Business is not a cake walk and hence every customer faces some problems and struggles to get through. Consider their problems as new opportunities and think of out-of-the-box solutions which work for them appropriately to cease their struggles. Identifying the cause and curing it at the specific spot is the right remedy.

There are 6 guaranteed ways you can make use of to determine customers’ problems. Then, start writing articles which will answer their most common queries and resolve their most endured worries.

Make a List of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

You might have noticed certain comments under your social media posts and queries in your inbox which are very familiar and repeated. Analyse that since it’s repeated, it is commonly faced and hence needs to be addressed soon.

Here’s how you should approach this step:

• Check the blog comments, social media, emails, and all the other places where you could receive messages from your customers.
• Create a list of all FAQs you were able to find. Copy-paste the exact words which were used by your customers when they were describing the problem they’re facing.
• Take each common question one by one and analyse whether it’s a topic for an article topic you can write.
• Start writing the articles.

After you’ve published them, provide a link to those people who asked the questions and let them know you’ve written an in-depth article about the issues they face and can make use of it.

This listing process of all the problems gives you enough content when you run out of them.

Know the Problems You Can Solve by Listening

Step two requires a little more research. Your customers engage on multiple websites, forums, or social media sites not just for entertainment, but also to seek help and advice on various matters. Hence, listening is important if you want to write articles which will resolve customers’ problems.

Here’s what you need to do here:

• Join social media groups and communities where your customers hang out. Check the conversations they’re having with other people and analyse the questions that pop up.
• Quora, GrowthHackers, Inbound.org, Reddit – these are extremely valuable communities. People ask questions there all the time. Study what people are discussing on these platforms.
• After spending some time in these online communities, you’ll be able to find out where you can be of help.
• You can then start working on some articles then.

Don’t delay because there are always chances of someone else solving your customers’ problems.

Identifying the type of Content your Audience shares the most

End number of research has been done when it comes to creating the final headline or how to influence people to share your articles.

And it was all done above the trust they generated in you and the content you prepare. There are certain psychological factors which trigger people to share articles.  Most of them get influenced directly by the headline. Hence, the headline of the article can determine its success. The headline is the first impression and thus it is a deal breaker.

To identify the content your audience would like to read and share, you can use a tool like Buzzsumo.

• All you have to do is just type in the search bar your target keywords, press enter and in a few seconds, you’ll see what type of articles received the highest amount of shares. You can sort the articles by Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Google Plus shares.
• Then, create a list with the title of the articles you have found. Thus, you’ll be able to analyse what kind of topics you can come up with, which are unique and fit for your audience.

Monitor Your Competitors

You should monitor how your competitors are doing and how your trajectory of competition is. You have to focus only on your most important competitors and don’t try to chase all of them.

To analyse them, here’s what you should pay attention to:

• Their website
• SEO strategy
• Social media strategy.

To monitor your competition, there are two extremely useful tools: Opensiteexplorer.org and Buzzsumo.

Opensiteexplorer.org is very convenient to use. Just type in the search bar your competitor’s domain and you’ll be able to:

• Know their domain authority and the page authority
• Analyse all of the inbound links
• See what anchor text the competition used
• Check the ‘Top pages’ tab, which will show you what pages have been linked to the most.

Buzzsumo, besides identifying what are the most shared articles after certain keywords, can help you:

• Identify what content is shared the most by your competition. To see this, you need to type in the competitor’s website.
• What social media channel works best for them?

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows you plenty of insights not everyone knows about or uses to their full potential priorly because it may not be the friendliest analytics platform out there. Besides throwing light on how much traffic you have on your website and where it’s coming from, Google Analytics provides plenty of insight when it comes to the demographics and interests of customers.

So, take advantage of it and start looking at these analytics.

It will help you segment your market and target it by creating better content – which brings us to our final step.

Create Buyer Personas

Every business has several buyer personas, not just one ideal customer. Your buyer personas can be extremely different, even if they’re interested in the same products or services. By outlining their profiles, you’ll be able to understand them better and create suitable content for them.

Putting yourself in the shoes of a buyer persona which you know so much about, is very easy. Content which resonates with the readers is more powerful and influential than articles which are targeting everyone and no one simultaneously.

Solving customers’ problems in the most appropriate way give you an edge in the market as well as satisfy your content thirst. Wondering what problems your customers are facing won’t give any leads but you must be grateful to make use of social media analytics and the multiple online communities, you can now find answers and most importantly, the questions you have been waiting for. Writing articles on those queries will let you evolve as the best place to seek their answers which will work in your growth as well. So, get out there and start hunting.