Introduction
This week we look at a powerful method for simultaneously:
- growing your audience
- giving you easy content ideas
- flexing your knowledge and experience
This is a super powerful method to add to your content creation and audience building arsenal.
It’s all about answering the questions your customers have.
Sounds simple. But we’ll cover how to use this powerful method to catapult your audience growth.
We’ll cover:
- Part 1: Questionable Content
- Part 2: They ask, you answer
- Part 3: Time for answers!
- Part 4: RIP Yahoo Answers
- Part 5: Q&A ouroboros
Want to advertise here? Get started here.
Let’s get started:
Questionable Content
Building an audience is crucial to any business.
The greatest product or service in the world will fail without distribution.
It doesn’t matter how good your stuff is if nobody knows about it.
Listen to Tibo. Tibo knows:
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1769321310386016503&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fpromptentrepreneur.beehiiv.com%2Fp%2Fprompt-playbook-entrepreneurial-resilience-part-5&sessionId=eb1a00c846ee62cedca794410879a055e4ab8faa&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px
Distribution starts by building an audience.
In my BATON framework Audience is the very first step after working out what your business actually does – Business, Audience, Tribe, Offer, Network. Without this the rest is moot.
Building an audience for a business is more than being good at dancing on Tiktok or being ridiculously good looking. If you are also these then more power to you.
But for the rest of us mortals (myself very much included!) we build an audience for our business using content marketing, specifically content that educates and informs.
This sort of content helps us:
- be liked
- be known
- be trusted
By talking about our particular area of expertise we build trust. And that trust can be converted into sales. This guy/gal knows what they are talking about – I would like to buy their stuff. It’s really that simple. Not easy, but simple.
Question and Answer
As a business owner the best way to build this trust is by educating people about your niche.
You immediately become the authority.
For example the other day I looked through the new EU Artificial Intelligence Act and shot a 3 minute video giving the highlights.
For any business owners using AI (especially in the EU) this video was valuable.
I had one Whatsapp message from a contact like this:
You need to be in a similar position of authority in your niche.
It doesn’t matter what the niche is. It doesn’t matter if it is B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business).
What’s important is that you, personally, are known for your expertise.
The best way to build this authority is to answer the questions that your audience has.
I’m borrowing this concept from a book called They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. Well worth checking out. We’ll cover the basics this week though.
The general thrust is that you need to answer questions that your audience (and thus potential customers) have.
For example let’s say I run a company that helps men who are losing their hair.
Their questions will be things like:
- how does hair loss happens?
- how can hair loss be prevented?
- what does hair loss look like?
- how does hair loss occur?
- how does hair loss start?
These are questions that my customers are already asking.
As an expert in the field (who runs a business in the niche!) I step up and answer these questions.
In the next Part I’ll show you how to find what questions people are asking. In the Parts after than we’ll look at how to answer these questions using social media and for SEO Google results.
The basic idea though is that we are going to answer the pressing questions our customers have.
Customer questions > We answer > Customer trust > Purchases
Let’s get started today with a prompt that’ll get the creative juices flowing. In the next Part we’ll do this systematically to provide us with infinite list of questions to answer.
Act as a content strategist
I am following the methods outlined by Marcus Sheridan in They Ask, You Answer. I want to integrate answering customer questions into my content marketing in order to build authority an trust with customers.
My business is [business details]
My customers are [customers]
Their main problems are [customer problems]
Provide me with a list of problem areas along their customer journey. Aim for 5 sequential problem areas.
For each provide 10 questions that they would ask at
each stage. By plugging in:
My business is selling hair loss products
My customers are men who are losing their har
Their main problems are hair lossI get the following output:
This is 1 of 5 stages that ChatGPT gives me. This prompt will generate a lot of content ideas.
Right now your only goal is to review the questions offered and ask if you are able to answer them.
If yes: this content marketing method will work perfectly for you.
If not then less so! And it also brings up the question of whether you are in the right niche or not. Your business niche should be something that you know like the back of your hand. So use this as a wake up call if these questions are too challenging for you!
In the next Part we’ll look at different methods of collecting up questions so that we have infinite content ideas.