Now, I know what you’re thinking: If I stop creating content, how will people find my site and my brand?

Content creation is a well-known strategy for people who want to grow their audience and get found on the internet.

It’s the most logical step if — like most marketers or business owners — you want to build an online presence for your brand. (And who doesn’t?)

But here’s the thing: creating content is not your only option. You can also focus on engaging with your audience, delivering value, and connecting with customers, so they become loyal followers.

These steps are often overlooked, but taken together, can be just as effective as content creation in driving leads and sales.

Although it might seem counterintuitive to stop creating content, if you keep reading, I’ll show you 5 things you should do instead. Let’s dive in!

Add Value

What’s the point of creating content if it doesn’t add value to your audience or helps them solve critical issues?

Content creation is a balancing act. On one hand, you want to create content to help your business grow, get more visitors and generate leads. On the other hand, you want to create quality content that helps your potential customers solve problems they’re facing.

So how do you know if your content is adding value? There are two questions you should ask yourself before putting pen to paper — or thumbs to keyboard.

What is the purpose of this piece of content?
Is this piece of content going to solve a problem for my audience?

The first question will help you outline your content goal, while the second will help you uncover the pain points in your audience’s journey that your content can solve.

To get started on adding value, open up an Excel sheet and create an inventory of all the assets that are currently not being leveraged properly within your industry.

Here are some ideas!

Customer testimonial
Industry statistics
Company product overviews
Blog Posts
Press Releases

Creating a content audit will help you discover loopholes in your industry and business that you can plug with valuable content.

If your content doesn't add value to the reader, your content is not adding value to your business. Share on X

Tell Stories

There’s something to be said about introducing your audience to the human behind the brand. It builds trust, allows you to tell your story through a more relatable lens, and helps potential customers identify with you.

Telling a story creates context between different pieces of content you create. Each post becomes part of a bigger narrative that your customer can identify with.

Storytelling is a technique that allows you to engage your audience in a whole new way.

It’s not about creating content, so you can add another “checkmark” to your content marketing strategy. It’s about telling a story, so the reader can picture themselves in your shoes.

Storytelling is about helping your customer connect with your brand on an emotional level. Share on X

To put this into perspective, when you tell stories about yourself or your business, your customers:

See themselves as the protagonists
Get a better understanding of who you are and what you do
Can experience something different
Identify with you
Trust your brand and offerings
Gain confidence in your company because they can see themselves using your product or service

How can you discover stories to tell?

Dig into the history of your business
If you don’t have any history, talk about how you got started in that industry
If you’re new to the business world, focus on what inspired you to start your business and how it ties in with one of your passions
Explain what makes you or your business unique from others in your industry

“Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints.” — Jonah Sachs.

Engage your Audience

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is putting in all their energy into creating content and not enough time engaging with their audience. You can’t have a successful content marketing campaign without engaging your audience.

Engagement is about being part of an ongoing relationship with your audience. It offers you a chance to build a deeper connection that will last beyond the moment they interact with you online.

An engaged audience will simply be more willing to be influenced by you. How can you promote audience engagement?

Be consistent
Ask for feedback
Include a face in your online communications
Include calls to action at the end of each piece of content
Ask questions to get your followers involved in the conversation
Be genuinely interested in the conversation
Check up on frequent commenters
Make your company a resource, not just a brand
See your audience as people first, not just some moving dollar bill

By actively interacting with your audience, you can drive the right engagements, or sway negative conversations in your favour.

Followers and audiences can become brand advocates if you engage more with them.

“Audience engagement is critical to the survival of your brand; if you don’t engage them, you endanger your brand. It’s social interaction” — Bernard Kelvin Clive.

Be consistent

If you want your content to attract eyeballs, there’s one thing that you should focus on — consistency.

Turning your presence into a habit through consistency is an important element of any content or social media marketing strategy.

But what exactly is consistency? One thing you need to know for sure is that consistency isn’t the same as posting frequently.

Consistency is posting on a regular schedule. Frequency, on the other hand, is posting repeatedly within a certain time frame.

Let me explain, consistency is exercising 2hours every day. Frequency is equivalent to exercising 10hours on Monday, then not again until whenever you decide.

To create a consistent brand experience, ask yourself:

Is my brand consistent across all available touchpoints?
Do I have the same tone, voice, and persona across these touchpoints?
Does my brand offer the same value proposition across these channels?

Brand consistency is crucial if you intend to engage and lead your audience through the buyer’s journey.

In the long run, it can help you prevent customer churn and keep customers happy.

If you’re having difficulty creating quality content consistently, you should consider outsourcing your content creating efforts.

Create Connections

We’re all familiar with this scenario: You sit in front of your computer and get a sudden urge to post something on social media.

After some thought, you decide to post a photo. While you’re posting the photo, you feel as if a little voice is speaking to you, telling you that your photo isn’t appropriate for the time and place you’ve chosen to share it.

What does this imply? Context is key to content.

Context gives content meaning, and meaning is the key to connection.

Why do brands wait till early to mid-November before creating yuletide content? It’s simple — the right context!

Content marketing is more than just creating content. It’s about creating connections. And to create connections, think about what matters to your audience and when it matters.

“Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn’t mean a damn thing. Knowledge is information-in-context… Connecting the dots.” — Michael Ventura

Wrapping Up

Stop creating content, instead:

Find your stories, tell them authentically
Create an ongoing relationship with your audience
Be consistent in your message and bring value to your listeners
Create lasting connections with your customers by putting them front and centre

Stop Creating Content: 5 Things You Should Do Instead