How do you know your content is successful? When users get what they need — quickly and easily.
That requires, of course, knowing what your users need. Listening to and observing your audience and building effective personas all help with that.
But once you know your user, it’s on you to align your business — and, by extension, your content — to those needs. When they win, you win. That’s why user needs lie at the center of successful content strategy.
Great user-driven experiences are a long-term investment that builds awareness, engagement, affinity, and trust. And that drives conversions and sales for your business.
But in the age of AI, SEO, and ever-changing algorithms, there’s more noise than ever around content and how to most effectively meet user needs online. It’s clear just how challenging that space is for content marketers. We attended the Confab 2023 conference in May — the tradeshow devoted to content strategy — and the recurring theme across dozens of speakers was the need to find better ways to break through the noise.
After taking part in three days of incredible workshops and presentations, our agency team sat down and mapped out the biggest takeaways to share with you. So, if you didn’t get to make the trip to the last-ever Confab, here are three user-driven content marketing trends that smart businesses are considering to create win-win solutions for them and their customers.
Hit Them With the Right Words
Poetry seeks the “best words in the best order,” as English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge said. User-driven content attempts that and then some: The best words, in the best ways, at the best time, in the best order.
Is it poetry? No. But the goal is still to move people (down the sales funnel).
To that end, content that moves people is content that serves people: It should capture and engage your audience, yes, but ultimately your words should help users complete the task they need to complete.
Businesses who get this are deeply researching how, what, and where their users read.
Make content that helps users get what they came for — quickly, easily — and then get out of the way.
They know broader habits, like that people read headlines over body copy and perceive title case CTAs as more authoritative. But they also know where their audiences are reading — which devices, which apps, which social channels — and tailor their UX writing accordingly.
They know their users’ tone and voice and let that inform their own, matching their expectations and creating common ground. They know when less is more. They know when plain words are more helpful than clever ones.
In short: They make content that helps users get what they came for — quickly, easily — and then get out of the way, letting them proceed down their customer journeys. Kind of poetic, in a way.
PUT SEO AT THE START, WITH USER INTENT AT THE HEART
Putting users at the center has a way of upending favored metrics. All of a sudden, time spent on page doesn’t guarantee your users love your blog. It may mean they can’t quickly find what they need.
Similarly, high traffic to your site means little if users don’t find what they’re seeking. That’s why sharp businesses employ user-centered SEO that emphasizes search intent: the goal or question that drives a user to search for your content in the first place.
Catering to people, and not algorithms or search trends, ensures that SEO informs content to be as helpful to your specific users as possible, serving their needs and your business.
Traditionally, search engine optimization gets lumped into the tail end of the content process — lacing in last-minute keywords right before you hit “publish” on a blog.
But smart brands are increasingly putting SEO at the front end, doing tons of search intent research early on to guide content processes before writing begins.
Instead of parroting the most popular terms to get the most traffic, they’re analyzing and parsing user intent: using search data, AI and SEO tools to truly understand what users who visit their page hope to do, solve or learn. They’re parsing long-tail keywords religiously and staying up to date on Google’s ever-shifting quality raters.
The result? Their sites and content mirror their users’ priorities in words that match how their customers actually think about, talk about, and search for their product. This comes through on their sites in easy-to-scan formatting, descriptive alt-text, and densely descriptive CTAs that serve and move the user.
THINK ABOUT (AND RETHINK) THOSE CHATBOTS
We’ve all had bad experiences with chatbots: unhelpful conversations in small pop-up boxes that go on forever and accomplish nothing.
However, smart businesses now increasingly value the art of chatbots, formally known as conversation design, and center how their users speak to make their chatbots more natural, helpful, and effective.
In theory, talking to a chatbot for assistance or information should feel just like talking to a human. You say something. They say something. A good conversation unfolds.
Except people don’t talk to chatbots like they talk to humans — and they come to them with an innately different sense of expectations: When people pose a question to a bot, they expect a reply that’s specific, immediate, and accurate.
However, whereas a person might input a raw term into Google — “returns Gap” — people pose full questions to bots: “What’s your return policy?”
Sophisticated conversation design begins with its users, to understand how they specifically talk to chatbots on a specific business's site, and how, and why — and whether a conversation is the best way to serve the user’s needs at all.
Ready to sharpen your brand with user-driven content that boosts your business? Learn more about our content approach and connect with us today.
By Two Rivers Marketing
