With the rise of social media and digital marketing, content development has increased dramatically. A whole lot of content, actually. So, with all of this content, how do you make yourself stand out in the crowd? How do you rise above the noise to make yourself heard and earn yourself loyal customers? You produce good, helpful, and educational digital content that is both useful to your customers and establishes yourself as the go-to source for potential customers. People want to feel good about their purchases and know they are buying from someone they can trust and relate to. Providing helpful content is a great way to demonstrate your knowledge and initiate that relationship before they walk through your door or make that online purchase.

Make Digital Content that Means Something

When it comes to social media, people follow brands that align with the beliefs that they already hold. Seems like common sense, right? But it's not easy to develop outstanding, authentic content. Think about your social media and who you follow. The trick is to write for your ideal customers. What's an ideal customer for your business? What kind of job do they have? Where do they live? What do they do for fun? See the Pro Tip below on creating a persona below. Even better, create two or three! Choose topics, products, and a voice that is relevant for that ideal customer. It sounds simple, but if you try and make everyone happy, you will end up making no one happy. So do yourself and everyone else a favor and create digital content that is in line with what your ideal customers already believe, but please put a unique spin on it that's relevant to you.

Pro Tip: Create customer personas of your ideal clients so that you can better understand who they are. This will help you to create content that is going to have meaning to your customers and will help your customers because your content offers value to them. A user persona consists of traits like age, gender, job, family life, daily routine, interests and some bits of knowledge about how they use technology and digest information.

Answer Questions and Be Knowledgeable

Now that you know how to make digital content that fits with your customer's core values, you have to figure out what precisely to write about. The trick is to find topics that are going to answer questions or have an educational value for your customers. In any industry, there are going to be issues that arise for the consumer, called pain points. Be there for consumers and tell them how to solve their pain points. If your business uniquely fixes these, tell them how you help and what makes your solution different from competitors. The best thing you can do is be a support system. This gains you and your brand trust. By offering digital content that means something to consumers in your industry, they will quickly develop loyalty for your brand, company, and products. The end goal? You can watch those consumers turn into customers!

Be careful not to write or publish digital content just because you know it's something you have to do. You need to have value to add for your customers, and creating content, just to create content, doesn't do that. Product reviews, how-to videos, lists, or product comparisons are all great examples of content that you can create to engage your audience.

Pro Tip: Create topic clusters and then plan your content around those. It is easy to find 3-4 topics in your industry that are important to both you and your customers and potential customers. With those clusters in mind, you should be able to brainstorm content subjects that will have real meaning for your audience.

Earn Their Respect

So, you are creating all of this great digital content, but how is this creating loyal customers? If you consistently deliver great content, your consumers will begin to remember. And over time, you will earn their respect and hopefully business. They will realize that your digital content is out there to educate them and help them through their decision-making process. As a result of your efforts, they turn to you first for answers, advice, or to learn about products. There's the trust! They will think of you as a knowledge leader compared to other dealers and will want to continue to interact with you or stop by your location to learn more. As this continues, you will find that more and more of your digital followers are turning into real leads, and closer to creating actual sales. Realistically, that's what all of this comes down to! Gaining trust in you and your advice will lead to increased readership and product sales.

Pro Tip: Create a content calendar and schedule for your digital marketing strategy. This keeps you more organized, gives you a well-rounded posting strategy, and can simplify the process. Your followers will notice that you are consistent in your posting, and they can count on you. They will start looking for the latest post or the newest video.

Pushing digital content to your customers is only the first step. Making sure your content adds value to your customers is the second and most crucial step. By doing this, you will build a loyal customer base who continually returns to you and your business.