It can be difficult to narrow down your audience, but if you don’t get clarity, you end up trying to appeal to everyone, which often means you don’t really appeal to anyone.

So think about who you want to do business with, what problems they might be experiencing, and any traits or characteristics your ideal clients might have.

The more specific you can be about who you want to attract, the easier it is to plan your content. You can decide what content will appeal to your target audience, where to find them, and what you want them to do after engaging with your content.

Instead of creating the content you think people want, find out what they actually want.

You can do this in several ways:

People will watch, listen to or read content that informs, educates, helps or entertains them. So before creating any content, ask yourself, “What’s in it for them?”

You don’t need daily videos or blog posts to make content marketing work. Go for quality of content over quantity every time. If you aren’t creating quality content, people will just stop paying attention to you.

Whether you are creating videos, podcasts or written content, you want people to feel like watching, listening or reading that content was a good investment of their time. Mediocre content won’t achieve that.

There was a time when people said, “nobody reads long posts”, but this has never been true.

After all, people will read a book on a subject if it is of interest to them, so they will definitely read 1000-3000 words if the subject is of interest.

And the great thing about longer content is it can be broken down and repurposed too.

While it might be tempting to create content on the latest trending story or fad, it will quickly lose relevance once everyone has moved on to the next thing. And when that happens, you’re stuck with a video or blog post that nobody is interested in anymore.

As a comparison, this article will be relevant for years to come. I might have to tweak a couple of points here and there in the future, but it’s unlikely this post will go out of date any time soon. And that means I can keep sharing it and repurposing it over and over again.

So instead of creating content about the latest craze, focus on creating content with longevity – evergreen content.

Not everyone is funny. Not everyone writes well. Not everyone is engaging on video.

So play to your strengths.

If you aren’t entertaining, then be informative.

If you are awkward and uncomfortable on camera, then create written content or podcasts.

If you struggle to write, try using a dictation app and then tweaking what you’ve said to remove any erms, ahhs and word repetition. Or hire someone to turn your audio ramblings into blog posts for you.

People will tell you that you need to do this, that and the other, but you don’t have to do everything.

So do what you’re good at. If it’s writing funny social posts, do that. If it’s writing in-depth white papers, do that. If it’s sharing your expertise and insight in short videos, then do that.

If you bought a new pair of jeans, would you only wear them once? Or would you want to get maximum value out of them?

Sure, you wouldn’t wear them every day, but you’d probably wear them a good few times, and with different shoes, different tops, a different belt even.

And it’s the same with your content. You should make it versatile. Share it more than once. Share it in different formats. Share it on different channels.

The only time creating content is a waste of time is if you don’t do anything with it.

If you’d like to receive my weekly emails, hit subscribe, and I’ll be in your inbox every Friday.

P.S. I also have a free 14-day email course to help you improve your sales copy and marketing content. You can find out more and sign up here.