Mining for Gold: How to Develop Great Web Content for your Blog or Site
What do people want? or need? How do you say something relevant? In order to make content that makes people want to engage with you, you need to meet their needs.
So you have to start by listening.
Say your industry is skin care, or maybe real estate. Look in your email inbox for questions you have been asked, you might have answers there already. Do not assume you know what people need. Make sure you look for what people are actually asking or looking for.
No idea where to start?
Go to http://search.twitter.com/
Click “Advanced Search”
If you’re a real estate agent you might put in the words “moving” with your city’s name under any of these words and then you might make sure the language is English if you are in the USA. Under places you can put in your city, and last of all, you might want to only see questions people are asking. So check that box marked question.
Hit search. Then you can see what people really want to know, what people are asking. Sometimes you can see conversations.
Maybe your industry doesn’t have great Twitter search results? Go to Google and search on your industry with the word “forum.” Say your industry is “skin care” then you’ll search for “skin care forum” and come up with “http://www.skincaretalk.com/” Browse there and see the questions people are asking. (Better yet, join the community and start interacting. ) Once you have a list of topics, you’re ready to go.
You can do this for any topic, any industry. When you see something many people are discussing or asking about? Time to answer their question.
Open a text editor. Note pad, Word. Write the question at the top. Answer it. Then go put it on your blog. Rinse. Repeat.
Twitter searches and other community searches are also good ways to find people with similar interests and needs that you can fill, just be sure to be genuine if you reach out to someone. Meet a real need, don’t spam folks or use people. Be a person of excellence and integrity, offer people answers they truly need, and you will see results.
