“Write to sell” is the golden rule adopted by most companies that have gone live online. Their approach to creating content involves telling people why they need their services before marketing themselves as a solutions provider. But how far does this content bank last?
What happens when people know who you are and what you do?
In a world overloaded with information, you must value your customers differently. You must find your unique voice and focus your goals on selling and educating your audience. That’s where educational content comes in, which stats say can increase your chances of attracting customers by 131%.
Importance of Creating Educational Content
People aren’t just buying things based on a catchy headline anymore. Customers need to know why they should buy, what they should buy, and what qualities the product they seek to buy must have. Their curiosity has driven them to not look at standard content but veers towards educational content. Here are the reasons why educational content is gaining steam.
Creating Trust and Credibility Among Customers
In an article titled How Important is Brand Trust, Edelman stated that 67% of customers must trust your brand before they make a buying decision. If they don’t trust your brand, they may look at another – a major detriment to your business, not because you will lose a customer, but because you can lose a retaining customer. Using educational content, your brand can build trust and establish itself as an authority in the field. And as you provide valuable information through your content that’s both grammatically nuanced and well-researched, customers become more likely to engage with your business.
Furthermore, if you create enough educational content providing precise information that makes your customers learn and think about their issues, you transform them into thought leaders. At that point, the minds of these customers will be branded by your content, turning them loyal towards your business.
Aiding customers in making informed decisions
Customer loyalty is valuable but equally valuable is the reason why these people buy your products. You don’t want them only to be enticed by your small marketing copy, which makes them expect something from your customers that you can’t provide. What you want is for your customers to be informed so that they choose the right product from you and then use it as expected, get positive results, as you expect and give you a review that elevates your brand.
Educational content is the way to accomplish it. Create content around the benefits and drawbacks of your product while specifically stating the types of customers that might need it more. That information will flow in your customers’ minds, which will dictate which product they buy and ensure you get positive reviews.
Standing out from your competitors
Most products that you can think of, everyone is providing. Therefore, to get ahead, you need to differentiate your brand and make it stand apart from the rest. Educational content is how you can accomplish it. By providing valuable information, complete with your unique perspectives and well-researched details that support everything you have written; you will position your brand as an authority to your customers.
Increasing engagement and customer loyalty
Brands that use educational content get the most engagement. Most content creates engagement, which you can leverage to know more about your customers – allowing you to tap into their buyer persona to refine your content even more. It creates a synergy between educational copy and a copy that sells, prompting your customers to buy from you and keep them informed, leading to repeated purchases, positive reviews and even referrals to their acquaintances.
It will help you understand what your audience is looking for
Creating a buyer persona is the most important step in writing a copy that sells. However, conducting research for such content takes a lot of work. Going to the stats and looking through the demographics will help you find the exact information you are looking for, but with educational content, you can make that information come to you.
As you write engaging educational content, you will elicit responses from your audience. As you communicate with them, you can funnel them to your sales department to get more information about what they seek. That is why educational content is the biggest honeypot of audience information there is.
Ensuring that your customers stay on your page
It is hard to just get customers to your page as you are inside a gauntlet with other brands that offer the same services. If your content bank is not full of information in that case, your bounce rate will go up as the customer will go away. That is why you need educational content to make your customers stay.
As they peruse through your educational content, a customer might admire the quality of the content you provide, which may encourage them to try out your products. But this time, they will have certain expectations that you may be able to meet if your product’s quality meets the content’s quality. That begins a new cycle of people buying your products again, leaving rave reviews, and so on.
What are the Challenges Creators Face When Creating Unique Educational Content?
Even if the prospect of creating educational content is in everyone’s mind, with brands left and right adding a blog section to their websites to entice customers, not everyone can perform properly. There are many roadblocks to creating educational content, which has exasperated with the rise of multiple websites providing the same type of content. Here are the content creation challenges that brands often face.
Focusing on content ROI
Content ROI – Return on Investment – is subjective and driven by your brand’s mission. However, you can’t use the metrics you leverage to judge the ROI of the web page content with educational content. That has been one of the biggest issues with content marketers and writers – they see educational content as part of the same content that they write on the web page. It pollutes content with a bunch of marketing terms that customers perceive as not content that’s trying to educate but a marketing copy that’s trying to convince. In simple words, giving a market-esque touch to your educational content by spicing it up with the brand name haphazardly is counterproductive to your brand.
The solution to this is redefining the Key Performance Indicators – KPIs – for your educational content. Don’t focus on how many people you were able to convert using the content, but on how much more informed you were able to make them. The comment section below every blog section is for a reason. It is to start a conversation and to inform yourself how much the customer was able to learn.
Creating basic content
In pursuit of perfection, many brands waste their time creating the perfect piece of content that their boss of the sales team wants – forgetting that educational content needs to be customer-centric and should be mapped to the buyer’s journey.
Your prospective buyers are searching the internet every day for something. However, since they are prospects, their search requirements are basic. For instance, someone with plumbing needs might have heard something about a Trap and searched for it. However, since some brands think customers know everything, they don’t create educational content catering to this “basic” customer. This approach denies entry of a prospect into a brand that could potentially become a customer.
The solution is to focus on basic content. It doesn’t matter how deep you go. You need to create foundational content that’s able to impart basic education to your customers before they make any decision.
Proving credibility and authority
One of the toughest challenges you will face as a brand is establishing yourself as an authority. You need an authoritative voice and substance to capture your audience’s attention. That has to be the goal of your educational content. It must impart education like an expert, with insights your audience can later think about. However, this approach is particularly difficult because whatever words you use, you may end up providing the same information as others – which harms your credibility and makes your content part of that overcrowded content pack that’s already online.
The solution lies in creating passionate content, which will have you dive deep into the intricacies of the topic that probably no one ever discusses.
Branding the Educational Content
Another challenge with creating educational content is branding it with your own imprint. Yes, we have stated that you can’t use exclusive marketing terms to deprive your educational content of its educational tone. However, you do need to ensure that whoever is reading your content identifies your style within the material quickly. A clever placement of brand names and keywords can help. However, you must decide the location of where to put your brand name so that your content can deliver what it sets out to do.
Synergizing content volume, quality and speed.
You not only have to provide high-quality content but have to do so on a consistent basis and with speed that helps you stick with your regular content schedule. Staying nimble while providing high-quality content means you need the perfect combination of content bank, writing speed, and optimal quality.
This presents a unique challenge since high-quality content and speed rarely go hand in hand, especially since the requirement is quick.
That’s where the solution will be in parallel processing. It is a term from quantum computing, which means that you need to multitask. As soon as you have written content, start researching for a new one. It is an approach that will keep your content banks full. You can then put that content into a content calendar to make sure that your audience always finds something new when they open your website.
Finding topics for your content
It is the biggest challenge you will face when creating content for your website – finding the right topics. As we mentioned earlier in this article, people are already aware of your services. So, educating your audience should not be merely regurgitating the same knowledge that everyone else has but providing something new that users will find unique and valuable. That’s where you need tips to find the perfect topics for your content so that your content bank never runs dry.
Tips for finding ideas for your niche
The first and the most prevalent bottleneck to educational content generation is what to write about. The topics are many, and people might have already covered the basics. In this scenario, how do you find ideas for your content so that it would impart something unique to your customers? Here are the top 10 tips that you can follow.
Understand the different elements of your niche and use it to create content
How well do you know your own business? Get an answer to this question first. Can you answer all the elements about all the intricacies of your brand? If so, then you have the perfect springboard for your content ideas going.
For instance, if you are running a plumbing business, you can create content around plumbing. Here are some ideas that can help you get started
- Understanding the common plumbing issues homeowners face and how to prevent them
- The science behind water pressure: Why it matters and how to maintain it
- Exploring different types of plumbing pipes: pros, cons, and best uses
- Water conservation in plumbing: tips and techniques to save water at home
- Do’s and don’ts of DIY plumbing: When to call a professional and when to fix it yourself
- How do you deal with water pressure problems on your own?
- Why do you MUST have proper ventilation in plumbing?
- Bursting common plumbing myths
These topics have discussed different elements related to plumbing. One has put emphasis on water pressure, and the other offers simple DIY tips to help customers handle small-scale plumbing issues on their own.
Let us now take an example of a clothing company. What kind of educational tips do you think a clothing company can provide to its audience? Since style is the central theme. Let us create some topics around style. Here are some topics for you to consider and pick
- How to stay stylish and up to date this season and throughout the year
- Top 5 different fabrics you must wear this season and five that you must stay away from
- The art of layering: Tips to creating stylish outfits with layer
- How to look for flatten your figure with the right kind of clothing
- Summer dressing tips for men – Don’t let heat get in your way of staying stylish
- Fashion and self-expression: Using clothing to reflect your personal style
- Accessorizing like a pro: Elevate your outfits with the right accessories
- Dressing for your body shape: flattering silhouettes and styling tricks for all sizes
- Fashion staples for women: must-have pieces for a versatile and chic wardrobe
A clothing store is a brand that’s easy to write about. It emphasizes style, which you can use to add your subjective flair.
But what if you are running a real estate company? Although not artistic, this topic still has many unique ideas you can tap into. All you need to do is pick the best elements for it.
- Home Buying 101: Things to know
- How to evolve your real estate portfolio
- Preventing issues during inspection – a guide for buyers and sellers
- Which place offers the best eating spot in the city
- Take kids to these fun places to make your stay even better
These real estate topics not only discuss the traditional educational content you would expect from a real estate brand but also use the “location” element to give readers a travel-related blog.
Focus on the Trends of the Industry
Your readers want everything latest, and one sure-shot way to entice them through your content is to give your own perspective on the latest news related to your industry. Go to the news section related to your niche and search for the latest articles. Find out what thought leaders are saying and give your own perspective on it.
Adding your perspective will make the content unique. But if you want to add more uniqueness to your educational content, don’t only focus on the news articles that you read. Scroll down and see what comments people are making. Let their perspectives add support to the statements you make in your articles. This way, your content will be elevated to more than just another rehash of the existing news content.
But what could the headline of such an article be? The answer is simple – News and perspective. For instance, support the news about a plumbing accident. You can start the headlining, highlighting the news and then add your own tips to them. Here is an example
“A pizza hut in Connecticut just lost its toilet – here is how they could have prevented it.”
Get into a brainstorming session and talk to other people in your division
To come up with a unique topic, you need more than a few heads on the job. That’s where you can talk to the other departments of your organization. There might be some idea so unique that you might not have thought of it on your own. That additional perspective will add another layer of expertise to your content.
Talk to your customer support team and learn about what the customers ask for the most. Schedule a meeting or create a form as a questionnaire to send your colleagues and make them fill out. This way might be a bit rudimentary and time-consuming, but it will get you the desired results.
Go to social media sites
This one doesn’t need to be said, but it is important to address it now and then. Social media is a place with no filter. People often talk about the qualms they have with certain products and services with complete authenticity. Also, your competitors might be sharing some content on social media platforms – content that Google hasn’t picked up on yet.
Check them out and their comments. The level of engagement that their content gets will tell you how effective the topic can be. You can then put your own spin on it and start writing.
Ask your audience
You don’t always have to introspect and look for content from within, hoping for something to come up. Sometimes, the content lies in what your audience wants. Ask them, and they will give you ideas,
Every video that you see ends with “What you want to cover next?” and every blog that talks has the words “What do you think we should write about in the next one?” as this thing is common. These types of suffixes to your content are there to ask the audience for answers; there is nothing even remotely wrong with that.
Depending on the engagement you’ve already been getting, a lot of content topics will fill up your content bank. And since you’re asking your audience what to create content about, you won’t need to worry about establishing a buyer persona.
Use tools to generate content ideas
The emergence of AI and already-established tools have made it very easy to create topics. Here are five topic ideas generators of 2023 that you can look into.
- ChatGPT: ChatGPT has reformed content in 2022, and in 2023, it has steadily become a household name. While the free version still relies on pre-2021 data, that’s enough for you to create good content. Just input “Generate me educational article topic ideas for my plumbing business/fashion business/(any business you have)” and press enter, and within a few seconds, you will have a bouquet of ideas you can pick from.
- Copy AI – Another autonomous content idea-generating tool is Copy AI. It works the same as chat GPT. However, the more refined your queries are, the more precise the topics you get will be.
- Impact – Impact is another tool if you are looking to create content about precise keywords. Enter the name of your keyword – which can be your niche + the element you want to write about; select the type of keyword you have entered and click on “Generate Titles”. It will generate a lot of topics for you. Pick and choose which suits you best.
Assess your Competitors
Follow the path that your competitors are walking on and get past them. They are your greatest motivation and already have several educational content on their website. Going through many of their articles will get your creative juices flowing, giving you an idea about what to write about.
Here are the things you should research when assessing competitors.
- The type of content they are writing about – Go to your competitor’s page and list all the topics they are writing about. Remember that not all blogs might be worthy of your attention. Explore whether their blog topics focus on the needs of the customer.
- Assess the content format – Learn about their content format and determine which is performing best. It can be a simple written article, a blog that combines video and article, or, it can be a small social media post. Assess how much traction these formats get from your competitor’s customer base before adopting them.
- How do they portray tough content – When your industry is as niche as plumbing, it can be difficult to articulate some things properly. So, assess how your competitors express complex ideas through their content. If their wording is complex, but the engagement is still high, make it simpler.
Study your Niche Thoroughly
Every niche is more complex than it appears. Amidst these complexities lies educational content that people might be interested in. So, study your niche thoroughly. The more you learn, the more unique perspectives can emerge. Use them as the foundation for your new articles. Take feedback from your audience and refine your content. This to-and-fro between you and your customers will help create powerful educational content that can transform into pillar content for your website, which can spawn more topics.
Conclusion
Separating yourself from the pack requires that you attract valuable customers. Attracting valuable customers is only possible if your information provides value. To provide value, you need to provide educational content.
While it is a common belief that coming up with a content idea is difficult, you can always look inside your niche and follow the tips we have provided here. They will refine your content bank so that you can provide more value to your audience and transform them into your customers. For customers that have already been there with you, educational content will make them more loyal towards your brand.
