Using Content Strategy to Answer Consumer Questions

The rise of social networking has created a whole new purpose for content marketing. Now if a user has a question or complaint, they can now post it on a brand’s Facebook page or tweet at the store. This is great for consumers because they can get the answers they seek almost immediately rather than sitting on hold for the majority of a phone call to a customer service. This is not necessarily as ideal for businesses because now a social media manager’s time could easily be monopolized by answering customer questions on all of the organization’s social media platforms. Of course, social media will always be important when it comes to crisis control and reputation management. However, there are better, more efficient ways for digital marketers to provide consumers with the answers they seek rather than personally addressing individual customer queries. Instead, it’s much more effective to find out what people are searching for and incorporate this into your overall content strategy. It’s less time consuming to write one blog post about a question you’re asked a lot than it is to condense the answer to that same question to 140 characters and tweet it over and over again to different consumers. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When I have a question, the first place I look for answers is a search engine. The same holds true for the majority of internet users who are looking for answers. When constructing a content strategy for your unique business, our goal is to uncover what your customers are searching for that is relevant to your industry or brand and build pages or plan blog posts to answer these search queries. We don't pull this data out of thin air. Here are some sources we use to help compile the questions that real consumers are asking: • Keyword research from Google Analytics • Quora • Reddit • Blog comments • Social media • Search functions on your existing website (what are people typing into that little search bar, anyway?) Including frequently-asked questions (FAQs) and related content as part of your website or blog gives you influence. You hold the answers to the questions people affiliated with your brand or researching your products are asking. This makes you a resource, which will help you build a base of happy, informed and loyal customers.