on their own
What content marketing needs to do is not make consumers feel pressured or forced to sell. One thing that is very important is to “let customers discover it on their own.” But what can we do to get the target customers to “find themselves”? It is to understand “what kind of information the target customers need and what they are looking for”, and we let them find this information in an “easy-to-search way”. This is a very important key.
Here, we still need to learn the secrets of keyword marketing, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to do more research at the beginning. Anyway, just start writing first. Express your professionalism or service connotation through words.
Make good use of character profiles to find the right direction for content generation
But before you start writing, it’s best to find the direction and purpose, that is, understand the type of target customer group. For different types of customer groups, different content should be created and fed.
Persona is a profile of potential customers set based on qualitative surveys and insight into customer needs. It is a “representative person” of a specific target customer group. In other words, if you only describe height, age, and gender, but fail to make an actual human form emerge in front of you, it is not considered a good persona. But then further add the previous basic information to Personality and [Values](https://www. contenthacker.today/2017/11/content-hacker-lecture-note.html), you can immediately think that this is someone (Andy Lau type, small S type…), does it make the persona more concrete?
For example, there are many subdivisions among motorcycle owners, which can be divided into groups with different needs such as fashion, transportation, fuel economy, and durability. Each motorcycle enthusiast has different purchasing needs. First, draw up a persona and write the content with this person in mind to see if it can impress him or her.
Conclusion: Professionalism is your content
Content marketing is a kind of slow but long-term marketing. If you keep doing it, good things will happen. When customers have relevant questions, you can be the first person they want to consult. Unknowingly, you will become a leader in the profession and cultivate customer loyalty.
And the customers who come to your door for consultation are often also the target group, which means you don’t have to spend advertising money to find customers. If a customer who proactively seeks out you is satisfied with the service, he or she will usually refer other customers to you because he or she has developed enough trust in your online content and physical products or services.
The book club finally mentioned “Content Calendar”. I think this tool is very important. For example, before the high school entrance examination, the teacher will plan the review scope for these three months. If you are disciplined and follow your goals, you will be less likely to lose direction. Knowing when to publish, when to proofread, when to create content, when to prepare materials, and what the strategy is before creating content, all need to be planned and managed through a content calendar.
★ Recommended reading:
★ Content Hacking Lecture Series (CHL5): How to run corporate official websites, blogs and publications [Registration now]
★ Content Hacking Lecture Series (CHL6): How to use presentations for content marketing [Registration now]
★ To improve your content power, please don’t miss the online course “[Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands] (https://hahow.in/cr/content-power)”
Further reading
- Selling without selling is content marketing──Experiences from participating in the Content Hacking Reading Club (CHRC1)
- Although content marketing knowledge is beautiful, it can only be followed by hands-on practice──Experiences from participating in the Content Hacker Book Club (CHRC1)
- [Da Nei Net Excerpt First Issue] Use the power of content to fall in love with consumers!
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