Now, before you continue reading this little marketing/business pro-tip, I’d just like to state that I don’t, personally, use this outline for myself; rather, it was created after I was asked, “how do I decide what blog content is considered priority to write about?”

From my own personal standpoint, and as you can see from my own blog, I write about whatever I find most interesting—which is much different than strategically writing to sell a product or service.

Let’s begin.

Before doing anything, it’s important for us to understand the general sales funnel Audiences available to us and their positioning/characteristics within each segment. Typically, from a sales stand point, your Audience will be broken up into the following categories: Unaware Consumers, Active Consumers, On-the-Fence, Purchasers of the Product, and Post-purchasers of the Product.

Unaware Consumers are all the individuals in the market who have not readily heard of your product or service. These individuals can typically be roped in through SEO keyword practices, friends-of-friends, or general blog content that is indirectly related to your product or service but can be stumbled upon through an indirect Google search.

Active Consumers are individuals who currently engage with your brand. This group is relatively easy to market to and write for, as they will have a baseline understanding of your product or service already and can ultimately be turned into Purchasers of the Product at a later date.

On-the-Fence types are the ones who aren’t fully sold, but can be persuaded into buying in the future. A very fickle slice of the market, these individuals can quickly be turned—however, this can happen in both directions…

Purchasers of the Product, again, are relatively simple to write for as there’s no real need to market to them anymore (aside from quelling any potential Cognitive Dissonance* that might occur). This group really just wants to know that they’ve made a good decision, along with any how-to/FAQ guides to help inform them on anything related to their purchase.

Post-purchasers of the Product are individuals who need to be reminded of the value of their initial purchase; and, depending on the product or service you are selling, content related to these individuals has the potential to open the door to repeat business, excellent word of mouth reviews and up-selling (think, “now that you have this fork, why not purchase the entire kitchen set?” kind of thing).

So, how do you select the most relevant content to write about?

Relevant content can be broken down into these two funnels:

CONTENT SCOPE

In this funnel, it’s all about figuring out how broad the content you are going to write about will be. Will your content be extremely broad in scope, enough to appeal to a large number of Audiences, or will it be narrowly defined and niche; where, only “those who know, will know”?

LANDING-PAGE LIKELIHOOD

What good is content if no one is going to see it? This funnel deals with the potential for anyone to actually see your content in the first place; and, therefore, engage with it. As you’ll see in this funnel, despite Unaware Consumers having the broadest Content Scope in the previous funnel, they have the lowest likelihood of actually seeing what you’ve created in the fist place.

So, how exactly do you select the most relevant content to write about for your blog?

I would suggest lumping your blog content themes into each one of the buckets in the funnels above, then seeing where the content overlaps; ultimately, allowing you to decide how much of a loss you are willing to take with regard to not having your content be seen. As an interesting side note, the best part about applying these two funnels is that you are able to strategically hit multiple tiers with a single piece of content, allowing you to pass individuals further down along the sales funnel!

In the end, it’s not necessarily about relevancy or immediacy, it’s about being efficient with your time and energy. There are only 8 hours in a work day—so, how are you going to spend them?

…and if you’re a generalist writer like me, then go home and forget about this model entirely, and just write about whatever inspires you!

-manage wisely.