Focused listening –v- Unfocused publishing

What I mean by this is very simply, if you have listened to customer need you are now prepared to publish content which is going to be meaningful. Rather than simply sharing content around what you think your customers want to hear about – then rather, you have listened in, done your homework and found out what matters to them.

Creating  content and solutions around a need – is surely a far more targeted approach to creating compelling, newsworthy and shareable content.

Case in point: 

A company was very keen to create regular video as part of their content mix.  They regularly had to create product demonstrations; they already had in-house resources which they could leverage to create video on a regular basis.

They set about creating a suite of videos – all based on things that they thought would be useful to their audience. 

Whilst the videos were very well put together – the level of engagement from their customers was disappointing.  That’s when they reached out for some advice.

We encouraged them to do some focused listening as to what was happening in their space. Reviewing what their competitors were doing, feedback on customer forums and listening in to real time conversations on both Facebook and Twitter.

What we found was that there were a number of clear ‘pain points’ around a couple of the products (the products were technical devices). Recurring themes were around upgrade features and practical elements such as transferring data from one device to another.

Armed with this information, the company created a suite of videos which focused on these very challenges.

Focused listening, resulted in creating content which was highly engaging. Not only for their customers, but for others having similar issues with competitor services using the same devices.

The traction to the videos was significant – far surpassing their usual web traffic levels.

This confirms that in many cases, it’s powerful to respond to a shared need rather to push out content which isn’t targeted.  Targeted content really does show who’s been listening.

Are you listening?

@Michelle Carvill an experienced marketer and founder of Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of marketing strategy and online visibility - covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website design and conversion focused website design.

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