Content marketing think like a publisher chapter 4 what kind of content are you

4
What Kind of Content
Are You?
“The first rule of knowing what kind of content you’ll create is knowing who
you’re creating it for.”

The title of this chapter is something of a trick question.
Sure, content marketing means developing content
around your business, your products, and your services.
But that content isn’t supposed to exist in some youoriented void. Content is aimed externally: at customers,
prospects, buyers, brand advocates, bloggers, the media,
people participating in social networks, and potentially
employees (if you’re recruiting).
So the first rule of knowing what kind of content you’ll
create is knowing who you’re creating it for. This will not
only help you determine what kind of content, but also in
what form and where content will appear. Blogs?
YouTube videos? Tweets?
You’ll never know until you begin creating personas.


Part II

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W h a t K i n d o f C o n t e n t A r e Yo u ?

Personas?
Personas are used in digital marketing for many purposes, not just content marketing. They’re woven into website design, usability, navigation, advertising, and marketing messages. They’re used in offline scenarios, too, particularly in the retail
sector. The idea behind personas is that you can’t connect with your customers
(and other constituencies) if you don’t know who they are. Obviously, you can’t

know each person individually, but do a little research, and different audience segments start falling into pretty well-defined characters with distinct characteristics.
Although books have been written about the art and science of developing user
personas, the idea is to boil your audience down to a handful of distinct individuals, each representing a group you’re serving—or trying to reach. Personas have
names, faces, and real personalities.
Following are three example personas:
• Jill is 28, and a highly competitive person, both at work and in her personal life. Social status is important to her, and she appreciates these
qualities in others. She tends to make impulsive decisions and is quick
to turn to the Internet to accomplish tasks so long as she is able to get
what she needs quickly and efficiently. She seeks verifiable results and
quantifiable bottom lines. Social interaction in the process of a business
transaction is not important to her. She’ll willingly pay more to get
extra benefits or features. Jill is unmarried and does not see marriage in
her near future.
• James, 36, is Internet savvy and is online in excess of 10 hours per day.
He has multiple email accounts and does all his shopping and banking
online, often from his iPad or iPhone. James works for an ecommerce
company and has just purchased a modest one-bedroom condo in the
suburbs outside a large metropolitan city.
• Stacy, 34, is a soccer mom and the main shopper for her family, living
in a semi-rural community. Outside of using email to communicate
with friends and family, she’s intimidated by technology and inexperienced with the Internet. She is well educated and usually confident, but
she doesn’t really trust online shopping sites that require credit card
information, and she’s leery of joining social networks. She’s heard too
much bad news about identity theft and privacy and thinks it’s safer
just to avoid these potentially risky areas.
Your content won’t connect with customers (or prospects) if you don’t know who
they are, and it’s unlikely they’re some amorphous mono-person. They’re disparate
individuals who likely fall into half a dozen or so distinct categories. People in each
of these categories search differently. They discuss different things on different

Chapter 4

W h a t K i n d o f C o n t e n t A r e Yo u ?

social networks. How they decide what to
buy, or what to recommend to their friends,
family, or colleagues at work, is different and
distinct. They have different predilections
and different preferences. Instead of creating
content for everyone, you’re talking to Stacy,
or Jill, or James.

17

“Your content
won’t connect
with customers (or
prospects) if you
don’t know who
they are.”

So how do you go about creating personas?
Start by digging into data. Look at website
analytics. Where are people coming from?
What keywords and phrases do they use to
find you (and your competitors)? How does your conversion data pan out from
those metrics?

You can use a variety of tools to collect and parse this data, as well as social media

listening tools, services that break out a site’s demographic information, and services such as Flowtown and Rapleaf that tease social network data out of your email
lists (assuming you have them). Then there’s that tried-and-true method: the customer survey. (Offering the chance to win a $50 Amazon gift certificate is a great
way to encourage participation.)
After you’ve collected all this data, analyzed it, and segmented it into personas, it’s
important to regularly revisit persona profiles. After all, they’re not etched in stone.
When personas have been developed, you’ll know who you’re talking to and writing for. You may even get a clearer idea as to whether pink or cerulean blue should
be the dominant color on a web page or in a photo or video. You’ll have a clearer
understanding of where your personas congregate online and how you might
approach them.
Think of it this way: If you were trying to get a pretty girl to go out with you, you’d
likely adapt a radically different approach when coming on to the bookish graduate
student in the library, as opposed to the flamboyant party girl in the red spangled
dress at a disco.
Well, wouldn’t you?
Every business has its own set of unique personas. Some have only three or four,
whereas others have a dozen or more. Although all your content marketing initiatives ought to be addressed directly to one of your identified personas (although it’s
perfectly possible that one content initiative may cover two or more profiles), all
content marketing tends to fall into a specific set of categories.
Let’s consider them. The next few chapters break down the different content categories.


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