Find Your Story's Angle
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Define customer pain points.
- Identify your customers’ pain points.
- Discover ways to find topic angles.
Choosing Content Topics That Stand Out
We are living in the age of information where millions of pieces of content are shared on the internet. The market is crowded with content and consumers are drowning in it.
The statistics on content sharing and consumption are endless. Figuring out how to create content that stands out from all the internet noise can be overwhelming. But the key to success lies in choosing content topics and angles that matter most to your audience. How do you know what your customers want to read, listen to, or watch? There are several ways to find relevant content topics, and we discuss them in detail in this badge, but every method comes down to the customer's pain points.
What Are Pain Points?
To get to the heart of your audience's concerns and make every piece of content count, you have to figure out what their pain points are. Pain points are the problems your customers are facing. Knowing your customer’s pain points is a major key to your content success because once you understand their problems, you are better able to provide them with information, inspiration, and solutions with your content.
So how do you know what problems your customers are experiencing? Ask and listen.
One of the best ways to figure out what your customer pain points are is to go straight to the source and ask your customers what they want. You can do this several ways.
Conduct online surveys with your customers. Online surveys are one of the most effective ways to get specific information from customers and prospects. Surveying is also an easy, cost-effective approach to qualitative research. You can use surveys to ask your customers specific, targeted questions related to their product interests, and the issues they’re experiencing in the industry or market.
You can ask open-ended questions like, “Is this content useful?” Or, multiple choice questions like, “How satisfied are you with (insert product name)?” You can also ask rating scale questions like, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how useful do you find (insert product name)?” The key is to be as clear and specific as possible in your questions so that you can get the information you need.
For example, say you create content for an organization in the healthcare industry. You send a survey to industry experts to ask them what obstacles they are struggling with. After you review the results, look to see if there are common themes in the data and make sure to develop content that provides solutions to the pain points you’ve identified. This will ensure you’re hitting the mark with your content every time.
If you aren’t in a position at your organization to do online surveys, you can ask to review customer survey data to become familiar with possible pain points.
Read comments, company reviews, and forums. Pay close attention to what customers are saying about your products, services, and content on social media and other areas of the web. Often, product reviews influence customers’ future purchases. Web listening is a great way to gather insight into your customer's opinions about product offerings and specific pieces of content.
Learn the products. As a content creator, it’s important to learn the products you’re supporting like the back of your hand. Take the time to read and become familiar with the products in your organization and the product’s features. Pay close attention to what problem the product (or service) is solving for people. This helps you target your storytelling more effectively.
Build strong rapport with your sales team members. Members of an organization’s sales team usually have solid relationships with customers and speak directly to them. These conversations often reveal obstacles customers are facing. Keeping a regular cadence with your sales teammates will help you stay up to date on the challenges your audience is facing.
Ways to Find Your Angle
Understanding your customer pain points is the first step to identifying your story angle. Pain points can tell you what answers and solutions your customers are seeking. But the search for your topic angle doesn’t end there. Here are a few ways to find the perfect angle for your story.
Think like a journalist. Put on your investigative journalism hat, and dig into some in-depth research to find a unique story angle. Finding a distinct topic angle that hasn't been covered yet is a key differentiating factor between you and your competitors. Remember: The goal is to stand out from the noise and your competitors.
Read up on trending news. Like a journalist, you may find your new story topic or angle by listening to, reading, and watching what’s relevant in the world. We often do this here at Salesforce when covering topics for our 360 blog. For example, there was a trending news topic about an intern that made an email mistake. We took that news story and created a blog topic around email blunders for our marketing audience. When watching the news, consider ways you can tie what’s going on to a topic or angle you plan to cover.
Conduct web and social media listening. Outside of traditional news, following trending topics on social media through social hashtags and comments can help you find an angle that hasn’t been covered yet.
Let’s say you recently published a blog and promoted it on social media. You can review the comments under the post to see what your audience is saying. Have they mentioned anything worth covering in a subsequent post, or worth updating in the existing post? Have you gained more followers or increased engagement because of that post? The answers to these questions can help determine the direction of future content. Here are some other ways to use social media metrics.
- Web traffic. How many people have viewed your content? Is a particular post drawing more traffic than others?
- Email conversation rates. Are you seeing higher click-through rates and subscribe and unsubscribe rates?
- Bounce rates. Are people leaving before they finish reading or viewing the content? Or are they spending more time than usual on a particular piece?
- Search visibility/SEO. Is your content high-ranking on search engines?
- Gated content downloads. Are more people clicking on your CTA or downloading your gated content and reports?
- Use web tools. You can use a website like Answer the Public to discover what people are asking search engines. Just type a content topic in and see what questions come up.
