Hey!

I slacked off a little on my updates.

I wasn’t feeling at my best this week.

Work was pretty overwhelmed this 2 weeks.

Not my boss (aka my co-founder, aka my boyfriend) giving me work. It’s me myself that’s giving myself a lot of pressure.

I’m in charge of content marketing at our company.

The single main objective of content marketing in my business is not to go viral, not to have tons of likes, or tons of reach, at least not for now, but to create credibility & trust with our prospects/customers.

I know this from the start. I swear I know.

Initially I started content creation with this objective kept in mind.

I started creating my first piece of content – SARAH, mainly talking about how beauty & wellness brands can use AI to keep customers coming back. At that time, we just launched our beauty & wellness CRM, hence creating this content for relevancy & to promote the solution. It got quite a bit of reach, likes & engagement.

I went on to create my second piece. This time to target on the importance of data analytics. Stop Waiting, Start Retargeting (AI-Powered Customer Insights Dashboard). We launched our data analytics solution and knew it would benefit businesses out there leveraging on data to grow their business. The numbers were quite OK as well. We shared the post to our personal social accounts. Started to have more people following our company page, organically.

The third piece of content was a follow up from the second. 3 Common Mistakes Business Make With Data (And How to Fix It). Emphasizing on how businesses can leverage data to achieve more for their business. A little tweak in design inspiration in this post. I felt like the previous 2 post was a little too “white”, not as “techy”.  I struggled a lot on this day to find references that I think resonate with me & our business.

After long hours of doom scrolling, I stumbled upon NPDIGITAL’s social media account. Neil Patel was one of my most OG mentor during my digital marketing times. I really looked up to him during that period of time. His expertise in SEO/SEM/Digital Marketing.

I found resonance in his company’s social media account page & posts. I liked it very much. Very educational & inspiring. Unlike some other solution providers, with more entertainment-focused content. Yes, the engagement of those entertainment content might be better. But at the end of the day, we are a business, not an influencer. What we prioritize is CONVERSION, not ENGAGEMENT(ie. likes, comments etc.).

If the post can make people laugh, of course people will want to see more of those. But for our business, we ain’t focusing on people watching more of our content, we focus on educating people on the power of AI & Automation. How AI & Automation can help their business. How AI & Automation can save their time, save their money while achieving more. It need not be entertaining. Anyways our target audience is not mass audience as well. Our target audience are tech-savy business owners wanting to achieve more in their business.

Educational contents will not get as many engagements or likes from normal people. I know this is for sure. But it’s crucial for our business to build trust & credibility with our prospects/customers. It acts as an additional touchpoint for our prospects/customers to conduct background check on us. To know that we are legit. To know that we know what we are talking about, and not bullshits.

Just like that day I’m interested in visiting a TCM clinic. A friend of mine introduced the clinic to me. When I first heard about the clinic, I will go conduct some background check about the clinic first. Searching them up on social media, to see if they are legit. What criteria/factor do I look for to determine if this clinic is legit? Does the clinic has any reviews? Any testimonial? Any photos? Any videos? To make sure at least the clinic is still in business. This is the basic thing I will look for to determine if a clinic is legit. If the basic (step 1) passed, then I’ll proceed to step 2.

Step 2, I will see what additional thing the clinic has done. For example, the clinic that I researched on has been doing content marketing since 3 years ago. And those content are not simply entertainment content. They are mostly educational content. Which makes me trust the clinic even more. Because if a clinic is willing to put in the effort to do educational content, I think they know what they are talking about. And I’ll even more willing to give them my money.

Step 3, Results-Oriented post. For example, testimonial post, before & after post. This builds even more credibility for this clinic. I’m seeing real results of out the service it has provided. Making it even more legit.

In this digital era, I fully agree on this type of customer journey. The world has evolved. Last time people will just try things out after just hearing from a friend, but now times have changed. It’s so easy to do research, to get information. Just a matter of one click. Hence, a lot of times, people will just make some clicks to check on the recommendation first before trying. If the background check results is good (with educational & results-oriented content marketing, aka built even more trust on the business), it’s a BIG YES to try the place out. But if the background check is slightly off (aka normal content like photos of the place, videos etc.), the customer may or may not try. The customer will tend to put the place into its waiting list. If at this timing, another friend recommended another clinic, and this clinic has much more content marketing done, I guarantee the customer will give the second one a try instead!

That’s the power of content marketing (the right way – with educational content). Which builds trust the most. Especially for intangible businesses like service/solution-based businesses.

Looking at my content calendar, I’ve created 8 contents till date. Some, I spent a lot of time making it, and I really loved how it turned out. Some, not so much time, aka using a template, but the engagement was super good. I think it’s because of the content as well, talking about our founders. People especially our friends are all happy for us, hence sending us more love for that post.

I want to remind myself, no matter the numbers big or small, these contents are our stepping stone to building trust with our customers. They are the small pebbles that lead the customers to our way.

I want to remind myself, to remember to enjoy the process of creating these small pebbles. Maybe now I might not see any results yet, but surely it will slowly blossom into the tree we all wanted <3