#25 in the life of Aksh

Content Marketing Plan?

Content writing is about emotional connection. You write for someone, and this person is a stranger in some part of the world. You never get to know who exactly read your piece, you just know that you wanted to write for someone and someone did read it.
That raises an important question: who is reading it? Who is reading all the extra content each day? What should I be writing that makes someone read through the extraneous chunk of information that I dispense every day? Who has the time for it? Why would someone read this? Why would someone read what "I" have written?

Well, I'll let you in on a secret. The key is selflessness. Just keep writing and sharing for the greater good. And, you will find readership. 
If you are a corporate, you can justify by saying, "I want to speed things up, shift gears, and make a brand go viral"; "I don't have time for this!" Then, answer this: can you write about the same thing every day? Can you have your first and 1000th article about how great your product is? Is that good enough? 

Instead of beating around the bush, let me answer by saying, that it is not enough. What you share should have an underlying message - a connecting thread. People in marketing give it all sorts of names. For simplicity, I would refer it as "space". Think of a space as the ecosystem where your content resides. Your space is the conclusion of your story as well as its background. You are defining the meaning of your writing by clearly defining your space. 

Let's start with some examples to make this easier to understand:
Example 1: If I am a freelance writer, and I write about poverty in India. What do you expect me to be writing about?

• Option A: In my every post, I write that India has poor and malnourished people*, and these numbers continue to grow. (*not every Indian is malnourished, just saying!)
• Option B: In my every post, I explain the state of poverty by sharing the lifestyle of the poor. I redefine what it means to live a life of poverty by giving my take on the stories that only I can tell. Like, Akshansh's special coverage of poverty in India. Read the stories of the struggling family and its lineage grappling with struggle. 

Which one (Option A/B) seems to have more depth and meaning to them?
Example 2: If I am a company trying to establish my brand of pain killers, what do you expect me to be writing about?

• Option A: In my every post, I acknowledge that pain is a problem, and my pain killer is the solution. It has the best features (fastest, best, most - the entire charade of superlatives). 
• Option B: In my every post, I dive into the topic of pain management. Perhaps, I plug in stories of grandma tricks (colloquially referred in India as as "दादी माँ के नुस्खे"). I normalize the idea of pain management because I understand that it's difficult and uncomfortable. 

Which Option (A/B) would you like to read one year after you start following it? Think about the space that you are creating for your brand. 

That's what it is all about. Set up a space for your brand/product. Let every piece of content reflect the space you have chosen for yourself. Create followers based on what you write about. Have people like your writing style and topics. 
The most difficult question that you need to answer before you start writing is: what is the space for my brand?
Here are a few more related questions:

• What are the concerns/issues that your users are facing, which you can solve through content?
• What kind of stories will you tell me so that I get hooked to your "message"?
• How would you become the leading provider of information on the topic you are talking about?
•  What is that content that relates not with our brand, but with our customers?

Make every piece of content fall in the same space. Start from there, and the rest would follow. 
It is not stereotyping, it is directional messaging. 
Akshansh.

If you are reading this and followed this far, congratulations! You are one of those people who considers giving value through their message.