This week, I attended what can only be called a masterclass in building helpful content that ranks, but not for Google. Nope, this was a talk on how to grow our YouTube channels from a colleague of mine.

While I can’t get into the exact strategies we discussed (and I haven’t tried them out yet), the entire discussion really inspired me because I love how he talked about creating helpful content for your audience.

And, it got me thinking…

Are we really creating helpful content?

For many of us in SEO, creating helpful content that is also optimized for search engines and our readers has become overly complicated.

And it really doesn’t have to be.

I mean, it’s the word of the day in SEO land these days after the Helpful Content Update. While many of us are still feeling the aftermath, many content creators are wondering — what can we do now?

Well, the heat and frustrations are bubbling over in Niche site and SEO Twitter, so much so that Spencer Haws put down the gauntlet saying, “Google is slowly killing blogging” in a recent tweet (that garnered a ton of responses & got Google’s attention).

If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look!

I feel Spencer and so many of my fellow content creators’ frustration these days. It’s tough when you’re not one of the big media publishing companies to continue to improve, to follow the rules (when they are constantly changing), and to keep going.

Has the fun been sucked out of content creation?

Well, for some of us who have made it our livelihood to create better content and have relied on Google to find new audiences, the goalpost is moving again, but I think it’s time for all of us to reflect…

Are we really building helpful assets?

I’ve said this a million times, and I will repeat it here - great quality content is just not enough, at least if you want your content to perform in Google.

Take this example from Anne Moss, who reflects on low-quality pages that are now outranking much better content.

But, if better content is not enough, then what is?

There are many, many ranking factors in the Google algorithm, but after the Helpful Content Update, it’s clear that Google is not just promoting the best piece of content on the topic.

We have to look at the entire publication and business presenting the content. And we have to do more to help those we want to serve.

Hey. This is Google’s world; we live in it. Google has the market share on search engines, even if they have to pay for it.

So, what does this all mean for us who are building dedicated content publications? What can we do today to improve our publications and give our audiences the help they need?

Let’s strip it back to the basics, shall we…

How to Think Like a Helpful Content Creator

Creating helpful content and a successful digital publication starts with how we think about creating helpful content.

If you’re still here, reading this newsletter, you know we’re in this for the long game.

So, while I don’t recommend panicking and doing any major dramatic updates based on how the SERPs appear today, there are many things we can do to improve our content and our overall publications.

Start by believing that you can always make your content or publication better. We can always help, do more, and serve our audiences better.

Let’s get to work.

The 4 Things You Can Do Today to Think Like a Helpful Content Creator

1. Do some research to find the questions your audience is asking.

2. Look and find the motivations and underlying feelings and experiences your people are experiencing.

3. Promise something helpful to your audience.

4. Check to make sure you’re delivering on your content promise. If not, there’s room for improvement.

To be a successful content creator today, you have to think like a helpful content creator. These are the muscles we need to develop and continue to work on if we’re creating content.

So, let’s break down the first two things you need to do to think like a helpful content creator. Next week, we can dig into what that promise can look like and how to evaluate if you’re delivering on your content promises!

Ways to find questions your audience asks.

You might already have many questions your audience is asking right at your fingertips. When was the last time you reviewed the comments on your socials or YouTube channel? What about the questions that come in on your blog?

These are golden feedback loops that you, as the content strategist in charge, need to look into.

But there are other ways we can find the questions our audience is asking. Remember, a few hours of in-depth digging and genuine curiosity can save you thousands of dollars in content creation.

Join a forum or a community, Facebook Group, Discord… and get involved.

A great way to get to know your audience is to really dig into what they are talking about on forums. While many forums and groups do their best to monitor the content here, generally speaking, this is where people go to share their real-deal opinions and ask questions they can’t find the answers to in a typical Google search.

These can be a treasure trove of clues to what challenges your audience is facing and the exact ‘search terms’ they might be looking for.

They can also give you a lot of clues on where people get the most ‘heated’ or ‘passionate’ as well. The more you can live in this world, the better your content will be.

Search Google’s People Also Ask Questions.

An easy way to find queries that people are searching Google for is to look at the People Also Ask questions that pop up.

This is another treasure trove of questions that provide many clues on what our audience is asking, struggling with, and wanting to know more about.

Keep asking questions, looking things up and start a running log of the questions that people are searching for.

Are there any trends worth noting?

Is there anything that stands out or doesn’t seem to fit? This is where you need to dig deeper. There might be some connections there that you haven’t figured out yet.

Look for the emotions and motivation behind the questions people are asking.

When digging through the questions your audience is asking, go a bit deeper to discover some of the emotions or motivations behind these questions.

For example, we have a subscription box site where we buy, test, and review a bunch of subscription boxes.

Last month, we asked one of our junior editors/VAs to dig to find some of the themes and questions our audience is asking in other YouTube channels to see if we can figure out some new video types we can create.

I was especially interested in seeing what type of questions kept coming up that we were not answering in our content.

We’re still digging into this research, but we uncovered a lot of great questions to dig into. Some examples:

• Is this a scam?

• Is it worth it?

• How to cancel x?

• Is x cheaper than y?

A lot of these questions can also be discovered in the topical and keyword research phase, but we were looking for ways we could improve our content, discover new types of supportive videos we might want to create, and of course, find new ways we can help our audience!

But knowing the emotions and motivation of our audience is even more valuable. This helps us structure our social and email newsletter content and gives us a much bigger picture of who we want to help.

From our list of questions, we can easily guess the motivation or pain points of our audience.

1. Is this a scam?

   • Fear and Skepticism: People may fear losing money or being tricked, leading to skepticism towards a particular offer, service, or product. They wonder if something is “too good to be true” and might doubt the results they look up in Google.

2. Is it worth it?

   • Doubt and Value Assessment: Individuals are likely assessing the value of a particular product or service, possibly doubting its worth in relation to its cost or the effort involved. What does worth it look like to our audience?

3. How to cancel X?

   • Avoidance of Loss and Frustration: Fear of losing money could be a trigger here for sure. Additionally, there might be dissatisfaction or frustration with a service or subscription. Our audience wants to do their research to avoid future loss and frustration when ordering things online that they’ve never tried before.

4. Is X cheaper than Y?

   • Cost-Saving and Practicality: Individuals are likely looking to save money or find the more economical options among the choices available. They might be looking for deals, and spending their money wisely is important to them.

From our initial research, we have now discovered a few more ways we can be helpful to our audience, both in the videos we create, in the content we create on the site, and in our newsletters.

We might want to create a cluster of videos that do comparisons. Or we might want to make another cluster of videos in that address, “Is this a scam?” for example.

Next Steps to Thinking Like a Helpful Content Creator

So, we’ve taken on this challenge to be more helpful to our readers, but it doesn’t stop here.

This is an iterative process. If we really want to build a community, a lasting community that can’t wait for our content, we’re going to have to keep learning.

That means we must build some feedback loops in our content processes. These can look like:

• Reviewing and answering comments on your blog.

• Responding to comments on your videos and social accounts and creating content with these questions in mind.

• Talking to your subject matter experts and having them suggest new topic ideas. We love it when our writers share ideas with us and almost always say ‘yes’ to those topics!

Next week, we’ll delve into this more and discuss our content promise + how we can evaluate if we’re delivering on that promise in our content and publications.

But if you take anything away from this discussion, understand that being a helpful content creator starts with deciding that you can always do more to help.

_{Things to Read, Watch, and Ponder}

If creatives are rule breakers (and they are) as Robert Rose says, how can you maintain content quality and standards as you scale (and still let creatives do their thing)? This is a dilemma I’ve faced for years building our niche publications. Creatives need room to run and color outside the lines, but there also needs to be clear content operational standards in place. This is a great discussion and one that I wish we saw more of in content. There is a solution! Check it out here!

Google has just made a massive update to how it’s classifying things in the Knowledge Graph. Why is this important? As Google gets better at classifying individuals properly and relying less on sources such as Wikipedia (which can be easily manipulated), there ‘should’ be better ways to classify writers for a website, for example. Will this lead to improvements in the algorithm? We will see.

Good news from the Superpath 2023 State of Content Marketing report. There seems to be a cautious sense of optimism in the industry, and an eagerness to add AI into our content processes overall. Check it out!

Thanks for reading! Next week, we’ll continue this discussion on how to think like a helpful content creator and talk about our content promise (or promises) and how we can truly evaluate if we’re delivering on that!

If you have some time, check out the Superpath report as well. It’s good to see the overall sentiment in content is still optimistic, in spite of all the changes we’ve seen this year.

While I do understand the saltiness and frustration from bloggers and publishers in this space right now, content in its purest form is still super valuable, and there’s still lots of room to grow in this industry.

As always, I’ll do my best to keep you all in the loop and share how I’m thinking about these things as I navigate another year in this industry!

See you next week.

Cheers! Amy

_{Some Bonus Newsletters You’ll Love}

If you want to get into the weeds on these topics, here are a couple of newsletters to subscribe to.