Creating Quality Content to Build Better Relationships With Your Audience

The importance of creating quality content for our audience magnitudes when you start thinking about it as a tool to build relationships. Brad Veach is the Vice President of Marketing at Thnks and in his article he outlines how helpfulness, gratitude, and quality in content can be the secret weapon to creating stronger connections. You can learn more from Brad by following him on LinkedIn.

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Brad Veach

Vice President, Marketing

Thnks

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As marketers, we know the importance of content creation. Producing valuable, insightful, timely content is one of the best ways we can reach our audience. Content often stands at the forefront and is a person’s first interaction with your brand. We seek to create quality content because we want to strike a chord with our audience - tap into the pathos of our audience. And the data backs this up. We know that content marketing, when done well, can drive success down through the rest of our efforts. From generating better leads to growing awareness, influencing decision makers, creating trust, and positioning a brand as an authority within its field, content is one of the most useful tools in our marketing arsenal. 

If we take a closer look at it, we can see that through quality content we are seeking to form a relationship with our audience. Whether it is that of a trusted advisor, an insightful commentator, or a witty entertainer, we believe that the creation of a relationship with our audience will increase the likelihood of them doing business with us. I’d like to advocate one step further - the value of relationship building, which we initiate through activities like content creation, should be something we instill in everything we do. Relationships are the foundation of all business development - they’re also at the base of what builds a successful company. 

Good marketers don’t just use quality content to garner leads, they know how to turn those leads into lasting relationships. One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate gestures of appreciation into your prospecting journey and throughout your follow-up process. After all, a customer’s relationship with a company or a brand often begins with marketing, and if we can incorporate the sense of actually caring - of working to forge a relationship not only with the business but with the person you’re doing business with - lasting success will follow.

So how do we create content that isn’t just noise? Content that resonates with our audiences and makes them feel heard. Content that helps us build lasting relationships with the audiences we seek to reach. 

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the past decade leading an array of marketing and content creation teams: 

• Quality Trumps Quantity. It’s easy to get caught up in the metrics of content, constantly pushing for greater quantities. Good marketers know that quality will always trump quantity. If your content isn’t on target, it doesn’t matter how much you put out. It isn’t going to move the needle. 
• Know Your Audience. It’s critical to have research in your arsenal so you can produce well targeted content. Who is your audience? What are they looking for? What questions do they have? Understanding this, and really putting yourself in their shoes, will ensure you’re able to speak to them effectively. 
• Be Genuinely Helpful. All content you put out should be genuinely helpful to your audience. To reap the benefits of search engine optimization connected to your content, it must be useful. It’s great if you can rank high, but even better if your content provides the solution or answer people are looking for when they find it. When you’re content is both relevant and useful your inbound lead generation will be more successful.
• Show Gratitude. Harnessing the power of gratitude in your marketing strategies can be an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to maintaining relationships. From sharing a thank you, to putting your company top of mind with your customers, gratitude humanizes your brand and makes it easier for customers to build a relationship with you. Never underestimate the power of a simple “thank you”.

At the end of the day, content is just another tool for us to communicate and connect with our customers and audiences -- from that initial interaction to long-term advocacy. As humans, we seek out the relationships where we feel heard, valued, and appreciated. There’s no reason our workplace interactions should be any different.

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