I’m knee-deep in preparations for a new project. I can’t wait to tell you all about it, but, in the meantime, it’s taking up too many hours in the day. And, let’s face it, those hours feel shorter with the amount of sunlight we have today (daily light savings time, please come quick!). But, luckily, over the past couple of months, I’ve had a number of great guests share their opinions on content strategy and media relations.

Content can do many things, but if it’s not connecting with your customer, then it’s failing.

I want to revisit them today, and really draw out an important point. Content is great to have on your site. It can help with SEO, connect with journalists and sell your product, but it must do one thing: As Adam Gottlieb of the Frugal Entrepreneur points out, it’s to connect with your customers.

So, I’ll start off by saying, that new small business owners (as well as established ones) should keep one main goal in mind whenever they go about producing any content: Your ultimate goal is to try to build a relationship with your customers; your content is simply a means to that end.

Notice I left out “generating sales”as a main goal. You’ll be more likely to generate those revenues through your content strategies if you make your customer relationships a priority.

With this in mind, there are two factors you need to consider to decide which content to really focus on:

Relevancy - You want to produce content that is both related to your business and/or industry and that is relevant to your target customers. What information do they want to know or need? What peaks their interest? What problems do they have? How do they like to get this information, and where do they go to find it?

Of course, you can connect with customers in many different ways. One way is affiliate marketing. I spoke with affiliate marketer Jon Rhodes on how writing and content development can help attract affiliates on a regular basis. 

The first thing to do is have an affiliate sign up page on your site, and really “sell” your affiliate program. Give good reasons why someone should join your affiliate program. Providing some ready made marketing materials for your product will also help.

Then joining some webmaster/affiliate marketer type forums is a good idea. Most will let you put some details plus a link to the affiliate page in the signature.

Another good idea is to find affiliate marketers or blog owners in your niche and tell them about your product. It’s a good idea to offer them a free copy of your product so that they can see for themselves what it is about. All really good affiliate marketers want to try out a product before posting it to their contacts.

And sometimes in order to reach more customers, you need a PR program to accompany that content strategy. But, as Waxing Unlyrical creator Shonali Burke points out, make sure any agency you’re thinking of hiring has the connections needed to connect you with journalists that speak to your customers. 

I often see companies automatically gravitate towards big name firms when they are looking for PR help, because they think a “big” PR firm will get them a lot of “ink.” What they should instead be focusing on is what their needs are, and what skill set and talent a potential agency (or even consultant) will bring to the table… and how their plan/program will help support the bottom line. That means they need to go back and look at what exactly they are trying to accomplish, and then see if the agency has the right kind of people to accomplish those tasks.

This is often much harder than it sounds, because many times, companies are so silo-d that their PR/communication staff have little or no connection to the business function(s). As a result, they don’t know what they should be looking for, and fall back on the age-old “PR standards” of pitching and media relations.

So as you create your own content, whether it’s a blog, social media feed, newsletter or whatever, remember to think about one thing: How does it help you connect with your customer? By starting there, the rest of it – subject, platform, etc. – will fall into place.

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