In a recent blog post titled “Social Media and the 3 New Pillars of Marketing?”  I mentioned that content is one of the  key pillars that can position your company as a “thought leader” in your market segment and help you provide solutions to your customers problems. So now we need to start looking more closely at what are the important facets of creating, re-purposing, promoting and delivering  content online.

So what are the three key components for content in a social media world?

1. Creating Content
2. Re-Purposing existing offline content for online
3. Promoting and Delivering the content

Today I would like to have a look at the first key strategy  “Creating Content”.

Firstly you need to define who your your audience is as shown in the diagram in a guest post on Mashable below courtesy of  Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog

or as David Meerman Scott brands them in his Book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”…. Persona’s.. So in essence persona’s are  ”the short biography of a typical customer”. Which can be profiled by asking some questions.

1. Who are you selling to?
2. What are their goals and aspirations?
3. What are their problems?
4. What media do they rely upon for answers to their problems?
5. How can we reach them?
6. What things are important to them?
7. What words and phrases do they use?
8. What are they really buying from you?
9. What images and multi-media appeal to each persona?

To find this out you need to do things like

• Check out blogs where they hang out
• Read the publications they read
• Look at the agendas of the conferences and seminars they attend

So when you are writing , sourcing and creating content for your blog, website and social media channels you need to ”walk a mile in your customers shoes” and provide solutions in your content for their problems that they face every day in their business. You need to talk their language and you need to have their segmentation in fine enough detail that when they encounter your web content they will then say…”they understand what my problems are and they can help me solve them”.   In most companies they will be engaging with several “persona’s” or verticals.

So what are your customer “persona’s? When they come to your website or blog do you help solve their problems by proposing solutions that makes them say “Hey these guys understand my problems and can help me solve them”  Would like to hear your experiences with developing content for your clients and has it made a difference.