How to Create Content Your Audience is Compelled to Read

When you’re trying to advertise your MSP services, your content—the materials you share with your audience, like service pages, blogs, deliverables, social media, and others—and its quality will be critical to your success. You need your audience to be informed, engaged, and even excited about what you have to offer.

Of course, for your content to have a chance of inspiring these reactions, you need your audience to read it first. 

Let’s explore some best practices to remember as you craft your content.

What to Keep In Mind When Creating Your Marketing Content

People Don’t Read Websites, They Skim Them

This single fact makes a ton of difference in how different approaches to content register with a reader.

Since most of the people you’re trying to talk to are seeking specific information, a pattern has formed in how we all engage with websites and other marketing materials. We initially only skim content to find the information we are looking for. If we find it, we might settle in and thoroughly read it. If not, we bounce to another site to see if we can find it there.

This means you have a limited window to capture your audience’s attention before they disregard your content. So, how do you do that?

Keep It Concise
Your content needs to be clear and to the point to keep your audience engaged. You know technology and all the jargon and industry terminology used to describe it, but your audience doesn’t. Therefore, using these terms won’t help you convince them to work with you. Keeping the language you use in your marketing simple and focused on the benefits your clients see will help emphasize your value in an inherently more convincing way.

It also helps to avoid more complicated phrases because they are inherently more difficult to skim. Keep it simple; keep it effective.

Focus on Your Audience
It can be too easy to approach marketing as communicating with your entire mass of contacts and prospects in mind, shouting at the crowd to see if any come to learn more. This is a mistake. Instead, you should focus on communicating with just one person—the one reading your content.

Directing your content to one person makes it easier to strike up a conversation and discuss things with personality and clarity. 

Start a Conversation
Speaking of striking up a conversation, that’s precisely what you must do. Your content needs to welcome your audience to engage with you, focusing less on yourself and more on their needs, concerns, and priorities. Ask questions, empathize with them, and keep the focus on them.

Addressing the priorities of your audience members can establish your investment in their success and show them that you are a dedicated provider.

Formatting Elements are Your Friend

So far, we’ve primarily focused on the message you’re looking to share. It is equally important that the message is presented in a way that’s accessible.

Frankly, your content needs to be easy for your target audience to follow, allowing them to spot the main points and investigate the items that interest them. There are many ways to accomplish this.

Break Up Blocks of Text
It is shocking how much of a difference it can make to split a huge block of text into smaller, brief phrases. This is related to the concision aspect we discussed earlier.

A wall of text can be very intimidating for someone who is looking for a quick and easy answer to their questions and concerns. However, a sequence of short sentences is much more approachable.

Use Headings and Subheadings
Adding headings and subheadings that guide your audience members through your content is also helpful for further breaking it up. Headings can give additional, overarching context to what is being said in a particular section, helping your audience skim your content more effectively.

This helps demonstrate that you respect your audience’s time and can identify their priorities. If they can’t commit the time to read the whole thing, using the right headings and subheadings can give a prospect the gist of what you are trying to say.

Lists, Links, and Graphics Draw the Attention
Also, adding additional elements to your content can help grab your audience’s attention and interest, making it easier to absorb and more impactful. A quick bulleted list can condense what could be paragraphs into a more efficient means of sharing information—and can very well make it more memorable, to boot.

Images and graphics work the same way, drawing the eye and providing additional context into what your content is discussing.

If you want to add even more context, linking to other samples of your content reinforces your authority and helps keep your audience engaged with your content and your message… all while keeping your brand top of mind.

Content Should Be Seen as One of Your Biggest Marketing Assets…

…and therefore, should be treated as such and invested in appropriately.

We can help! We offer managed service providers various services based around content and content generation. Reach out to us to learn more by calling 888-546-4384.