Beginning the Content battle

byjpwatts

84 followers

6 years ago

Beginning anything new is always a jumble of misconceptions and unpredictable challenges and roadblocks and of course that blank mind syndrome where we sit staring at a page or screen with our hands poised smartly above a keyboard and find that we have absolutely nothing to write. Content starts with knowing your audience, who are they? Have you really defined your target audience? What is their pain? What can you help solve for them?

Beginning this project I had no experience as a blogger or copywriter, I found it difficult to land on a topic and then far more difficult to write about that topic when I did finally decide to do so. My content was very disjointed and lacked any sort of flow that would keep a reader engaged. Asking myself why opened up a wealth of information to me only when I committed to actually find out the reasons for my situation. I was a master of excuses and lack of focus and commitment. But, my real problem was my lack of a narrowly defined audience that I actually wanted to reach.

My writing was good enough for me to be satisfied with, my content was good enough for me to say well done to myself, my research was giving me a good understanding of a topic I was learning about etc. See a pattern here? Who was I really writing for? Well it should be obvious, I was writing for me, and I’m actually not that difficult an audience. I can ramble on to myself for hours on any number of subjects and entertain myself. Not going to get anywhere doing that!

So, I’m hoping to help some aspiring writers here with a short message on focus and discipline in the process. My research now starts with getting to know my audience. I spend some time looking at posts on their facebook or WA page, I try and understand where they are and I ask myself if I actually care about them. That sounds harsh maybe but hey, we all can’t care about everyone or where they are in their process. When I strike upon an audience that I do care about I can then reflect on how I may be able to help out a bit. My research then focuses on their pain point, my note taking is focused on their need or want, and my outline, yep I outline everything to ensure i’m following a real train of thought, is focused on answering their problem.

Then I write a short blog that I hope will be valuable to my target audience.