Letter #42: Creating content loyalists
Using internal links, your expertise, and more to breed fans for your content.
Hii there!
It happened again — after a lonng time, I found myself loving a new website’s content so much that I went on opening new articles in different tabs then saving them to my Pocket (read-it-later) app.
When I read those saved pieces over the weekend, I fell in love with First Round Review’s content all over again.
Put another way, I became their content loyalist — something we as content folks should aim to create more.
Essentially, content loyalists are folks who love your content so much they sing praises of it ✨ They:
Return to your content now and then
Share your pieces with their network and their team, and
Slowly but surely become familiar with your product
As a result, they even start recommending you to others — whether they convert themselves or not, or buy from you at a later time.
So the million dollar question for today: how do you build an army of content loyalists?
I’ve got a handful of tips for you:
1. Shift your focus from conversions to value
I’m not saying you drop the ball on driving conversions altogether. Nope, that can land you in serious trouble with the leadership.
What I’m recommending is you sit with a cup of coffee (or m&ms if you prefer) and ask yourself: how are we providing value with our content and how can we get better at it?
Value is subjective, I agree. And after a lot of deliberate thought, I’ve concluded it rests on these three pillars:
Expertise (insights from people who’ve been there and know the challenges and the thrill of it)
Examples (including real-life success stories on top of made-up examples to explain the topic better)
Actionable insights (address not just the “why” but also the “how” for every single thing that you talk about)
Pair all three with a solid narrative flow and boom! 💥 You’ve content that’s fodder for building loyalists.
Such valuable content is memorable (here’s more on making your writing memorable), which gets people to come back to you for more advice, insights, and tips. Until one day, they turn into loyal fans — shouting out praises for you.
2. Stop obsessing over funnels, create a content playground instead
People rarely ever move down the funnel at your insistence or push. Instead, they move at their pace, whenever they’re ready.
Until then, your job is to keep them engaged. How? By creating a content playground that offers them so much goodness they remember you.
In this playground, create content based on the next questions readers have.
For example, you create a piece on what is SEO. What do you think a person reading this will question about next? ‘How do I implement SEO,’ isn’t it? So create a fresh piece that answers that and so on.
By taking this approach to ideating and creating content, you’ll focus more on value and providing resources to help your audience.
3. Add internal links
So many content teams neglect this. In reality, internal links are table stakes for creating content loyalists — keeping people on your site longer, providing them value with each piece.
This has been my experience with Databox’s blog content before I started writing for it. I’d save one piece, but I’d keep reading different pieces on their site — thanks to the recommended reading links they’d add.
You can do this too. Start with either manually creating a content inventory of all your published pieces or using Screaming Frog to create it for you.
Alternatively, google “site: website URL + keyword” and the search engine will pull out all relevant published content on your site.
4. Draw people to your content playground
Instead of spamming with links to your published content on marketing channels your audience uses, share value.
How? By answering their questions using some of the most valuable nuggets you share in your content. Then, share the link to encourage readers to dive deeper.
This way, you establish your expertise then lead people to your content, which gets them to actually read the shared link.
A better (highly recommended) approach is to not link at all.
Instead, create engaging Twitter threads, answer Quora questions, and/or write LinkedIn posts from the content you’ve already published.
Do this on a regular cadence and you’ll be creating a repurposed (and memorable) content playground on other channels.
As you do this, more and more people will see you as an authority on the topic and refer you (and buy from you when they’re ready).
And that’s a wrap.
Here’s to building content loyalists 💪
Cheers,
Masooma