Photo: Shutterstock.

I’ve talked a lot lately, about the importance of being useful with your marketing. A number of you have asked me, if I can give you some specific topics you can use, which your prospective clients (or customers) will be attracted to.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done for you today.

So, for Ashley, Hasan, Thomas, Noah, JJ, Padraig, Ben, Melissa, Calvin and Georgia (and you, dear reader), here are some almost-universally useful topics. Each one represents something, which your clients and future clients are attracted to or extremely attracted to.

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following topics and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing or general marketing messages. Each topic ends with a question, to help you focus on how it applies to your business.

1. People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: What are you doing, to connect them with useful contacts? The Wall Street Journal wrote about how I achieved this, for one of my clients – 4 Marketing Strategies That Paid Off For Small Companies
2. Everyone is trying to succeed at something: What are you doing, to help people achieve their targets, goals or dreams?
3. We all need security: What are you doing, to help people reduce risk or feel secure and safe?
4. We also share a common need for a sense of belonging: What are you doing, to create a community?
5. Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: What are you doing, to help people maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks, faster?
6. People want to improve and expand their knowledge: What are you doing, to share useful information with them. This is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.
7. Everyone wants to avoid unnecessary stress: What are you doing, to help people feel more relaxed and assured?

Are any of those topics missing from your marketing messages or content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Whatever industry you’re in, you should be able to benefit from all 7 topics. And if your business doesn’t do anything to address one or more of these needs, look for a way to add it to your services.

Photo: Shutterstock.

If you’ve ever wondered, how some people are able to regularly produce effective content marketing; (newsletters, blog posts, articles, podcasts, etc), and how you can do the same, this post is for you.

1. Is this useful?

There’s a sign on the wall in my studio. It’s a small sign, containing just 3 words: “Is this useful”. That’s the mark I set for everything I create. Nothing gets published unless I believe you’ll find it useful. I don’t try and be clever. Just useful. And as long as I think you’ll find an idea or observation useful, I share it.

Some small business owners are put off creating content, because they try and make everything as close to perfect as possible.

The thing is, your prospective clients or customers want something useful, not perfect.

Once you stop aiming for perfection you’ll find it a lot easier. You’ll also get massively better results.

2. Don’t let crappy ideas block you

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that most of the ideas you get are pretty average. But maybe 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 are good enough, to be turned into a valuable piece of content marketing.

The challenge is that in order to get that 1 useful idea, you need to allow yourself to have the crappy ones… without getting disheartened.

The way I overcame this, was to deliberately give myself permission to think of lots of crappy ideas, knowing that something useful would come from it.

When you view lower-value ideas as essential steps in the development of better ones, they switch from being disheartening to highly motivating.

3. Give your work the respect it deserves

We often overestimate the ideas of others and underestimate the value of our own. Here’s a great example of what I mean.

A business owner told me how she was taking some files off a computer for archiving, when she discovered an old documents folder. It contained loads of articles, which were really interesting. She looked to see who wrote them and found they were all her own work, from 6 years earlier!

She didn’t publish them at the time, because she thought they weren’t good enough. It was only when she thought they were written by someone else, that she saw them for what they really were. Your work is almost certainly way, way better than you think.

So get it out there.

In short, if you’re looking to improve your content marketing in 2020; focus on being useful, see your average ideas as necessary steps to your useful ideas, and give your work the respect you deserve.