Speaker 1: Welcome to module one. Now, in order for your content to resonate with readers, it needs to be relevant to them. And by readers, I mean consumers of content. Now, that could actually be watching videos, looking at visual content, or consuming any other kind of content. But for the sake of simplicity, and because so much content is text-based, I'll refer to them as readers from here on out. So in this video, we're talking about creating content that resonates with your audience. Ready? Let's get started. Music When you write content that's supposed to be engaging, you write it for your audience and not yourself. Your reader is not overly interested in you and your problems. They're thinking more about their own. Now, this doesn't mean that the reader is selfish, it's just that most people search the internet for content that provides them value in some way. But what actually provides value? There are many ways content can provide that value. And chief among them is that content somehow helps the readers. Much of the internet content you see is of a how-to nature. Articles teach readers how to overcome simple problems or make changes in their lives to help them reach their goals. If your content provides help such as this, it's likely to be very valuable to them. And value isn't always something so serious. A reader might find a piece of content valuable if it inspires or simply entertains them. The key is to understand your readers and what they're looking for when they're searching for online content. What's valuable to the reader is determined by the reader and their tastes, their lifestyle, their problems, and so on. If you follow the courses in order to this point, you will have already conducted your market research so that you can gain an understanding of what's valuable to your reader. It's important to realise that each piece of content you publish is a part of building a relationship with your readers. The value and quality of your content offers engenders loyalty. If your content is consistently good, your reader will likely see you as a go-to source of information they like or need. They'll come to you when they need help or entertainment. And ideally, your readers should be sharing your content on social media and telling others about it. If your content truly hits the mark, your readers will do this. When a reader shares a piece of your content, this lends its credibility with their friends. So consider this. If you visit a website and see an article there, you may find the article credible or not credible. But if a trusted friend of yours shares the article and tells you you'd better read it, you're going to put much more faith in that article. And this is how social sharing works. Your readers promote your content for you. The key to building this relationship and creating shareable content is to not only know your readers, but nurture your relationships with them. And you can do this by learning more about your readers as you continue to interact with them, connect with them on social media, and create a dialogue with them. Pay attention to reader feedback, both directly in terms of comments or messages, and indirectly in terms of sharing or other behavior. During the personal branding course, we stressed how important it is to be real with your audience. Well, the same applies to your content creation. Because in order for your content to resonate with your audience, you have to be real with them. You have to break down any formal barriers that stand between you and your readers. Now, the ideas discussed that you should listen to your audience and connect with them whenever possible will help you do this. But there are also things you can do within your content to make it more personal. And one way to do this is with the tone of your content. Write in a friendly and casual tone that's like a friend talking to a friend. So imagine you're writing an email to someone. This will make your content sound like a personal conversation, which is much more relatable than formal writing. Keep in mind, however, that writing should be free of grammatical or spelling errors. Another way to do this is to share personal stories where appropriate in your content. It's perfectly all right to break down the personal barrier and refer to yourself in the first person. Personal stories or anecdotes are very popular. They're fun and easy to read, and they give your content a personal touch. However, there is such a thing as too much information. The best way to strike a balance is to get personal wherever possible, but make sure that it's still completely relevant and very valuable to the reader. What's really going to determine the effectiveness of your content, much more than tone or any other factor, are your topics. In order to write good, engaging content, you have to write about things that are interesting to your audience. And here are some questions to help you generate good ideas for relevant content. So what are the questions your customers are repeatedly asking you? What are the questions they should be asking or that they're not asking yet? What is something your customer could talk about all day long? What could help your customer grow right now? What do you know that your customers don't about your industry or niche? What are you already sharing or posting on social media right now? What breaking news or new thing in your industry should your customer know about? And if you ask these types of questions, as far as your content creation is concerned, you'll be able to come up with some fantastic topics. Now, no matter how long a piece of content is or what format it takes, it should be simple and direct. You should be able to summarize what the piece is about in one snappy sentence. Your introduction and conclusions should sum this up for the reader with the rest filling in the details. If you can't summarize the piece in one sentence, you have several options. One is to trim the parts that aren't completely relevant to its topic and maybe try again. If you can't summarize in one sentence or you find that you're dealing with two subjects or questions at once, turn the piece of content into two pieces of content. No matter who your reader is, it's almost certain that they're looking for some context behind your content and better again if it's unique. So you should make that content as unique as possible. And some ways to do this include things such as saying what no one else is saying. Don't be afraid to take a stand and say the one thing that nobody else seems to be saying within your industry. Maybe take an unusual angle. So take a common problem and take an uncommon approach to solving it. Reading the work of other people or taking an uncommon approach to solving it. Reading the work of content creators in a similar field to you and find something they're not currently saying or covering. Taking something that's say a common wisdom and opinion that's widely held and arguing for the opposite opinion. Getting ideas from other media like movies, popular music, art, poetry, novels, et cetera. Finally for now, content that's emotional resonates with readers. When a piece of content stirs emotions and gets the reader to feel something, it's much more likely to get shared and create a bond with them. Now it can be any emotion, wonder, joy, awe, sadness, fear, anger, but generally speaking, positive emotions tend to get a more positive response. So that's it for this module, but here's what I want you to do next. Answer the questions from the module to spur some content creation topics that you can use for engagement. Write a one paragraph summary providing one solution to one of your customer needs right now. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in module two. Bye for now.