Where can I find content for my marketing is a common question!

We all know that having new emails, blog posts, news posts and articles is a really good thing, but coming up with a never ending stream of ideas is really hard.

In this episode we’ll give you lots of ideas to find new content. The good news is that you don’t need to do anything new; you just have to tune in to the sources that are around you every day…

Transcript:

Hi, welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

I hit Episode 100 recently and I was talking about video and the importance of video and the ways you can use video within your business. We had quite a few comments from various people about the Episode. I think mainly from the introduction but also around how to find content to talk about.

One of the concerns is where you constantly come up with new information and new content to put into videos and emails and blog posts and all of those sorts of things.

I thought it would be really useful to talk about the ways that I find new content, because it is quite a challenge to come up with content for videos every week.

Actually once you get tuned in you can find things far easier than starting with a blank sheet of paper every week.

It also gives you conversation points if you’re wanting to talk to customers and you’re trying to find a reason to pick up the phone to them. Sometimes to have content, can actually be quite useful in that as well, to almost justify the conversation.

Because it’s really important to keep that dialogue going with customers, particularly if you’ve got long periods between purchases or contact, you need to keep the conversation going. And video is obviously a great way of doing that.

Also to be able to prove your worth on things like social media and on blog posts and on your website, having good content and being able to repurpose that is actually really useful.

But it is, as I say, it’s hard to know what to say!

So I’ve got a few ideas for you.

First off, think about the conversations that you routinely have with people.

So when you’re chatting to somebody, perhaps at a networking event or when you’re chatting on the phone or maybe even if you’re just out with friends or family, if someone asks you about your business, just make a mental note of the question that you’re being asked because if they’re asking that question then other people will likely be of a similar mindset.

Think about the types of questions that you’re asked.

Why do people phone you with questions?

What questions do you get in emails that you receive about your product or service if people are considering buying or questions that they’re asking about specific topics. We get questions routinely about, for example, this one about ‘where do I find my content?’ So it’s things like that that can give you ideas.

Think about what’s changing within your industry or within your business.

That’s always a good thing to talk about and to promote, to talk about positively, to explain.

And think about also what’s hard to explain other than face to face.

Some of the things that I cover often in terms of BaranovTV, so we’ve done budgets in two stages. It’s quite a chunky subject and you need to get across the reasoning, the logic and the different scenarios and that’s really hard to do in an email, it’s just going to be too wordy. But a video can give you a really good starting point and it’ll enable you to chat to people, so it’s a great way of doing that.

What do new customers need to know?

So it could be things about instructions of how to use your product; how to get the most out of your product; what your services involve; things they need to think about in terms of renewals potentially or fees and that sort of thing.

What’s topical, what’s happening at the moment for you?

So it could be, I don’t know, Brexit related, it could be news, it could be something that’s come up that you see online, and you think, actually that would be relevant to my customers, I can get that out there quite quickly.

The other one to think about is ‘myths and misconceptions’.

We quite often talk about ‘Joe down the pub’. ‘Joe down the pub’ is a nightmare for accountants generally, because there’s always someone down the pub who’s ‘oh no, you don’t need to be paying all that in tax’. But actually with the different scenarios and different individuals have different situations and ‘Joe down the pub’ doesn’t necessarily know his stuff quite as well as somebody who’s a qualified accountant.

So think about things that you hear that are myths and misconceptions and where you put people right. That’s a really good idea to get some content out there.

Finally I have talked about this book in the past, “They Ask You Answer” by Marcus Sheridan.

Marcus talks about how to use content marketing, particularly on websites. If you can have a read through that it will give you some really good ideas, for content. And it’s all about making sure that your content gives a full story and building trust with your potential customers to make them feel really well informed and that they trust you so that you are the go-to person when they are ready to purchase. So Marcus Sheridan’s book is a really good one to look at to get content ideas too.

So that’s a whistle stop tour, I hope that helps. I hope that prompts you with some ideas of content because content is hard to find but is brilliant and you can obviously use it in lots of different ways once you’ve got an idea.

So I hope that helps and I’ll see you all very soon.