It has been said that content is king, and whoever said it was right.
Creating content for your audience is one of the biggest values you can give your audience aside from your products and services.
Value is the number one asset you can provide without using too many resources. However, many struggle to understand what is the exact content they should be providing to their audience and how do they know it adds value.
In this post I will break down the following:
- What is value in the context of business
- How do you provide value
- How to create valuable content
- How to direct your valuable content on social media
What is Value in The Context of Business
Value in the context of business is giving your audience beyond your base work. Meaning, you are bringing your audience, resources, ideas, and tools that will help them build further trust in you, become loyal to your business and build a long-lasting relationship with your brand.
The concept can also be looked at as the lifestyle of the business aside from its core offers and main functions.
How Do You Provide Value?
To simplify this I will use my own business, Creative Boost, as an example.
Creative Boost provides digital marketing services for businesses that want to grow their online presence by using platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram and Influencer Marketing. That is the base of the work Creative Boost does and this is my paid value.
If you stumble upon Creative Boost and do not know much about who we are and what we do, you will probably read the services we offer and testimonials. That is cool, but aside from this upfront paid value, you probably know nothing else about Creative Boost and why you should work with us.
However, when you go to our blog you start seeing our “expertise”. You are now consuming our lifestyle content or in other words our valuable content. What you will find in our blog is content that further enriches you and your business on core topics that go back to our services and our value proposition to you. Our blog also provides information on topics we do not offer services in but know very well given our years of expertise and presence in the digital marketing world. Our blog is the first value proposition we have for our audience.
The next valuable content we offer is our Pinterest 101 guide. This guide is the popup you see on your screen at some point while visiting creative-boost.net. In that guide, you find more information about Pinterest. With this guide, we are giving you free insight on how Pinterest works and how you can do it yourself. Although we offer full Pinterest packages we do think that allowing individuals to learn and understand on their own with tools that work is super important and we do not see it hurting our core services. We want everyone to win 🙂 !
You can also download it here 😉
If you find us on social media or explore us outside the website you will see us on Linkedin and Facebook posting short tip videos and articles. On Instagram, we focus on building a personal relationship and that is why the Instagram account is linked to Anat Morderer the founder. We want you to get to know the person behind the screen and your potential team player.
These are the different ways we, Creative Boost, provide value to our audience, clients and potential clients.
This can be achieved in any industry, the key is to think beyond the obvious offer you have for your audience.
How To Create Valuable Content
The first thing you should look at is what you currently offer. It does not matter if it is a service or a product, what matters is if you can build on it.
For instance, let’s say you are selling handmade vases and you want people to buy them from you. Aside from pushing your vases online, you need to add the lifestyle (value) of your vases into your online presence.
What does that mean?
There are many ways you can look at your product and create content that is beyond your vases. It can be achieved in various ways on social media and your website. Here are a few examples:
- Creating Instagram stories that showcase how to style each vase
- Making a blog post on how to care for your vases and what flowers match each vase the most
- Involving your audience in creating a new vase by letting them choose different aspects of stories
- Making short videos on how the vase is made and painted
- Make a Tik Tok with your top-selling vases and show them off with cool music
As you can see, even if the only product you sell is a vase there are many ways you can use that one product and create endless valuable content that will engage and build an audience.
Now an important thing to remember, do not focus on perfection, focus on distribution. If you wait until each post, blog or video is just perfect you will be missing out on being active and losing presence to your competition.
You do not need to invest a lot of money to create that content. You simply need to look at what are the “things” around your product that can be of interest to your audience, even if you think no one would care, they will.
You have to test different ideas and different methods to see what catches someone’s attention, and once you have their attention they are hooked.
How to Direct your Valuable Content on Social Media
Now that you understand how to create the content, the growth and presence of it online comes into play.
The most important decision you first have to make is what platforms you think will benefit your business the most. You can not be present and active on ALL SOCIALS at the same time. Pick the top 3-4 platforms that you know your target audience is most active on and start building your audience.
Also, think about which platforms you can use one piece of content in different ways. This will allow you to recycle and create more volume than creating something for each social. For instance, a blog post about how to care to give your dog a bath can be used as a Tik Tok where you show those tips in action, in an Instagram post that shows a cute picture of your dog and the tips in the caption.
Aside from posting your regular business/brand content, start adding the lifestyle aspect. Add this sort of content into your regular content calendar and play around with your message.
If you are not sure how to market on these platforms, here are a few resources that might help you:
How To Build A Tik Tok Marketing Strategy For Your Business
7 Ways to Build a Strong Online Following
5 Instagram Don’ts When Starting a Business
11 Must-Try Hacks to Boost Followers & Engagement on Instagram
The reason this content is valuable is because you are educating your audience to look beyond the product and also see how they can use it in different ways. One person might have seen your product or service and liked it but originally they did not think they can engage with it given various obstacles they personally had, but once you provide free valuable content for them to consume they are able to keep up with you and once they are ready to be more than just your community they will reach out.
The key is to be visible and share as much as you can. You would be surprised how many people truly care and want that content from you.
It is your time to boost more value into your business!