How do you amplify your message? We’ve all heard the phrase “It’s not what you say but how you say it,” and that applies to all communications, including digital content. As a small business, you want to engage with your ideal customer audience, speaking their language so they choose to take action, have a conversation, and make a purchase. Those communications are written in blog articles and social media posts, recorded as videos, audio clips, or visual images. Your customers can interact with any form of media, from their computer to their mobile phone.
When you use your voice online in written form, including titles, keywords, and tags embedded into other media, the search engines use the words to deliver the best content to the correct audience at the right time.
What Messages are Most Important?
Why, How, Who, What, Where, and When are used in over one-third of search words and phrases. So it makes sense that people use questions to find answers. Most of the searches begin with, “How to….?” or “What is….?”
You should be using keywords and phrases in the form of questions.
Think about what your target audience asks you the most or reverse engineer the most searched answers. Then you can pepper your content with those matching questions. Answering popular questions ranks you higher on Google’s browser, so you can be found more readily in searches.
Answering common questions also gets the audience immediately engaged with your content. When you interact by offering valuable information to a potential customer, they are more likely to do business with you.
Optimizing Your Content
Content marketing done right on your website optimizes every form of media for questions and keywords. Your content will wrap around the top keywords and phrases to boost your search engine rankings. If you have content with an answer to question-related searches that is direct and short, your link might get listed as Google’s Featured Snippet, bringing you even more attention.
You can get real-time responses if your content brings up an issue that is current and maybe even a bit controversial. It makes your comments and posts more interesting and relevant. Questions invite them into a conversation in a way that statements can’t accomplish.
Questions also make wonderful headlines that immediately identify the content that follows and grab the reader’s attention quickly. You can use question headlines to explain your posts, emails, audio and video scripts, or images.
Incorporating questions into your writing will:
- Make a point stronger
- Get your audience to think about their answer
- Draw out your audience if they agree with you
- Give new customers some idea of your perspective and thoughts
- Make your content stand out
- Increase your relevance for search engine results
This strategy goes beyond the content on your own website or blog. If you ask questions in your social media posts, then people can respond easily. When they feel heard, then they connect more closely with the brand that began the conversation. Posts create ideas to get people talking. When the posts are centered around questions, there is less direct pressure for purchase and more focus on information that is related to the customer’s needs.
Another way to amplify your voice online is to ask questions in groups and communities. If you manage your own group on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, then you can stagger questions related to weekly posts.
You can also amplify your voice in other groups by asking questions about your topics that are related to the group’s purpose. You’ll come away knowing who is the most engaged with that content. You can have follow-up conversations by Messenger or schedule a call.
When attending live events, you see people talking among themselves to find others with similar thoughts and ideas. You want to be the person that takes an interest by asking them questions. The conversation results in learning more about each other to develop trust. The right topics will eventually lead to discussions about products and services.
If you can’t think of what to write for your next content piece, asking a question about other content, current trends, or the latest research statistics is a great way to stimulate conversation and also ties your content to a bigger issue for more exposure. If there is a chance to tie in your products with breaking news or a hot topic, it might be worth a try. You can learn more by using Google Webmaster Tools.
As a small business owner, you probably also attend virtual events on a weekly basis. Through that, there is a great opportunity for initiating a conversation by bringing up questions around contemporary issues and your company’s areas of expertise. You can do this in the chat feature of a webinar or comment or reply on a Facebook Live.
You can expand your message either by adding more content or by greater exposure to the content you have already created. If you can tie titles, keywords, and phrases that use questions into an article, web page, social media, or email heading, a higher search engine ranking will improve your digital marketing ROI.
Humor is another great tool to gain attention. A funny question can turn that attention into sales. Knowing your audience’s behavior and interests well is the most important thing for your business.
Getting More Out of Social Media Messages
Social media is, by definition, social. Therefore, automation for posting social content won’t always give you the information you need. Go through your social accounts daily and look for questions that need to be answered. The more often you can answer questions, the more people will notice and trust you. This effort will keep you current on your audience’s most pressing issues.
By bringing your social pages to the attention of an influencer, you can then get the attention of another similar audience. This is a great way to boost more traffic to your website.
Another tactic would be to interview people and cross-promote to their audience. Interviews are built-in opportunities to ask questions. You could record a video or audio podcast of the interview and share it on social media. You could also post Q&A style content on a Facebook group using the video to start the conversation.
Using Data Metrics for Testing
No matter how many of these ideas you try for your business, your work is not complete until you check the data. You can’t know what is working if you don’t check the statistics. You need to know where your clicks to your website originate to know if what you’re doing on social media and other channels is working. Test how asking questions changes your engagement statistics.
Blue Zenith stays on top of content marketing trends, so you get the most out of your digital marketing efforts. If you aren’t already using question-related content, we can show you how this can work to your advantage, test results on websites and social platforms, and find out where you get more engagement to amplify your messages.