You may have heard the phrase “Content is King”. Content can bring traffic and establish your expertise. Planning your content marketing strategy first can help you to get better results with every content piece that you create and publish.

Why Content is so Powerful

Content marketing is an amazingly powerful strategy and has numerous benefits. Here are just a few:

• It’s inexpensive.
• It can help create fierce loyalty from your audience.
• It helps generate free word of mouth.
• It helps establish your authority and expertise.
• It’s great for search engine rankings.
• It can bring publicity from traditional media to you.

This guide is going to help you tap into those benefits.

What Your Market Wants

A lot of people say that they aren’t quite sure what kind of content they should create or what they should write about. But you know what? You have a ton of research opportunities right at your fingertips. It’s all a matter of really being aware of and taking the time to get to know your target market.

If you do this, you’ll be way ahead of most of your competitors who seem to prefer to live in a bubble and GUESS at the appropriate content for their audience.

Here are just a few ways to start understanding what your readers want to learn and the types of products they buy/want to buy.

1. Ask them to submit questions. A dead simple way to find content ideas is to simply ask your readers what questions they have on a particular topic. Not only do you get great content ideas, it helps your readers feel involved in the process. Set up a simple submission form and you’re ready to roll.
2. Track your links. If you send a link to content or a product in an email, track it. Do the same on your websites. Pay attention to what interests them and what type of stuff they just pass by and modify your plan accordingly.

Tip: Don’t just track product sales… gauge interest in the content you provide as well. By doing this, you’ll learn what types of information your readers are interested in. You’ll also learn what format they like and whose information they respond to best.

3. Observe your audience on your own virtual property. If you have a blog, forum or some other type of interactive site, you have a lot of research opportunities right there. Pay attention to your reader comments, the questions they have and click through to their websites to see what their interests are and what problems they might need help with.  Spending just a little time doing this on a regular basis can be a real eye-opener.
4. Observe your audience in their natural habitat. If you don’t have a blog, forum, etc, you can go elsewhere to observe your market. Just realize that when you have your own social opportunities with people who already love to listen to you, subscribe to your newsletter and buy your products – you will get the best picture of what your particular audience wants.

The potential risks with going outside of your own network is that we all attract a particular type of person in our target market and we may get slightly different impressions by observing our intended targets elsewhere.

5. Make affiliate offers. If you’re considering creating a content-based product (info product), test your idea out first by offering similar products through affiliate links. There is no sense in creating something your readers have no interest in buying. Knowing exactly what your audience will buy is priceless marketing information.
6. Conduct keyword research.  To generate more first-time visitors and leads, conducting keyword research will help you determine what kind of content you might create. You can do research at WordTracker.com and create some nice-sized keyword lists for potential content ideas. Look for highly-targeted phrases that are likely to have low competition to make it easy to rank well on search engines.

For example, “How to build your own router table” or “remove wine stains from carpet.”

7. Watch your competitors. See what your competitors are doing. What types of content do they give their readers and what do their readers respond to? Again, your audience may be unique from theirs but look for competitors who share a similar style and focus to you and you’ll get some great ideas from there.

Overall, the more observant you are, the more likely you are to deliver what your readers what. At first, you might find it challenging but the more you make it a habit to observe in these ways, the more second-nature understanding your target marketing becomes.

Content Brainstorming Strategies

Observation is your best source for delivering the type of content your audience really wants but we all run short on ideas now and then. If you run into trouble, here are some more surefire ways to get the content idea ball rolling again.

1. Read/watch the news and current events. Pay attention to what’s happening in the news and many times you’ll find something that ties in perfectly to your audience’s interests. For example, if your target market is parents of teens and stories of online dangers or even of inspiring kids is a potential subject to share and comment on.
2. Keep a notebook with ideas. Always keep a little notebook or your mobile device handy when you come across ideas. Sometimes a little story about what happened to you at a restaurant or your kid’s soccer game can become a relevant lesson to your readers.
3. Product reviews. People always appreciate detailed and honest product reviews. A good review will discuss a product’s features and potential benefits. It will also clearly show who the product is suitable for and perhaps who it is not. It will also talk about any potential drawbacks to be aware of.
4. Conduct case studies with your clients/customers. Case studies are perfect because they can be highly-informative, but also provide amazing testimonials for your business.
5. Interview other experts/celebrities in your market. Now I don’t mean get Angelina Jolie or some other big-time celebrity. Just get people in your market that people turn to for information, guidance and even entertainment.
6. Have someone interview you. This is an ultra-easy way to create content simply by answering questions. You can even have your own readers submit questions for the interview.
7. Look at previous content and expand on it. If you previously created some popular content, see where you can expand it or possibly target a certain aspect of it in finer detail.
8. Create a “Top 10” list. If writing isn’t your bag, this is an easy way to come up with plenty of ideas in point-form. For example, “Top 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Groceries”.
9. Entertain. People use the Internet for information but also for entertainment. You don’t always have to come up with earth-shattering information to impress your audience. Have fun, inspire them or make them laugh.

Of course you don't have to use all of these tips. These are meant to give you ideas that you can sort and use as you plan and create your own content marketing plan. To your success!

Go from zero content, zero ideas to being the hero of your family and friends by creating your own in-demand profitable info product ready to take orders in the next month! How is that even possible? Read on…