Teach your children well

In this case your children are your customers and prospects. Not in the sense that they are immature, helpless, or need rules and discipline (that’s how some people see children). Instead, that you may be new to them or have something to share and teach. You can teach through your content. Social media begins with a conversation, and a conversation begins with content.

High value teaching comes from you sharing your deep knowledge of the industry you serve and new ways of thinking about solving the problems your customers and prospects face every day (Or it can be something outside of an industry topic, but important to your audience).

Traditionally, companies spend all their communication time on product and service features, functions and benefits. While benefits get you a brownie point, it doesn’t get you very far in marketing the new way.

An industry I worked in, legal electronic discovery, did engage in the teaching aspect–out of necessity. That teaching aspect is Continuing Learning Education or CLE. Legal professionals seek these sorts of programs out in order to keep their credentials current. Companies and event organizations used this to draw the legal professional audience. Many of these programs and courses were of high value, but some fell flat and became just a ‘check mark in a box’.

Without an incentive of getting CLE credit, most companies need to work a little harder at offering content that has impact. A little house work is in order to begin. Here are a few thoughts on how to go about it:

Start by looking at what you already have—What white papers do you have? Any special presentations or reports you prepared for a client or prospect? What about any PR related content that was created, like an article? Do you have materials from going out for VC funding?

Check in with your partners—Did you develop any co-branded papers with you partners? Have your partners created any special reports or presentations? Any co-branded articles? Could you work with them on building content, like how-tos for instance?

Check in with your customers—Do you have case studies, testimonials? Any co-authored articles? Do you have any webinar videos or podcasts that you completed with your customers? Ask them what they need to know. Ask them in what format they prefer their content delivered. What have they received from the competition that they found valuable?

That’s a start.

The idea is to begin pulling information, ideas, and resources together while considering what your audience really needs and wants. Webequity recently wrote an article about social media strategy and how you should think like a reporter. They provide a nice social media slant to the always relevant who, what, when, where, and why. Strategy and content mix well.

When you are molding the content that will teach keep some words like these in mind:

• Share
• Educate
• Change
• Motivate
• Connect
• Inform
• Collaborate
• Tutor
• Engage
• Transform
• Inspire

Then, your audience just might go away with something that they can then share, engage, inform, transform….

How are you teaching your audience?