Does your content have context?

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Content marketing is becoming prominent as a key customer acquisition strategy for more and more organizations.

Most marketers understand that creating and sharing engaging content draws more visitors to their website, which leads to more page views, signups, prospects, paying customers, etc. That’s the theory at least!

“Content is King.”
– Bill Gates

This causes some marketers to commit one of content marketing’s cardinal sins: putting out content without any context.

Although content marketing campaigns start off with good intentions, there’s a point where an organization will publish content just for the sake of it. Meeting the quota becomes the objective.

It’s true that content should be interesting and engaging, but context is beyond that.

Having context means that every piece of content you publish has a purpose to it. You should know why your audience will engage with your content. Here are three questions to ask yourself to give your content context:

What’s the persona of my target audience?

Before you write anything, you should know whom you’re writing for. There’s no such thing as a generic audience in content marketing. Know your target audiences by creating personas for each.

We could write a whole post about personas, but the most important persona characteristics include demographics, behaviours, and values.

Demographics include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Budget
  • Location
  • Industry
  • Education

Behaviours include:

  • Goals
  • Challenges
  • Roles
  • Activities
  • Habits

Values include:

  • Beliefs
  • Attitudes

Good personas help you personalize the content you write. They direct the tone, style, and wording in which you communicate. If you write with a persona in mind, you give your content more context because the audience will feel like your content was written just for them.

Where and when will my target audience view my content?

Knowing the place and time your content will be viewed lends more context to your content. Audience personas can be extended to include communications preferences, content medium preferences, and device usage patterns. Will your audience consume your content on a home computer or a smartphone at work?

Assuming you’ve selected the most effective channels to reach your audience, content can be tweaked for that medium. Do not write long-form content for the body of an email.

Timing is not referring only to the time of day your content is syndicated and viewed. Timing has to do more with time frames where content will be most effective.

The best content creators consider what is relevant to their audience at the time of consumption.

It’s the ultimate context for content marketing! Think like a newspaper. There’s a reason why you read an article when you do. Usually the article will be about a story that happened recently.

Your content should consider proximity to an event if it can. An event doesn’t have to be a story in the media. Instead, an event can reference an action your target audience has taken.

For example, if your leads keep watching a demo video of your product, you should be writing content which explains the ROI of your product, that gets sent immediately after watching the demo video. Help your audience with their next logical step.

How will this content impact my target audience?

This final question relates back to why you started content marketing in the first place. When you begain content marketing, you had objectives in mind. Does your content influence buyer behaviour?

The last context to check is the business context!

Whether your content is intended to generate information requests, page likes, or white paper downloads, it should help you meet your business goals.

Don’t publish content for content’s sake. Publish with context!