It’s happened again. It’s time to Get Serious About Your Content Marketing, and you settle down to be Quite Serious.

And your brain freezes. You think you have nothing to say to anyone about anything. So once again content marketing goes by the wayside in favor of stuff that you know how to do — and that everyone expects you to do anyway.

So how do you produce content that is interesting and practical for your customers, and do it on a regular basis? First, and I cannot say this enough, is to know what they care about. When I was in IT at Avery Dennison, we used HP servers and storage. One day a sales rep from Sun came in to talk to us. He told us how great his networking was because was from Sun. We will be so very happy because Sun made it. When we told him that we were happy with HP and Sun wasn’t offering anything new, he blinked. I think he honestly did not understand what you were saying. His response was, “But it’s Sun.” He didn’t sell to us because we didn’t have a pain point he could meet. We didn’t have anything against Sun, but it wasn’t going to do us any favors.

So, know your customers’ pain points. Then start looking around, because you probably have more content than you think you do. And you can produce new content more easily than you think you can. (Note: Before you create content, look to see what your existing content is and where your gaps are. Look here for my simple gap analysis worksheet.)

3 Quick and Pretty Easy Ideas

• Start with the case study. Most businesses have them. But don’t stop with the regular 1 to 2-page customer success studies. Create a YouTube video about the study. If you can interview your client, so much the better. If can’t, then do it yourself by describing the issue, the solution, and how you can repeat your solution for new clients. Write a blog about it and link to the case study and the video. Viola, you have several pieces of new content.
• If you have a large enough and engaged enough customer base — or if you have access to a good size group such as a LinkedIn group — then create an interesting survey. Keep it short and lively. Then turn the results into a report. Once again, create a video about the results and consider turning the survey results into different formats like a presentation or Infographic.
• Speaking of videos, not every video has to be an Oscar-winning masterpiece. They should have decent production values. Fortunately, that doesn’t take much these days. Decent studio lighting, a good camera and clear sound, and a speaker who comes across well on camera will do the trick. And if you have employees, do video spots. Talk to them about what they do, and how what they do benefits their customers. Some of these men and women will surprise you with their passion for making their customers’ lives better.