Content is king – the adage has never been truer than in 2025. But in the same vein, not all content is created equal and not all content is right for every audience. As AI encourages more and more ‘authors’ to churn out generic content, the need for creativity and focus has never been more critical.
But, where do you start and what is the trick to developing effective and meaningful content? It starts with evaluating your purpose, audience, their interests and what you have to offer. If you need a roadmap, start with these five questions:
- What’s Your Purpose?
What are you trying to convey and why? Is it thought leadership, which requires the highest levels of insight and uniqueness, or is it demand generation which requires a narrative focused on the buyer and their primary concerns? Maybe its market education, which is among the hardest content to get right, since it needs to be unique and compelling but also needs to be credible and vendor agnostic.
- Who’s Your Audience?
This ties directly to your purpose. Who are you trying to reach and what is their profile? Are they highly technical buyers; are they business leaders who understand the issue but don’t go deep on the technology? Are they investors, who want to know what makes you different and how you are going to ‘win’? Maybe they are regulators and legislators, who are concerned with a particular issue that relates to your business.
- What’s Their Concern?
In a time when focus and clarity are paramount, you need to tailor your story. The most boring people are the ones who leave nothing out. If you want people to listen, you need to leave out what your audience isn’t concerned with. You don’t need to tell them the entire story; keep to what they care about. Really consider your audience. Your technical buyer does not have the same concerns as a business leader.
- What’s Your Perspective?
Now that you’ve considered who you want to reach and what they care about, it’s time to really think about what you want to say. What is your perspective and how does it address your audience’s concern? You can tell the greatest story about the most unique product, but it doesn’t matter if your audience can’t relate or doesn’t care.
- Is it Compelling?
Once you’ve laid the foundation, you need to ask the most important question. Is what you have to say about the topic actually compelling? What can we say or offer that’s unique or different? Are we offering something no one else is? Do we have a position or an insight that helps us stand out from the pack? And, most importantly, why should your audience care?
This is probably the hardest part of the journey. How do you get your audience to care about what you are saying – or more importantly, how can you offer your audience something that they can’t get anywhere else and that draws them in, engages them and helps them?
Our team seeks out perspectives and insights that are more than just interesting; they are useful. They draw your audience in and provide them with something that makes them consider things differently. We share anecdotes and real-world examples that illustrate our points and help them relate to the material we are presenting. We also include unbiased tips for taking action. We want it to be unique, offering a level of detail, perspective or experience that they can’t get or haven’t gotten from others.
Creating content is relatively easy; creating compelling content is a journey. It’s not always easy but when done effectively, the pay offs are endless.
Stay tuned for our next blog, where we talk about the common content pitfalls and how to avoid them.