Even the greatest writer knows the bone-chilling terror of the blank page. When it comes to creating effective site content, very often, the biggest challenge is simply getting started. What exactly do your visitors want to know? What do they need to know? What magic nugget of information can change them from casual browser to loyal client?
If these questions seem like A Lot, don’t worry. Chances are, you already have all the information you need to create truly compelling content. The key? Listening to your customers.
Get content ideas from your customers
Okay, it’s unlikely that a client of yours is going to get in touch and say: Hey, I’d really like to read a thousand-word blog/FAQ/entertaining-but-expert article all about visual branding/cybersecurity training/whelk-stall management for beginners.
Nothing’s ever that easy. But your current and potential customers do give you valuable information through the questions they ask.
- Is your product suitable for my needs?
- What are my payment options?
- How can I get the best value from what you’re offering?
- What insights does your team have on trends in the whelk sector for Q4 of this year and beyond?
Enquiries like this are gold, because they give you a direct insight into the needs and interests of your customer base. So how do you maximise that insight and make your visitors feel really and truly heard?
1. Keep track
That’s the first and simplest step. When a customer gets in touch through any channel, keep a record of the initial question and any follow-ups that may arise. Ideally, compile all enquiries in a central document or spreadsheet so that you can easily progress to step 2…
2. Keywords and phrases
Once you’ve amassed some material, it’s time to start looking for common elements. When words and themes occur across a number of customer enquiries, that’s a good indicator of an issue you need to tackle.
There are plenty of programs, apps and other tools to help you identify, analyse and categorise those key search terms. Here at WordHound, we use Keywords Everywhere, an intuitive freemium browser extension.
3. Categorise and cluster
Once you’ve identified some useful topics, it’s time for triage. Some questions are big and meaty and need a blog post – or a series – all to themselves. The more detail, the better! This is especially the case if you’re focusing closely on a specific service, use case, or market segment, e.g. cybersecurity for legal firms, or the little wooden forks supply chain.
But others are small and straightforward, and can easily be clustered into a catch-all blog post or FAQ with other, similar concerns. This approach is often suitable for simple, standard elements like payment procedures, or terms and conditions of purchase.
4. Create!
At this point, you’ve identified those common keywords and themes, and you’ve decided on the appropriate weighting for your new content. So now, all you have to do is write the darn stuff.
You’re not just creating brilliant stuff for your website – though we hope you’re doing that, of course. The blogs and articles that result from your customer enquiries can also be used as part of the client onboarding process.
Take our article all about briefs – no, not underpants. This is a step-by-step guide to filling out a content brief when you first decide to work with us. It’s featured on our blog as a handy introduction for potential clients, and we include a link to that article on the brief itself so they know exactly what to do.
Before the first content planning meeting, we send through our article on 6 types of content your business needs. It gives a quick and helpful overview of the content types, but it also provides links to more detailed articles about each one. This answers many client questions before they even arise, and gets them thinking of topics before the call begins.
Optimise your existing content
This four-point process isn’t just useful for creating new material. It can also help you refine and sharpen your existing site content, plugging information gaps and making your blogs, landing pages and FAQs work even harder. Whether on its own or as part of a more general content audit, this kind of line-by-line revision can really pay off.
After all, conversion is the ultimate goal. You want your site visitors to reach out and take some kind of step: sending an enquiry, booking a demo, buying a service. The more concerns you can address up front, the easier you make that decision.
You’ll save time and effort for your team, too. No more repetitive chats, answering the same questions over and over again. No more long phone calls with new clients, explaining what whelks actually are, i.e. not fish. The only conversations you’ll need to have are the ones that truly matter.
Call on your clients
Of course, all of this is academic if your clients don’t have a good way – or, preferably, ways – to get in touch and make their questions heard. That sounds obvious, but our experience is that far too many businesses make it difficult to reach out at all, or unknowingly exclude whole sections of their client base by offering limited options.
Communication preferences are intensely personal. Some people want to pick up the phone and talk to a human being (e.g. Angela), while others hate phone calls and just want to send an email instead (e.g. Simon). Some like to solve issues over live chat, while others find it easier to drop a message via social media, or fill out a contact form.
You can’t necessarily give everyone what they want. But the more ways you can offer for people to get in touch, the more forthcoming they’ll be with their questions, and the better you can anticipate their needs.
Ready to get started?
Whether you tackle this process yourself or want help right from the start, WordHound is here to support you. Our totally free content review gets you an expert analysis of your site’s content, complete with follow-up to go over the results. Just fill out the form, hit ‘submit’, and we’ll take care of the rest!
