“Alright, what do you think we should our blog post be about this month?” my client asked me.
And my brain explodes with, “What are you goals? Who is your ideal client? What action do you want your audience to take?”.
It’s just not as simple as, “What do I want to talk about.”
It’s as complicated as, “What does my audience want to read about.”
Too often I think we assume we’re pouring content onto the internet when we’re actually putting content into the hands of people. Our audience is giving us the privilege of taking up space in their brain, inbox, and social media feed. Let’s write content that’s worth taking up that space - so worth it that they want us to KEEP taking up that space.
This means I get to introduce you to my favorite part of content creation: giving faces and feelings to my internet audience. I do this in two parts: Identifying my ideal clients and market research.
IDENTIFYING IDEAL CLIENTS
In last weeks blog post I told you that I’m a business and marketing rule breaker. And I keep the streak running strong when it comes to identifying ideal clients. Instead of dreaming someone up and describing them in creepy-specific detail I ask myself these two questions:
Who engages most with my content?
Who do I most want to encourage?
Then the description comes out...
Name
Summary of who they are and what they do
Explanation of why I want to encourage them
I recently did this exercise and here’s what I found: All three of the ladies whose name I wrote down love Jesus, are working a side hustle, and are navigating incredible transition.
I didn’t come up with those things when I was thinking about an ideal client. I came up with all this common ground when I considered who typically interacts with content I naturally create.
MARKET RESEARCH
After I made my list I sent each one of them the following text:
_______, Keeping up with your journey via social media has been absolutely inspiring! I’m working on creating some new content and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. Would you have 30min to talk Thursday morning or Friday afternoon?
Within thirty minutes I had calls set up to talk with all three of these ladies.
Now, the gold from market research comes when you ask the right questions so I spent about thirty minutes brainstorming the information I wanted and what questions I could ask to get there.
The best formula I have for coming up with great questions is reverse engineering. I ask myself, “What do I want to know? What would make me feel confident and motivated to share content on a regular basis?”.
I love creating but I hate trying to decide when to post and what to post. So here's a list of everything that hangs me up:
Type of image
Content length
Content topic
Time of day to post
How many times a week
And created the following questions (I’m sending an email to all my people tomorrow with a cheat sheet of all these questions. Grab it for yourself HERE)....
If you could only follow ONE instagram account what content would they have?
How often would you like to receive that content? About what time of day?
What type of photos do you want to see...graphics?
Do you want to hear about other brands to follow and engage with?
PRACTICING GRACE: Sometimes, good questions come from asking not so good questions....To be fair, the original question was, “If you could create an instagram account with only the content you wanted what would that content be?”. But it felt confusing to say and answer. When I re-explained it on the phone, I blurted out, “If you could only follow ONE instagram account what content would they have?” she liked it so much I switched it out.
I knew I would get decent practical answers from the above questions, but I wasn’t gonna get the answers that inspire me to write long term. The answers that tell me what make them tick and what solution would change their lives for the better.
So, I followed those up with more open-ended questions:
What do you want to do better in your life?
What encouragement do you most want to hear?
***btw, I’m sending an email to all my people tomorrow with a handy cheat sheet of all these questions. Grab it for yourself HERE.
Now you know why, “Alright, what do you think we should our blog post be about this month?” is the question that sends me into panic mode and ecstatic mode, at the same time!
P.S. Next week I’ll be talking about how I took all the information, pitched an idea, and decided on the direction of the re-brand!
P.P.S. Did you get on the list to get the cheat sheet of all these questions, yet?! No worries, you can do so HERE!