Let’s assume it’s a Friday afternoon and you either have a business or aspire to create one. You undoubtedly have business challenges; increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction or simply getting the first version of your new app out into the market. For any one of those challenges, you will either figure it out yourself or pay someone to figure it out. In either case, you’re probably going to do the following; you’re going to go online and do some research to get a “quick hit” of knowledge. Chances are you’ll do a Google search and/or head to your favorite online forum (i.e. Quora, Reddit or Bubble forums) to search threads or ask questions. And since it’s Friday afternoon you think to yourself “why not spend the weekend trying to figure out a solution.” Or at least learn enough and get to the point where you realize you need to find an expert to help you.
The content you find might be from a site of a subject matter expert or from a boutique company’s blog postings. As you look thru the material you’re searches dig-up, how do you know the content you’re reading is Quality Content? To validate whether the content you’re reading is of quality, here are a few characteristics you might evaluate the content against:
- how high in Google ranking is the content or author/company (granted they may have paid to get there)
- how much content (i.e. posts, videos, etc) have they provided on the topic (or related topics)
- how engaged are other readers, i.e. are there lots of comments from them
- how responsive is the author to those comments
- how many followers does the author / company have
While you’re effectively looking at “volume” of content and author/reader interactions, these quantitative characteristics can be a good proxy for Content Quality. From a qualitative perspective, since you’re someone working hard at your business to make a better life for yourself and your family, you probably “know” the content is of quality because your gut or experience tells you it is. And because you’ve learned something, something of value.
Hopefully this approach on figuring out how to solve your problem resonates with you and is familiar. If you think about it, your search for a solution to your problem has put you in the “shoes” of a customer. You have a problem in need of a solution.
Thru your searches, you’ve hopefully found an expert who’s knowledge you’ve acquired can be applied by you to solve your problem. Or if needed, you’ve found an expert you can outsource the work to. Or perhaps it’s both; you apply some of the great Quality Content someone created for free and you hire them in an advisory or coaching type of role.
But you’re a business owner. You have customers. And presumably you want to get more customers.
So what are you’re doing to help potential customers find you and your business?
Are you creating content that prospective customers can do a search on and consume for free?
Are you participating in online forums, contributing your knowledge and helping others for free?
You’ve created a business to solve customer’s problems. You’ve figured out a solution and offer a product and/or service. What’s preventing you from sharing some of your expertise in solving a problem by providing your knowledge? Create Quality Content for others to consume for free and get value out of. Chances are pretty good you’ll attract new customers because they’ll get a preview of what you can do for them. Something to ponder over the weekend as you work on solving your problems.
