Marketing is a huge part of any business. Content is a key issue that takes time to craft and perfect. Dana offers some great advice for creating content that is relevant for your people.
Content is king. As cliché as this may sound, there’s still a lot of truth in these three little words — even more so now with all the changes to Google’s algorithms. But in the rush to generate content, we often fail to question its relevancy. For today’s marketing efforts to work, content must be relevant. It must add value. It must get folks talking. It must be so good that it needs to be shared. If content isn’t compelling, it does nothing for your position in the market.
In fact, just creating content for content’s sake can damage your credibility.

Tip 1: Focus on consumers. When creating content, keep the audience experience in mind. It should be something consumers want to read, something they want to watch or hear. Try to address their needs. And take the time to interact with them.Tip 2: Optimize content. While the focus is always on relevancy, don’t go throwing SEO out the window. Content must be searchable if it’s ever to be read. Define your keywords and use them in the copy as well as the title and URL.Tip 3: Align content with goals. Sounds obvious, right? But people still create content that doesn’t quite match their objectives. And this idea goes deeper than just generating leads or landing sales. It’s about image, voice and other immeasurables.Tip 4: Follow the conversations. Questions are plentiful on social media sites, so follow the conversations to find the demand. What are folks talking about? How are they talking about it? Where’s it taking place? Once defined, provide the answers.Tip 5: Choose the right channel. Not every idea is worthy of a blog post or merits a webinar. Sometimes, a quick tweet is all that’s necessary. Ask yourself if the content is fitting of the channel before ever putting it out there.Tip 6: Take stock of existing content. Looking back at what you’ve said can inform what should be said in the future—let alone, measures the content and its quality compared to your competitors. If something is missing, fill the need.Tip 7: Track what’s trending. The Web is filled with tools to track what’s hot, so start using them. Google Trends is the obvious choice, but Twitter also allows you to keep tabs of what’s trending. Even a quick Internet search can identify key terms. In creating content, we are our biggest obstacles — trust me, the cheesiness of that statement isn’t lost on me. It’s all about mindset. If you sit down to generate content, you’ll come up with bupkis. But sitting down to honestly share — share being the operative word — an insight or idea can make the content compelling.  Just remember if content is king than relevancy is his queen.
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Dana Severson has been writing since about the age of six, but didn’t branch out professionally until…well, let’s say it wasn’t a full-fledged career until mid-2005. Of course, his looks weren’t so scruffy as a small child, but that’s still up for debate. We want pictures!
Prior to copywriting, Dana worked in marketing as a Manager of Business Development (it seemed like a natural transition). As part of the marketing machine, he was responsible for $1.75M of business annually through the development of targeted marketing campaigns in some of the biggest (and smallest) grocery store chains around the nation. He worked on brands like Big G Cereal, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Progresso, Old El Paso, Yoplait, Nature Valley, Cascadian Farms and Muir Glen.
Dr. Jan Hoistad
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