Your content strategy should help you connect with your target audience. There are many ways to develop a connection. This blog will focus on how educating your audience can build a strong connection with them.
If your expertise can add value for your audience, share it. Consultants reading this are probably shaking their heads, thinking this sounds like I am suggesting a free consulting gig. I am not. However, there are ways to share your expertise without giving away the farm. Stay with me on this…
When you share consultative content, you are credentialing yourself (and your company/team). You are also developing a teacher/learner connection based on a topic that is important to your audience.
You don’t have to share your entire process for implementing a system. However, you may share the results of your work and the value you brought to a client. In doing so, you are highlighting successful practices that will motivate the prospect to ask more questions.
Discussing common challenges that prospects are experiencing also creates a connection. Sharing your practical expertise and understanding of those challenges makes you relatable. Your grasp of any nuances and the impacts on the prospect helps to deepen the connection.
Educating your audience can also initiate engagement. This may take some time, but if you are consistently providing valuable insight or perspectives for your audiences’ consideration, you can begin to engage them on broader, more visionary topics. If you are seen as an expert, your audiences will be looking to you for your views of current problems as well as future challenges. Your unique view may offer insight into industry trends that your audience would appreciate.
Engagement can also help to synthesize your own position. Once you educate and engage your audience, it becomes easier to look across conversations and draw better conclusions. Sometimes, there is more than one right answer to a question. Your exclusive perspective may help a customer make a better choice when confronted with multiple options.
What topic can you help your audience understand?
Write a blog about it, post a video, record a podcast – or do all three. When you are developing content for diverse audiences, you have to remember that everyone learns differently. The more ways you can share your ideas, the more learners you will be able to touch.
Final thought: When you educate your audience, you are also contributing to your brand equity. Each person who learns from you or recognizes you as the “go-to-expert” represents a potential client who respects your expertise and wants to do business with you.