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Alright. Let’s cut to the chase. You have an awesome business that’s gonna change the world. A brilliant service that will change people’s lives. Maybe your product saves people 2+ hours a day or generates companies 10x the amount of leads. YOU put your heart and soul into this product. If only the world knew.
You’ve worked with your team and identified your ICPs. You’ve got them outlined. Their job titles, their pains, their strengths, their core longings. Maybe you’ve got a list of companies they work for.
That’s all great. Seriously. You can hit them with ads on the right platforms all day long galore. Shove static images and tailored carousel ads right in their faces. They go on Youtube, bam, an ad. They scroll on Linkedin, slam, another ad. You build a retargeting audience manager and you hit them everywhere on the Google Search Partner network. And yes, you are getting in front of your audience, but you’re being a pest.
OR….
You can put that budget and resources into developing an organic community. Show that YOU’RE the expert. You’re the person people should work with. You understand their problems. And even better than that, you showed up when they asked for you. Not when they didn’t - that would be a little creepy, wouldn’t it?
And that is done by creating Quality. Organic. Content. Content that shows up when people ask.
Don’t mind if I do…
Every day, “Google processes approximately 99,000 search queries every second. This translates to 8.5 billion searches per day and approximately 2 trillion global searches per year.”
2 trillion searches per year and almost 10% of Google search queries are questions. That’s about 200 billion questions being typed into Google per year! And what do people LOVE? Answer: Having someone answer their questions. Someone that has the solution. Not just anyone, but a reliable, trustworthy expert. And even better, that expert is ungated (no form blocking them), free, and shows up right when they ask their question in Google.
Keep in mind that expertly written, informative content is quality content. That is the content the people are dying for in order to trust a brand. “If you need a competitive advantage in the overcrowded digital marketplace then high quality content helps” (textuar, 2021).
Once you become an expert on the subject, people will trust your product. You search any Digital Marketing question into Google, I can almost guarantee that HubSpot will show up. They know their audience and have tackled their questions. There are many reasons “Alignable's recent announcement that HubSpot earned a top spot in their Q1 survey of the most trusted brands, identified by small business owners across North America. (Kristin Jones, Jones PR)”, and it’s no coincidence the company continues to hit new highs when it comes to growing its reach across the business landscape.
Also, for you to actually be considered an expert, the content MUST be HIGH QUALITY. That can be a whole nother article in the future. But the repercussions of low quality content hurt in numerous ways and backfire on your goals. Poor UX, diminishing brand value, lower on page time, etc. They all hurt your SEO (and there aren’t shortcuts, professionals in any field will read right through overly dependent Chat-GPT content). Rant over. Now back to your regularly scheduled information on hitting your ICPs with Quality content.
SO, we’ve established that if you can expertly answer your ICP's questions, you are creating quality content. But how do you do that?
How do you find people’s questions? Simple answer. Reddit. lol. Or any online community. Linkedin. Facebook. Quora. Etc.
One study found that 90 million Americans have participated in online groups. Another study showed that 76% of internet users participate in an online community.
So if you have developed an ICP, there is a solid, solid, SOLID chance that there is a community somewhere online where people are discussing the culture, issues, and dynamics of that community.
If you can identify what corner of the internet your ICP lives, eats, breathes, and sleeps in, then you can set up an account and join those communities. If someone is asking a question in one of those communities filled with your ICP, ding ding ding, you have your first questions to answer. And if someone is asking about it in a community, damn well more people are Googling that question and hoping it shows up. Once you start attracting traffic from the people that ask those questions.
Us for example. We’re in an embarrassing amount of reddit communities in the digital marketing world. r/ppc, r/emailmarketing, r/B2BMarketing. You name it. And EVERY DAY we see people asking questions related to these subjects.
Let’s pause a take a look at what has been posted today on r/ppc
Now if we were running a company focused on PPC optimization. I could turn this into three short blogs. I could make a series called “Answering People’s PPC questions”.
So, to double down here, If you can find the communities where your subjects live, join, check regularly, and see what people are talking about and asking about.
If you find any common questions or issues people are having then, damn, you have your topic. Pro Tip: You can use the exact question wordings for your titles and headers.
And just like that, you have a topic that would be quality content for your ICP.
Identifying your ICPs questions through keyword research
Now hold on you data loving freaks. We can already hear you saying “really, how do I know people are asking these questions, just because one person in a community asked something doesn’t mean others are”. Yeah yeah, we get it.
Good thing there is another way around this. We can use ✨keyword research✨ to identify the questions your ICP is asking. And more specifically, long tail focused keyword research to identify the solutions your ICPs are looking for.
Moz is a leading software company providing tools and resources for search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing professionals to optimize their online presence and improve search engine rankings. AND a great tool to use for this.
1. Go to your Moz account (or set up an account)
2. Go to the keyword research section on the left-hand side
3. Go to their newly updated “Keyword Suggestions” section. So happy they rolled this out to the full product, I LOVED the beta for it.
4. Type something in related to your ICP and click “analyze” (ex: Lead Generation)
5. And then click the questions tab
Now you can see any Google searches that are occurring in the form of questions related to the topics related to your ICP. Potentially 1,000s of questions. You can filter these questions by how often they are searched and do a SERP analysis of these keywords.
From there you can see what and how competitive certain SERPs (i.e Search Engine Results Pages) are by the results domain authorities, site strengths, etc. Yes our data-loving friends, we can feel your excitement through our screens.
Just click on the”Analyze SERP” button
And then Moz will present a statistical breakdown of the SERP for that question. You can use all this data to decide what subject you’d like to take on with organic traffic.
Oh, what's that? Your team uses SEMrush, not Moz. Rewind! Let’s do it again.
1. Go to your SEMrush account or create one.
2. Go to the SEO section
3. Go to the Keyword Magic tool
4. Type in a related keyword and click search
5. Toggle on the questions button
6. BAM, same thing, hit search with a keyword and there are loads of questions with lots of data on each
Also we are aware both those services cost money. If you don’t want to pay for this in the long run. Pay for one month, do your research, and cancel your subscription. No hard no foul. We live in a subscription economy with easy on and off ramps across many different services including streaming,
And…bonus tip…plug any questions in Google Keyword Planner to gain a plethora of more data on the questions like YoY and 3 month search trends.
Let’s go! You have an awesome product. You have your ICPs. And now you read this far into this article, got so excited you couldn’t wait, and identified the questions your ICPs are asking. YESSS. Now let’s get to work.
Where do we target our ICPs organically?
There are two key spots. First and foremost, traditional search engines: Google, Bing, the other ones.
You have the questions. Now it’s time to write the content. There are some key things you want to do here to make sure your content is targeting your audience.
1. Consult an expert.
Unless you are an expert (and don’t lie to yourself). Can you keep up and have not just thoughts, but opinions firmly grounded in experience to answer the questions you discovered? If not, it will take you way longer to draft this content and your ICP will likely read right through what you have to say. Quality over Quantity.
Also keep in mind, in this Nielsen study, 85 percent of consumers look to content from experts before purchasing something. So if you are going all in on content, it’s best to ask an expert for help.
2. Make sure that your blog is OPTIMIZED.
Dear god. Please. We’ve seen countless websites that don’t have meta descriptions. Or there are no image titles or alt texts. The H1s aren’t relevant. Oh brother. Google crawl bots need this information to properly rank and decide how to categorize and rank what you are talking about.
AND, when done correctly, you increase your chances of having featured snippets. Significantly increasing your website's domain authority.
Here is our definitive checklist of 10 things to ask yourself before publishing a blog.
⬜️ Do I have an informative Meta Description
⬜️ Are my headers things that may be searched in Google
⬜️ Did I include alt text on all my images
⬜️ Do I have backlinks
⬜️ Are my backlinks set to open in a different tab
⬜️ Am I using internal links
⬜️ Is my page title catchy
⬜️ Are their relevant keywords throughout the blog
⬜️ Am I keyword stuffing?
⬜️ Am I tagging the site properly
3. Humanize your content
Unless this isn’t the tone of your content. People trust people. Around 50% don’t trust content written by AI. Make sure AI is used for ideas, not the actual content. We’ve seen content that clearly is written by AI and the comments are filled with “Boos”. You don’t want to get booed do you?
Keep in mind, seeing results from blog content takes time. SEO isn’t as sexy as paid ads. Patience and consistency are key. Organic content is a slow burn. But when it pays off, it pays off Huge 🚀. Take a look at this, 94% of people skip over search ads. So if you can take over the Organic search results you’ll gain MORE leads AND not have to pay per click.
So write, and write consistently with expert information in an optimized blog.
What? Social? Is that really organic content?? Yes, yes it is my friend. Organic search is changing.
Leading them are Gen Z and Millennials, as 29% of the combined group prefer to search for information on social platforms over actual search engines. People are leaving traditional organic search engines to search for things on social platforms.
That being said, it gives you a PERFECT opportunity to get to the top of those search results.
The way to do this is the same as search engines but different.
1. Consult an expert.
Yes, first and foremost, work with an expert to make sure your content is informative (we covered this. But also, talk to a social media expert (unless you are one, you know if you are)
Social Media is a different beast. People are slow to forget about poor content. “Social media marketing builds brand reputation and loyalty” (Ronnie Gomez, 2023). So if you are going this avenue, make sure you talk to someone in the industry to develop a strategy that will minimize any hurting returns.
2. Make sure your content in Optimized
Here is my checklist of 10 things to ask yourself before publishing social content to make sure it is optimized.
⬜️ Am I including relevant hashtags?
⬜️ Are my hashtags questions?
⬜️ Do I have links in my posts?
⬜️ Is my caption catchy?
⬜️ Am I posting at the right time of day?
⬜️ Am I posting with the right frequency?
⬜️ Is my account Bio providing valuable information?
⬜️ Are their relevant keywords in my caption?
⬜️ Are there accounts I could be tagging?
⬜️ Am I using UTMs in my links?
Make sure it’s optimized. Do everything you can to get that content to the top.
We could break down the value of each item in that checklist into a post of it’s own…yes…seriously.
3. Humanize your content
Why are people using social media as a search engine? It feels more human. Younger generation wants “authentic information for opinion-related subjects (ChannelFactory, 2022).” How do you make it authentic? Make it human.
Closing Wishes to Your Content Writing Journey
Nothing great is rushed. It takes time. Purpose. Find the questions people are asking and answer them. Answer them with details. The extra technical steps that they don’t know. Noone can do that better than an expert. In a world with an abundance of content, quality content shines. The companies that put the energy into that, that make a difference to their prospects, will create a community of people who keep note of it.
There are certain businesses I tend to lean on and trust and that’s because I know they are supporting people in the field to write quality content, NOT gobbleguk.
How can Mesh Analytics help?
Once you’ve created some quality organic content and are firing on all cylinders pushing it out over different channels, how will you know if it’s working and what’s actually moving the needle?
Mesh gives you the power to monitor the leads and opportunities that touch every piece of organic content! Mesh enables you to track unique visitors across sessions, no matter the browser or device settings that they use, and see the influence of your content on bottom line revenue for your business.
Want to learn more? Book time with us!
