Creating purposeful content with intention takes time, effort, and practice, and the blinking cursor can set one off on a daydream to now where. Before you know it, two hours have evaporated, and you are no further forward than when you started. This is why this article aims at breaking down the five steps for creating purposeful content and how intention setting is the key to successful content creation.
The importance of creating content with a clear purpose
If you are creating content to attract leads and sales, having a clear intention and a plan will stop that feeling of “What do I think about what to say and write each and every single day?!?” Or it could be, “How do I know whether the content I am creating will even help with my end goal?”
It all starts with determining what season of the business cycle you are in. Are you actively wanting to get new leads to talk to people right now, or are you building a course around your expertise that you hope to launch in a few months? The answer to that will determine the intention setting and how you plan your content so that you can help walk people through your process and expertise.
An example of that using a content plan is in the image below. This is the first week of a 6-week plan that gives people an insight into what they need to know first, using what teachers commonly refer to as a scaffolded approach. The plan takes potential students through what they need to know about and understand before they are ready to enroll in a course. This is the first step to creating purposeful content in 2023.
To find out about creating a sustainable content plan for your needs, use the power of a cadence-first simplicity-driven approach to creating a content plan that works for you.
Each week brings people closer to an understanding of how to create content with purpose, creating content using a simplicity-based approach. The following weeks walk people through how visibility will help your brand or business and ultimately get you more leads and sales by building your authority in the minds of followers and why it is important to prioritize visibility with a solid foundational understanding of the need to create purposeful content whilst building visibility.
The 5 Steps to creating purposeful content
Now that you know the reasons for creating purposeful content, here are 5 quick ways to create purposeful content.
1. Define your business season
If you are starting out, establish whether you are ready with your offer of services or products or whether there is still work to be done, such as market research. You can still start to create visibility for yourself by making the content you create more useful by using examples from your own professional career or things that provide one specific outcome that you have achieved for yourself. This will give you much-needed visibility and get you started while working through the steps below.
2. Define the job for the business season
If you are starting, increase your visibility and do everything you can to create more content for a broader audience by being useful and helpful. However, focus on a specific outcome that many people are searching for and will invest money in to solve their problem.
If you are established and scaling, set yourself apart by being unique and start to build engagement by warming up your audience with content that is meant to engage and get a response.
3. Research your market
A relentless obsession with discovering what your customers want and their pains and desires will help you create content with authenticity. The more you understand what your audience’s pain points are, the better equipped you will be to create purposeful content, as understanding where your customers are before they seek your solution is the key to the first step in developing content with intention that goes beyond generic.
Get in front of at least 10 real people who are solution-seeking. Meaning that if you are selling baby clothes, don’t ask someone who had a baby 5, 10, or even 20 years ago because seasons change, and you want solution-hungry people to advise on whether baby booties need to be wool-lined or cotton lined. This same applies to whether you are selling digital products. Is the solution you are providing solve the problem of the person who has that specific problem, or is it your neighbor or friend down the road that you are asking?
Who you ask will make a big difference to your product, so seek out solutions seeking people in the market at this time to do market research with.
4. Define your ideal customer avatar
Okay, this one really gets me. For the best part of two years, I wondered how on earth I was going to know and define a single customer avatar. And what did the movie avatar and the form of a Hindu god have anything to do with customers and marketing?
Worry not because I have finally cracked the code. The cryptic code that no one talks about.
It’s simply to say, who from ALL the people in the world can you energetically see yourself aligning with for their stage of the journey?
In other words, are you more likely to align with someone at the same level as you in your field because you have skills that other leaders want and will pay money for?
Or are you more likely to align with people who are still a few years behind in the journey to where you are now?
This is just one example, but it’s important to think of energetic alignment because once you have a predominant recurring pattern or a theme that runs across all your customers, you can create content that will sound exactly like the words that come from your customers.
And better still, you will have defined your ideal customer avatar along the way. However, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, so talk to actual people. It will make the world of difference.
What if you’re not ready to talk to people?
Well, lucky for you, I have a free guide that will help you craft killer messaging, even if you have no clients. This guide is an absolute goldmine, and I feel bad giving it away for free; it’s that good.
5. Define the customer journey
This one is definitely the most challenging after you have taken the time to do market research and identified the specific outcome you can offer people. This is about stepping people through the beginning, middle, and end stages of your solution. What would your ideal clients need to know at the very beginning? Just like the steps listed here in chronological order.
Creating purposeful content starts with stepping people through their customer journey in relation to the problem that you help solve.
Ultimately, creating purposeful content comes down to how you can level up your content game in a way that attracts clients by showcasing the journey in the order in which it needs to be done and expanding on each step deeper. By giving people an understanding of how you package your offer, expertise, or experience and the specific outcome or results they can expect to get, you would be on your way toward creating purposeful content with intention.