Have you heard about the recession?

Most people talk like companies are not spending money. The truth is companies are still spending money. In fact, companies are spending more money in certain areas of the economy.

One of the areas of increased focus is content development.

But beyond content, businesses are focusing more on context. Companies are fine tuning their content strategies into a holistic approach to their entire customer communication.

Companies are adopting the idea that every company is a media company and as a result they are including the all important context of their message in every piece of content they create.

Context & Content for Online Success

The idea of improving context is highlighted in a recent article on eConsultancy.

From How context is driving the future of web content management: new report:

Marketers are not only becoming more involved in the content creation process, but they have also started to realise that repurposing content that has been created for a specific demographic or channel is not sustainable in the long run.

As customer expectations are continuously growing, dynamic, highly relevant content that is personalised in real-time is gradually becoming the norm for forward-thinking brands.

This is important. Please read the entire article for more details.

At the heart of the context topic is the idea that people are continuing to want more from the brands they purchase from. Consumers are demanding life changing products and services. This demand creates companies that provide better products and services. The best companies are always striving to innovate and provide more value for their customers.

For decades, marketers have been working to make personalized products. In life, we all feel as if we are true individuals. Even globally the idea is that we are each our own person. For decades, marketers have created segments of their customer databases. This has proven to be a practical way of doing business.

Of course, business leaders have always wanted to be as personal as possible. They send different versions of catalogs to different segments of customers. They create different variations of their products in an attempt to satisfy different segments of their customer database.

Now, the idea of personalization is spreading to content. People demand content that has the context for their unique situation. Consumers want businesses to understand what their pains are and really offer something for their unique situation. Consumers want to change less and have products and services cater to their situations.

For content creators (and we are all content creators now), this means creating content for targeted groups of our target consumers. The idea is to create blog posts, videos, and other forms of content that speak to individuals.

With blogging, it’s important to setup your content as a story. People relate to stories even if it’s not their story. People are crazy in the way they can find examples of themselves in other people’s stories. We all do it. It’s something we do that allows us to connect with others even when things aren’t exactly the same in our lives.

Putting stories into your blogging can really setup the context of the point you’re trying to make.

There are blogs (even business blogs) I follow that really take the idea of storytelling to heart. I think of blogs like Mark’s Daily Apple where some of the most popular posts are actual stories from the readers (including my own). They share their stories and others in the community are really able to connect. Mark also provides a great commentary on a variety of health topics, but his entire business is based on the story of his own life and the life of people like him.

The story is the context most blogs can use to find success.

What is your story?