Providing value is the most important part of any copywriter’s job. Because all businesses need to do it to sell products and services. But how does providing value even work? It’s all about the audience & their needs, interests, and concerns. And then you take what you learned from your audience and use that feedback to reach your customers.

So, what’s the best way to figure that out?

Here are 4 great ways to find out what your audience is interested in.

1) Use Buzzsumo

This can easily be done, no matter how much content marketing you’re doing.

And how you use it depends on the content marketing strategy you’re using.

If you already have an active blog (or you just want to learn more about your website)…

Buzzsumo can help you uncover what your readers like the most about your blog or website.

For instance, when I typed in the URL for my blog, specifically for the past year it the following were the top three most shared content:

But what can I actually learn from that?

A hell of a lot.

Clearly, a majority of my readers checked out my blog to learn more about topics like branding, pitching, and writing for other blogs.

And that can help me figure out what to write about in future posts as well.

Because that’s clearly what will make long-term readers want to come back for more, and new readers want to share my posts with friends.

If you guest blog occasionally (and have a blog):

Then, I typed in “author:” followed by my first and last name.

Doing that is what will help me figure out what was getting the most shares in the past year, in terms of all articles I’ve written online thus far:

That reveals a similar trend, which makes sense because of the services I offer.

If Twitter marketing is your bread and butter…

If you heavily rely on social media for your content marketing Buzzsumo can also help you figure out what content you’ve shared is getting the most attention.

However, with Buzzsumo this is only the case for Twitter usernames.

To uncover what links are getting the most attention, in terms of the stuff you’ve shared on Twitter so far type in “shared:” followed by your Twitter handle:

2) Ask a question on Quora or Alignable

Or even a Facebook Group, Or a LinkedIn Group, or Reddit.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I recently re-branded.

And that was heavily influenced by a market research question that I asked this past summer in an Alignable public forum:

Even though I only got two responses, I definitely learned a lot.

But why is that the case…well read the answers to find out:

Response Number One:

Response number two:

In other words, a lot of proof of results and a lack of copy that created anything besides leads.

So, I started to focus on being more than “just a writer” to help get the marketing copy in front of an actual audience.

Because…unfortunately far too many organizations receive the content, and expect that miracles will happen if they do absolutely nothing to promote that content over the long-term.

And that leads to zero results.

If you’re unsure about what is holding people back from buying what you’re selling, I highly recommend asking a similar question in whatever public forums or Facebook groups you have access to.

And if none of them focuses on audience interests, join one so that providing value will get a lot easier.

3) Be true to your way of doing things

Even though I’ve spent so much time telling my readers that:

• Telling your story
• And producing content that looks and feels like you is important

I got to the point in my business where I was so caught up in the everyday reality of working with clients and onboarding new clients that I felt too much pressure to make other people happy.

This lead too far too many feelings of being overwhelmed and burnt out by putting far too much energy into pleasing people.

And somewhere in that madness, my “why” statement got forgotten about.

And so did the “harder than it looks” act of telling my story.

Then I tried out being a guest on podcasts and got so used to talking about my journey and what I do to like-minded people who:

• Making that story public didn’t make me feel like my journey was way too different from everyone else’s and not worth telling.
• Having a clear statement about who is and isn’t a good fit wasn’t a good fit wasn’t as scary anymore.

A useful method for providing value for your audience is to tell your story, and consistently talk about what matters to you the most.

Because that will attract people who value the same things and have gone through similar struggles.

If you attract like-minded people, and stay true and consistent with your message.

The right people will reach out (eventually).

Because they’ll see aspects of their needs and personality in your brand.

So… give you a sense of how this works, here’s what happens when I prioritized this approach:

4) Create a survey

I used to hate surveys. However, I hated surveys because of my iffy experiences with surveys as a consumer.

But the older I get, the more the companies that are targeting my demographic seem to know exactly how to ask for survey answers without being totally icky and sales-y. Or maybe my patience just gets better with age. (Honestly, I’m not really sure about that.)

So, let’s look at this from a purely marketing-based point of view.

Did you know that surveys increase customer satisfaction, through appealing to their desire to be coddled?

That’s exactly why surveys are a useful method for doing a better job at providing value.

And if you’re not really sure how to create a survey, check out the free “pre-hiring a copywriter” downloadable exercise, which is available on my website’s resource page.

Never forget that…

The most effective method for making your copywriting more effective is to make empathy and market research an important part of your writing process. Because that’s exactly what will help you come up with the right angle of your web copy. Otherwise, you’ll have marketing copy that sounds exclusively like what “you think” your audience wants. And that will lead to far fewer conversions and sales overall because your audience won’t think that you’re providing value.

Still a bit confused about how to pull this off?

Check out my content strategy services. I can talk you through strategies that you can use to get the best possible results out of the finished draft of your web pages or blog posts.

Let's chat

Please add a comment below if you'd like to discuss this topic. – Rosie