Content development and inbound marketing have taken the lead as business development strategies.

But when it comes to figuring out the best way to reel people in, where does one start?

Many companies are beginning to lean towards blogs or other forms of content marketing in order to showcase their expertise, ideas, and experiences.

Developing a content strategy can seem like a daunting task; content marketing isn’t as easy as simply writing a post and pushing it live. How do you know what content your potential customers or clients want to hear? How much should you write? How do you cure writer’s block?

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when trying to take the first step in Content Marketing:

1. What do people (my future customers) want?

When it comes to developing content, I’ve always found this question to be the best place to start: what do people want?

If you can create content that shows people how they can get from where they are now to where they want to be, you’re a million miles ahead of your competitors. Maybe they want to be lying on a beach in the Bahamas, maybe they want to be building their dream house, maybe they want a kick butt new website for their new company.

As the content creator, you need to learn how to show your potential clients and customers all the possibilities that lie ahead of them.

2. What challenges do my customers face?

People don’t realize how many obstacles they overcome everyday. We defeat cold weather with warm clothing, we defeat long commutes with good music or novels, and we defeat exhaustion with coffee and energy drinks.

We’ve faced and defeated these challenges so often that we forget to see them as problems. Content that shows us how to overcome our challenges, whether it means a service or a product will help you show off your expertise and build a more loyal and trusted following.

3. How did I get to where I am now?

A percentage of your content should be about communicating what you know and what you’ve experienced.

By sharing your milestones, whether it’s actively or through remembering fond memories, you are helping your readers learn a little bit about you; showing a person as the face of your business instead of a company logo. You can choose to create content about anything from quick things you learned in a course, or maybe some motivational quotes that have helped you through the hard days.

When you show people that your company is built up of people who are human and have daily tasks and struggles and motivations, you will build stronger customer relationships.

Building a blog is the same as building a community. Your content needs to show people how you can solve their problems, help them reach their goals, and connect with them.

The answers to those three questions will help you create content that will serve you as a tool for customer acquisition, engagement and retention.