Entrepreneurship Series: Focus on the style of your content

How do you present yourself and your business?

Communication is one of the most crucial things to “get right” for an aspiring entrepreneur. Unless you are an absolute natural at presenting yourself and your content, you will constantly challenge the way you do what you do.

Here are a few things that I have noticed, that can improve the way you communicate with your target audience. In essence, I urge you to have a good look at the way in which you communicate, not so much what you communicate. Here’s why.

You need to get your message across

As an entrepreneur, your goal is go seek the attention of others around you constantly. Your customers will not come running at you, if you do not show them what it is that you do and what you stand for.

You will need to focus on grabbing attention – constantly.

Mind over matter – focus on what would trigger the mind of your target audience. How can you get their attention most efficiently? Think about how your audience interacts with the tools that you use to get your message across.

• Do they use Instagram? Use great Images and Stories.
• Do they read a lot? Focus on creating the most legible and beautiful blog / or magazine there is

There are plenty of great innovators out there with fantastic ideas. But the ones who manage to grab the attention of their relevant audiences, are those who do best in the long-run.

Reach a Relevant audience

You can lose a lot of time and energy, by focusing your attention on a channel that you feel comfortable with, but that does not have your target audience.

I made the same mistake. I love(d) Instagram for a long time, but for all the wrong reasons. My love for Instagram came from a creative perspective; one of my hobbies and passions is photography. Thus, I started to use Instagram to share images and stories about my business.

The main problem was that my target audience was simply not on that platform and the people I reached on Instagram were not interested in my content. It is pretty simple, right? I focused far too much attention on creating content and not on the core audience I was trying to reach.

It took me over two years to figure out that I should be using this same content on Twitter and LinkedIn to reach the audience I really want and need to have.

Use your core strength to be authentic

What I did figure out though, is that photography and writing are my core strengths. I have a natural “way with words” – okay you will probably find plenty of mistake in my writing, but I still love to write. It comes very natural to me to write about my experiences and my thoughts.

Whereas your strength might lie in video content, or some other form of story telling, possibly user engagement on Twitter or Snapchat.

You need to find out how you can communicate in your most natural and authentic voice. It is key to understand that if you do not choose the right medium to get your message across, you will not be able to reach your goals.

Make it look great

One thing I had neglected for a long time, was the fact that sometimes it matters more what something looks like than the actual content. You need to make sure that your content, whatever it is that you post, looks great.

That means that when you run a blog, as I do, do not forget to download and set up a great template for it. You need to make sure that people feel at home with your content and love to read it.

Just yesterday, I decided to go back to one of the standard WordPress templates, because they do my content a lot more justice than the template I ran before. The font type was too small, it did not make good use of space and I simply did not like it. Although, I did not even take the time to evaluate my “time on site” in Google Analytics I knew that something was off. I was not presenting the content I had curated and written so carefully, in a good manner.

I will be sure to have a look at the statistics in a few weeks time, to see if it has changed for the better. But I actually already know the answer to that question.

Find your own style as an Entrepreneur

You will need to find your own style as an entrepreneur. Let me tell you what, though. You have the possibility to have as many goes at it, as you want. There are no corporate design guidelines or communication guidelines that are holding you back.

Be the best and most authentic Entrepreneur that you can be, and be yourself. That is the best way to represent what you stand for. And remember, it is not only about the content, it is just as much about how you present it.

I hope these lines gave you something to think about and possibly a nudge in the right direction.

Have a great day, Remco