July 28, 2020
Audience-first – the consideration of what your audience wants and needs to see. It’s a mantra that has been pivotal to the growth of our thriving agency.
In a content-rich industry like Social Media, the proliferation of stories is plentiful. All businesses are creating stories, clamouring for the thumb pause that brings audience attention, and those sought-after engagements. Content is getting quirkier, stories are becoming more random. Whilst tangentially positioned content can prompt the ‘wtf’ moment for followers, allowing juxtaposed content to leap from the feed of expected content and create a pause and brand discovery. It can work, BUT it cannot be the mainstay of content. That’s strategically flawed.
Audiences face challenges, or as we call them within IF ‘sleepless nights’. And no, I don’t mean the entire world is enduring an actual sleepless night right now, although media are publishing articles detailing many of us are enduring broken sleep patterns due to the impact of Covid-19. I certainly don’t want to belittle those significant and important challenges. What I mean is, audiences have challenges that consumer products can solve. Or business challenges that external propositions and services could impact. For example, one of my ‘challenges’ is that I need to paint some wooden furniture to protect it from the weather. Do I use wood stain? Should I paint them? Do I want it coloured or neutral? If content landed in my feed right now detailing the difference between stain and paint, or I saw stories about colours that are ‘in’, or a narrative about how to recreate the shabby chic look, I would absolutely click on in.
The point being if content meets a behaviour or interest, then users click and explore. If you understand the sleepless nights that your brand solves and impact, and you then create content that speaks to these very points, then you drive resonance is significant numbers. Scaling this process across many stories is what we call ‘relevance at scale’.
So, with that in mind, why have so many businesses stopped creating audience-first content? Tangential content, as previously mentioned has a role to play in the content engine mix. As does content speaking to trends and the thought-leadership or CSR content that you would craft. The cornerstone though should be sleepless nights. Our results and client retention speak volumes to this philosophy too. Many of our clients have worked with us for over five years and already extended contracts for another three-years. Clients would not do that if they weren’t feeling the positive effects of audience first.
Brainstorming these moments and the subsequent content creation is blooming fun too. Win, win! You’ll also find that your audience develops into a resonance of your expected client base. Audience-first delivers on so much. It’s a MUST for your content creation strategy.