When you are planning any business there are some basics you should know. Not just your area of expertise, or how to run a business, but you should have researched and discovered several things about the market you are targeting.

You should know the broad audience you want to serve, that the audience is easy to reach and large enough to build your business on, and how you can serve them.

This focusing makes your business more effective.

Focusing for effectiveness is also important when you are creating content. If you are going to create content that is going to attract, engage and delight your audience you will need to focus in the following areas.

Your Audience

If you don’t know who your audience is enough to create in-depth audience profiles or personas, then you need to do more research. Your business may have one major audience such as “Women who want to eat healthily.” But that is a very broad audience. You need to narrow that audience down to specific women within a certain income bracket, married or single, mothers or without children, how much free time they have, etc.

It may be counterintuitive, but by marketing to a very specific persona you can make more sales. The people you target will feel as if your content speaks directly to them, and they will be more likely to respond.

The Purpose Of Your Content

If you understand the purpose of your content it will be easier to make it effective. Do you want the content to raise awareness of your brand? Are you trying to teach your audience something so they can understand how your products are better than those of your competitors? Or are you trying to promote what you offer and encourage more sales?

Knowing the purpose of your content will help you decide the type of content to create to get the results you want.

Your Keywords

You also need to focus the keywords you use in your content. Don’t overdo keywords. Select just a few at most that are relevant to your content and what your audience is most likely to be using in search engines. You should also select keywords based on your niche and the products or services you wish to promote.

Once you have selected your keywords you should be looking to put them in specific places as well as your main text: titles, headers, sub headers, and anchor text. Don’t try to force them into the text. Often the best way to include keywords is to write the post or article while focusing on creating good content, then go through what you have written looking for opportunities to include some of your keywords. Be careful not to overdo this as you do not want to be penalised for “keyword stuffing”, which can lower your Google page rank.

Where You Promote Your Content

It’s no use having targeted content if you don’t put it in front of the right audience. Today social media and paid advertising can target your audience extremely accurately. However they can also tempt you to publish your content everywhere.

To make the most of your content you need to place it where your most responsive audience will see it. This may be on a blog, mentioned on a forum, or posted on platforms that appeal to your audience. If you have done your audience research you should know the best places to present your work.

To create effective, targeted content you have to make sure it is focused. That means understanding your audience, deciding the purpose of the content, including the right keywords, and finally promoting your content in the most effective places.