The Quick Guide to Giving Your Audience What They Really Want

There are over 3 billion searches conducted on Google every day. With more and more people gaining access to the web, giving your audience what they are searching for can sometimes seem impossible. Through all the searching, reading, commenting, sharing, and liking, it’s incredibly easy to get lost among the masses.

You’re not a mind reader, and it’s difficult to stay on top of changing trends, so how can you possibly do it? Let’s dive in.

Research and Plan Ahead

The words you use throughout your content are what connects you to your audience, especially if they are searching for specific information or products. Before you create, be sure to research what topics are trending and check out the conversations happening online to get a picture of what your audience is looking for.

Hashtags have been around for about 10 years now (feel old yet?), but their popularity has really exploded in the past few. Hashtags have made their way through just about every social media platform as a way to connect posts and for users start or join conversations. Hashtags can be funny (#tbt photos are usually good for a laugh). They can be controversial, like #NotMyPresident after the 2016 US Presidential elections, or #WhyIStayed, which started conversations regarding domestic abuse. Hashtags can also form a sense of community, such as #PrayForParis and other hashtags representing global events. Some can even turn into worldwide phenomena.

There are tons of online tools you can use to track trending hashtags. Twitter uses them to show what is trending in your area, as well as across the country, or the globe. Browse around to see what’s trending in relation to your business or industry. This will give you inspiration for content that would likely resonate with your audience.

Keywords are similar to hashtags in the way they provide connections. If you are posting content, such as a blog, where you generally would not use a hashtag, then you need to research keywords that users would potentially enter into the search bar.

Ahrefs Keywords Explorer offers an in-depth analysis of keywords, with graphs and charts showing the popularity, search volume, and clicks generated from each. Ahrefs will even suggest keywords that are related to your primary keywords, and you can use these to reach a bigger audience.

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Consider Relevant Partnerships

Choosing a partner for your brand or business can be a great way to boost your content’s reach. When an influencer or well-known brand endorses a company they are partnering with, their respective audience generally trusts that recommendation. For example, the popular makeup brand Becca Cosmetics recently collaborated with model and social media personality Chrissy Teigen to create a beauty palate. Teigen shared this content to her loyal Instagram following of over 13 million.

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You should be familiar with social media influencers that are related to your industry. With some online searching, they should be easy to find. Be sure to check out bloggers and vloggers as well, especially on YouTube. You do not necessarily need to partner with the biggest and best in the industry; in fact, partnering with smaller, up-and-coming influencers can provide immense benefits for your brand while creating a stronger collaboration for the long term.

Once you find a partner, be sure to track the results to see if they are actually driving traffic and growing your audience. Referral traffic is the typical metric you want to look at in terms of influencer effectiveness. Sites like Traackr make these analytics easy to understand and measure.

Watch Your Analytics

As you share more content, you need to make sure your website is optimized. Slow loading and mobile of the biggest issues that can kill your online sales.

If your goal is to draw more traffic to your website and gain conversions, be sure your site loads cleanly and provides a seamless experience to your customers. You can easily test your website speed for free using a variety of tools on the web.

Another thing to keep in mind is that mobile internet traffic has overtaken desktop traffic – even searches are being conducted more on mobile. This has led Google and other search engines to prioritize user experience on mobile devices. Google has gone as far as declaring that it will have a mobile-first index. It also offers a free tool to check mobile friendliness.

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The most important part of giving your audience what they want is gauging reactions to learn what is working and what is not. Analytics scare a lot of people because the data can be overwhelming and confusing, but when you know what data to look for, it will make the task much easier.

You will want to pay attention to the correlation between your content and how well it is achieving the goals you set. Using your analytics, you can make educated assumptions as to what is working and what can be improved upon. This applies to every single aspect of your marketing efforts in relation to your website. Pay close attention to metrics like traffic sources and search volume to see how your messaging is impacting brand awareness.

From here, you can dig into which topics and channels are driving the most traffic and impacting your audience. With such insights, you will be able to learn from past experiences and create future content that gets the results you need.

In Conclusion

Use the power of the internet to get a glimpse into the mind of your audience. Listen to them first; check out what content they are sharing or reading, who they follow, and how they interact with what’s trending online. This is the most important ingredient to creating content tailored to what your audience wants to hear.