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One of the biggest content issues we see is that companies and organizations try to figure out what their customers want to know, but they rarely ask those customers. The best way to find content that is relatable and reaches your customers/prospective customers is to ask them what they want to know. There are a few easy ways to do this:

Email Techniques

It’s quick and easy to get feedback from customers through email. Below are a few ideas, in order of easiest to more time consuming. All should take less than an hour.

• At the end of each email, put a P.S. with text like, “Can we research something for you? Tell us what question you need an answer to.” Have that link to a contact page. You may want to also promise to personally share the article with them when it’s ready for publication.
• Send a quick poll link through email, and perhaps offer a freebie for those who participate. If, for instance, you make online content, offer a free report.
• Create an email campaign specifically for feedback and follow-up. The plus with an email campaign versus a poll is that it gives a more personal feel. The first email should definitely use a name field to insert the customer’s name. Ask for what they are in need of, and let them know you’ll respond with ideas. This will help them feel like a person, not a number. If you segment the email, you can then do bulk replies that cover several issues common to the segment.

Use Your Existing Conversations

It’s also easy to canvas customer needs during any conversation your company has with customers. The hardest part is remembering to do it. To ensure it isn’t forgotten, add it to scripts, post it next to screens, etc. Here are a few ways to make it happen.

• Every salesperson and every customer service person could ask at the end of a conversation, “Is there something you’ve been needing or wondering that I can help you with?”
• Add the exact wording to phone scripts
• Have employees log each customer’s response
• Print employee reminders that can be attached to screens and phones
• Make screensavers for employees
• In meetings, count the number of responses you’ve received so far: it will remind everyone to keep asking

Digital

Another quick way to get feedback from your customers is to add questions online. Just as with the email campaign, it’s helpful to also promise rewards for participating. Here are some ideas for getting questions to your customers online:

• On your home page, place a banner that asks what customers are struggling with, or what they want answers to.
• On your social media banners, put the questions and promised reward for answering
• Tweet your question, post it on Instagram, post it on Facebook, make a video clip with you asking the question.
• During webinars, make sure you answer questions that are typed into the chat box. The more questions you answer, the more other attendees will start to ask questions. This alone makes webinars worth doing. You’ll get great input into what topics your customers care about most.

With very little effort, your content calendar can be filled with topics that speak to your customers and show you are genuinely interested in providing quality information and service to them. Let us know how it goes!

Earlier this week, I attended a conference where the keynote speaker said “people don’t want to suck”.  The claim was taken from Gartner research. The point was that people don’t want to be bad at what they do. 

Anything you can offer that helps people be successful in their work is powerful. 

The speaker also talked about how psychographics is the new demographics.  That’s a valid statement. It’s harder information to come by, but very powerful once you can get it! The next survey you do, try throwing in some psychographic-related questions and see what you find. 

Tell me what you find out.