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How to Create Content Your Audience Wants to Consume

Alright, so how to create content that your audience wants to consume?

Realistically–I’m gonna say this in the kindest way possible–you are infringing on other people’s time when you create content, so you have to make it worth it to them. That’s the premise that we’re talking about here.

It’s not about you, it’s about your best client

One of the things that I’ve always kind of laughed about, chuckled about from way back in the days of my first business as a wedding photographer, was the about page on the website. And people always said, I don’t know what to write about myself. (To be very fair, I struggled with this as well for a time. So I am poking fun at myself, 100% along with anything else.)

Sometimes people thought they’d get clever and make like little lists of facts about themselves, you know, like, coffee connoisseur, gym rat, sourdough aficionado…all those random things that had nothing to do with why the clients were on the website. And the more I got involved in actual marketing, marketing in an on-brand away, in particular, the more I realized your about page isn’t about you.

And that’s just your about page on your website, right? So if someone goes to your website, and clicks on the about page, that’s probably the place they would most expect to hear a bunch about you. But even then, it’s not what they want.

What they want, is how you are going to help them. So anything you write about you needs to be framed in the context of how it’s going to help the viewer, the audience, the person consuming the content.

If you want to create content that your audience wants to consume, your content always needs to keep that in mind. What are they looking for? When you put something about yourself, you have to frame it in the context of how it matters to your audience.

How to Add “About You” Information Your Audience Cares About

I’m a big fan of including, you know, little life details in your work. So right over my shoulder in this video, you can see my little Lego thing. It’s the $60 Lego set that they released for Pride last June. I saw it and I bought it immediately. And I was like, that is gonna look great on display.

What does that tell you? Well, it tells you that I try to be friendly to everybody, right? Will I be successful 100% of the time? Not necessarily. But it is a goldmine of information. It tells you what I value without me ever actually having to put a value on my about page.

What else can you see? You see pictures of my family? I’m a mom, I don’t hide that. For the record, I am a working mother, I work no more than 20 hours a week right now. At least in the context of me being able to provide for my family, I do a full-time income with my 20 hours a week. These are things that you know about me, things that you know I value.

Now, how do I frame it in the context of helping my audience in creating content that they want to consume?

I share a lot of content on how to make your content creation, your content production, your strategic outlay of all that content that you’re constantly creating, more efficient.

Why do I do that? Well, my time is valuable and your time is valuable. So I always put whatever I’m talking about myself in the context of how it can help you. If I have figured out content production ways that make it take less time, so I can get back to either helping my clients more or living my life more, or I don’t know, just crawling up on the couch and reading a good book, then that same thing can be applied in your life.

The mechanics of balancing your content plan

That is how you create content that your audience wants to consume. Now, as for the actual mechanics of creating that content, last week, I did a whole four-part series on the different ways to balance your content. It’s based on that wedding poem, “old, new, borrowed and blue.” (Whether you think a bride actually needs to wear something old, new, borrowed, or blue is up to you.) But it’s really good way to have a memorable content balancing mechanism for your business.

• So you know old content, that’s repurposing old content
• New means new content, have a good new content creation system
• Borrowed content: share somebody else’s, but give the context, not only why it matters to you, but again, why it matters to your audience. What is the point of them consuming it? Why should it matter to them right?
• And then out of the blue was kind of the fun off-the-wall stuff.

So if you want more information on the mechanics of balancing your content to make sure that it is really client-focused and really consumable for them, go ahead and check out the rest of that series. But everything we do has to come back to that one idea that I’ve already expressed. What’s in it for them?

Work with people’s natures

We humans are a very self-centered lot. And it’s okay to acknowledge that. My favorite example of how self-centered we are is a group photo. The last time you had a group together, y’all took a selfie together, a group picture, right? Whoever had the picture on their phone, I guarantee you, the picture they shared with everybody else is the one where they look the best.

So knowing that that is part of human nature, knowing that uncomfortable truth about who we are, and who our audience is, create content that acknowledges where they are at right now.

“Hey, you’re here, you want to get over here, let’s connect the dots on that and help you get from A to B or from A to D, even.”

That is the kind of content there people will consume.

Now, knowing your audience, of course, means that you know whether they’re going to prefer short format content, longer format, content, all of that kind of stuff. That’s up to you to do the market research on your best clients, I have resources on how to do that. Just reach out to me if you want some of those resources, they are available for free on my podcast on my content channels, as well.

Even with that client research, even if you know everything about your client, you always have to ask yourself the question before you hit Publish. What’s in it for them?

• When I ask them to consume this content, however long that’s going to take, what is the value exchange?
• What are they going to get out of it?
• How is it going to apply to their life, not just after reading through the whole thing, but in the first few lines.

That is how you create content that your best client will want to consume again and again. And that is how you grow your audience in the same way. Alright, guys, I hope this was helpful. Again, go out and watch the rest of the series for the actual how-to and how you can balance on-brand content for every audience.