6 Powerful Goals to Set for Every Piece of Content You Create

Even if you have a well-crafted content marketing strategy, it’s easy to forget your bigger goals when you are actually writing your blog posts. You may get waylaid by quite a few trivial things – like using your keywords in the right places, or finding the right words, or trying to keep track of your word count.

These are all vital, for sure, but these are the micro issues. There are six strategic macro goals every single piece of content you create – long-form or short form – must aim to meet. When writing content, the larger view is as important as the nitty-gritty. After you’ve written your draft post, cast an eye over it, to see if these more significant factors have not been missed. Always make sure you’ve covered all these bases …

Does your content meet these two customer-centric goals?

1) Your Content Must Solve a Clear Problem a Lot of Your Customers Have:

Marketing is another word for problem-solving. If you can make someone aware of a problem they have, that’s like hitting first base. If you can then agitate the problem so they feel the problem more acutely, that’s like hitting second base. If you pop up your solution in front of them it’s like making it to third base. And if piece after piece, you consistently sound like you have all the answers to all their problems, you win hands down. You become a go-to “problem-doctor” from whom consultations are sought, and whose prescriptions are bought. So everything begins with finding problems to solve with your products and services. Does your piece of content solve a problem? Which problem exactly?

2) Your Content Must Aim To Educate The Customer Better Than Competition:

It’s often not enough to identify problems for consumers unless you are able to also educate consumers further on the problem and its possible solutions. Let’s again take a medical example. You believe you may have diabetes, but you’re not sure. If your doctor can explain the problem to you in good detail and tell you how it needs to be solved or prevented from getting worse, you’d trust him all the more, wouldn’t you? He has shown he cares that you understand the ramifications of the issue, and he gives you solutions based on the education he has given you. This is what your every content piece should do. Give the customer wise information to know that he is in good hands and that the person helping him has his interests at heart. Does your piece of content offer care education? How much? About what?

Does your content meet these two brand-centric goals?

3) Your Content Must Add To Recall Of Your Brand And Its Difference:

As you deliver information and problem-solutions to customers, through content, remember it’s vital they are able to later recall who gave them that information so nicely. What is the use of being the purveyor of high-value information to people, if they cannot also get some good positive vibes ingrained into them about the author? In the world of advertising, there are two phrases that still hold value in content-writing: one is “brand recall” – that means, every piece of writing must add to the memorability of your brand in connection with a particular solution. There is another phrase “unprompted brand recall” – that means your brand must build so much recall value that it pops to mind even without someone having to remind you of that problem. Does your piece of content build towards making you the only name that will eventually come to mind in relation to a problem and its solution? In what ways is the piece also building unprompted brand recall?

4) Your Content Must Enhance And Deepen Your Topic Authority:

There are many types of authority an author of content can wield. You can be an authority because of your deep knowledge on a topic. You can be an authority because of your practical experience built over years on a topic. You can be an authority because you’re the one who is “on the ball” on a topic, a walking encyclopedia of the latest. You can be an authority not just because of your knowledge of the topic, but of your deep knowledge of the people afflicted by the topic. Or you can be an authority simply because you too are a passionate afficianado on the topic, like a lot of other people. Authority is not what it’s made out to be … authority can be any quality that earns respect and a ready listening ear from others. With every piece of content you write you have to be clear what kind of authority you want to come across as, and that should not waver from piece to piece of content. You have to build layers of authority in a consistent direction. Does your piece of content reinforce your distinct kind of authority? How do you want to come across and have you given the right cues?

Does your content meet these two SEO-and-conversion centric goals?

4) Your Content Must Be Able To Earn Backlinks And Rankings:

Every piece of content you create has its “official duties” to perform for your business. These include some SEO-centric goals to deliver on. In the first place, your content must be able to attract and earn high-value backlinks from other sites in your space, preferably from peer sites with good authority themselves. In Google’s language, great backlinks are like signals that your website and content are “in the right company of the exalted”.The secret about getting great Google rankings for your piece of content is exactly the opposite of what most people think. Google does not rank you to make you popular. It ranks you if you are already popular! Does your piece of content have something to interest the “biggies” to want to link to you? Have you already reached out to some big guns in your niche to gauge their interest in backlinking to this piece of content? Will you support your own content by following through to not let those links get away?

5) Your Content Must Be Able to Entice A Site Visit And Get Action On A CTA:

You’ve surprised how many blog posts are still written like articles that air opinions, rather than as the basis for a follow-up Call-To-Action. The whole idea of creating content for a business, as different from writing an article for a magazine, is that the content piece has to create business opportunity, in addition to being great reading material. Every content piece has to be able to beckon a site visit to read the piece, and it must also offer a natural lead up to a Call-to-Action placed just below it so that after reading the piece, the reader feels like taking some immediate action on what he has read. Maybe he could be enticed to opt in for a book that adds more value to what he has read. Or maybe he could be enticed to want to keep in touch with a great author like you, whose style he likes. Or maybe he could be enticed to read more on the same topic or grab an action-worksheet. Does your piece of content create the context for some “next action-to-take” for the reader? Does it “strike while the iron is hot” to turn a reader into a subscriber? Have you made sure that your CTA allows the kind of follow-up action most readers would prefer to take?

In Conclusion: