One of the hardest things about creating content, whether it’s for your website, email list, or social media accounts, is finding time to write it. For people who aren’t particularly comfortable writing, even the thought of sitting down to write a blog post can be a daunting one.
Fortunately, you don’t have to be a great writer – or even write at all – in order to create compelling content that will interest, engage, and inform your customers. Here are four ideas to help you do exactly that.
Videos are one of the most popular forms of online content. A well-made video is more likely to be viewed and shared than written content, and YouTube is one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world. Some ideas for video content that you can create without writing include:
- Product demonstration videos that show potential customers what your product does and how it can help make their lives better
- Interviews with you or some other person of interest to your followers
- Comparisons of your product with one of your competitors’ products
- Q & A videos where you answer questions from your followers
- A quick tips video where you share information relevant to people who are interested your industry or niche
- A behind-the-scenes tour of your factory or office
As long as you are speaking about a topic that you know well, you don’t need to write a script beforehand. Some of these ideas – such as the Q & A video or product demonstration – could even been done as live videos on Facebook or Periscope.
Like videos, graphic content is extremely popular with internet users of all ages. The proliferation of social media sites such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat has made it easier than ever to share graphic content with your followers. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
- Create (or pay someone to create) an infographic that illustrates some key information about your industry. A well-designed infographic can convey a great deal of information in a way that is easy to digest and share with others.
- Hire a photographer, share your own photos, or source high-quality stock photos to share with your followers. The key is to find images that don’t look like stock photos. Try taking pictures of your office or store, or take pictures of an industry event you attend.
- Create clever memes to share with your followers. While a lot of internet memes are silly, it’s possible to create one that is highly relevant to your customers.
The key with sharing graphic content is to vary what you share. You can and should curate content from other sources, including industry leaders and publications as well as creating your own original content.
One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to get great content to share with your followers is to get them to create it themselves. That might sound impossible, but you have probably noticed other companies using this strategy. The key is to give your followers a compelling reason to create content and send it to you, and then do a good job of choosing the best content to share with all of your followers. Here are some things you can do to get your followers to do the work of creating content for you.
- Host a contest or giveaway and ask your customers to do one of the following as a way of entering the contest:
- Write a short essay on a topic you provide
- Take a photograph of themselves using your product in a unique way
- Film a short video of themselves or someone else using your product
- Photoshop an image to include your product or logo
There are endless possibilities. The idea of winning a free product is often enough to get people to go to great lengths, and you might be surprised by how creative your followers can be.
- Participate in social media community events like Throwback Thursday and ask users to share photos of themselves or memories. If you can find a way to tie the event to your product, so much the better. For example, a company that sells cooking supplies might ask people to share their worst cooking disasters and then re-share the most compelling or entertaining entries.
Use these ideas as a starting point, but don’t be afraid to branch out and be creative. There are hundreds of things you can do to prompt your customers to do your content creation for you.
When it comes to marketing, there are few things more valuable than customer research. After all, when you know who your customers are and what they want, it becomes relatively easy to target them with marketing content that will appeal to them. You need to do exactly that if you want to turn casual visitors into leads, and leads into customers.
It’s very easy, both with social media sites and email autoresponders, to conduct surveys and polls that can help you gather information. A well-constructed poll can be entertaining to your followers and extremely helpful to you.
If you want to create a poll or survey, think about the information you want to collect and design your inquiry appropriately. For example, you might decide that you want to know how your customers are most likely to use your product. That information can help you with advertising in the future because you can use it to target your social media ads and other marketing campaigns.
The polls you create should be brief and easy to take. Social media is a great place to do one question polls that customers can answer quickly. If you use email or put a survey on your website, you can ask multiple questions or even encourage written responses. How you do it will depend on the type and depth of information you hope to gather.
These four options can help you create interesting and valuable content on a regular basis without having to do any significant amount of writing. You may need to write a few words here or there to introduce a video or infographic, but for the most part, you can focus your attention elsewhere and let your non-verbal content do the work for you.
