Many writers think that they can overlook Customer Research in content Writing. That’s a HUGE misconception!
They think it's only important in copywriting (when we’re writing to make people take certain actions that we want them to).
This is the reason why a lot of writer's struggle with the tone, cadence and even vocabulary while writing content for certain niches.
The research we usually talk about in Content Writing is focused more on the “topic” rather than the reader.
We dedicate our research hours reading other articles, news and statistics about the topic and gather as much information as we can before we start writing. In this whole process, we forget what’s most important: the reader, or customer.
So how do you find out what your Readers like to read? Because people don’t go online to write stories about the blogs they read and why they read it.
Where can you find the helpful data about your readers? Let me share 2 easy and effortless ways to get to know your readers:
1- Comments
If your client has opened comments on their website, it can tell you a lot about how your readers react to the stories.
You can go to your competitors' websites and read all of their comments as well because you’re basically targeting the same people.
You can also find similar products on online stores and read reviews to get some vocab.
2- Demographic Data
It’s now easier than ever to access readers' demographic data. If you don’t have access to your clients' accounts, you can just ask them questions like:
Who are your readers mostly?
What gender do they belong to?
How old are most of your readers?
This is the very basic data that your client can easily provide you to start with.
If your target audience are millennials and you’re writing like a Gen Z, you will offend a lot of people so know who your readers are.
3- The Usual Research
When you’re reading all those articles to do competitor research, you can look closer and start looking for a pattern.
What writing style do most of them follow? Pay attention to those which are performing statistically better. You can check this on any SEO Tool.
See what tone and cadence they follow and if it keeps showing up in all articles, then you have an answer.
This whole process can take 10-30 minutes but understanding it and adding it to your writing process can change the quality of your writing completely.
As they say customers are always right; but first know who the hell are they?
Until next week,
Muzzamil Khan
