If you want to keep your content marketing efforts relevant and profitable, you need to be careful not to pigeonhole yourself into any one specific audience.
We all know that content is king. But when you think about it, there is so much more to creating great content than just simply putting words on a page for a single type of audience.
There is a strong argument to be made that the best content resonates with the voice of diverse communities that your company serves and leads optimistic societal development through careful and well-thought content; that diversity is what will make your content truly great.
As an SEO consultant, here is a piece of content strategy that talks about diversity and inclusion.
Why digital marketers should care?
If you’re trying to get a message across, your audience wants to see themselves represented in your content.
These types of content elevate brand perception, boost brand effectiveness, and remarkably increase buying intent and loyalty.
While most people agree that a brand that reflects the diversity of its target audience is important, there’s no question that content marketing can help drive brand awareness and conversions.
But if your brand is only promoting a small slice of the diverse population in Singapore, chances are your company is missing a lot of potential customers.
For instance, your agency is helping permanent residents with their Singapore Citizenship Application. Your audience is primarily foreigners who already have plans to live and work in the country.
But how about the teens who have just started studying in the country?
Another one, you are a beverage distributor and you just focus your writing on beverage retailers.
Have you ever considered writing for restaurants that are looking for beverage suppliers? How about offices and homeowners?
To reach a wide swath of the Singaporean market, you need to take an approach that encompasses a broad array of demographics and interests.
- Women
- Men
- LGBTQ community
- Asian
- Western
- Other minorities
- Millenials
- Middle-age or seniors
- Office workers
- Industrial workers
- and the list goes on…
This content strategy is key to increasing your company’s reach.
To help you improve diversity, here are some ways to widen the inclusion in your content.
1. Perform In-Depth Research About Your Audience
This is a good reminder to keep in mind: people want to be included in a process. But this doesn’t mean including those audiences that are not by any means relevant to your business.
Identify your primary target then dig deeper about the gender, income level, geography, race, etc.
When we look at the representation of any group, we tend to make generalizations about the group itself. For example, we assume that men are better at math than women are. But, we’d be wrong. We also assume that all young people are enthusiastic about sports, but we’d be wrong again.
Update your audience personas to make sure that they mirror all of the heterogeneous characteristics that are important to your audience.
2. Know Your Team
It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind of running a business. But it’s crucial to keep yourself engaged in the process.
One of the best ways to do that is to think about what voices in your editorial team can provide to the business.
For example, a good content strategist might help you create the vision for your company and brand. A copywriter might help you define a fresh voice and tone that will resonate best with diverse customers. A graphic designer might help you create pictures that will represent every group without any stereotypes.
3. Edit for Inclusion
When writing, it is vital to know how to reference people based on their specific characteristic. Your team should be able to balance out whether that characteristic is even relevant to include in the article.
4. Integrate in Output
Make every element in your article matter. Don’t just write and upload photos.
Always think to consider adding alt-text for every digital image, captions for all videos, transcripts for audio or video interviews, etc.
That will also cater for audiences who are physically challenged.
5. Don’t overdo it
People hate it when brands put a lot of energy into communicating they’re diverse.
For instance, the company is very concerned about being culturally relevant to the black community but they are often misinterpreted that it sometimes offends them.
You need to communicate with them in a language that resonates with them.
Conclusion
Content marketing is not about creating a bunch of posts and hoping it will bring in traffic. It’s about trying to find the right keywords that will drive traffic to your website.
And it’s about having a clear strategy that connects to a “diverse” target audience and drives them to take action. It’s about creating content that people care about and giving them something to talk about. That’s it. That’s a key to your digital strategy.
