Content Marketing Today

Why a Question Asking System Is Essential to Content Marketing–and Business–Success

Running a successful business requires asking tough questions again and again and again. 

But, unless you develop a structured approach to capturing and asking the right questions, you will be ineffective.  This applies directly to developing a successful content marketing strategy.

While I was struggling over the right approach to a chapter in our upcoming book, Get Content. Get Customers., Stephanie Diamond’s blog post on “Capturing the Right Questions” arrived in my e-mail. The chapter has to do with developing a content marketing mindset. So I’m grateful that Stephanie served as my muse in realizing that asking questions is the very first step in developing that mindset.

As her first post of 2008, Stephanie recommends a system to capture the kind of questions you need to be asking all the time about your business.  Why is this so important?  Well as she says:

Now is a great time to formulate the questions you need answered to grow your business.  As the old saying goes, “everyone is an expert when you ask the right question.”

Peter Drucker may have been the best question asker of all time.  He often said that all he did by way of consulting was to ask questions.  But the questions he asked were brilliant–and he asked them relentlessly. 

In the marvelous book, “The Definitive Drucker,  General Electric CEO, Jack Welch, recounted one question from Peter Drucker that led to a sea change at GE: “If it’s not your front room, can you make it somebody else’s front room?” In other words, if a certain area is not your company’s strength, can you outsource the work for the best possible outcome? This led GE down the path toward partnering globally with companies that could do a better job in certain areas than Welch’s company could.

These are the kind of questions that we need to be asking of our own organizations.  How can you be sure that you ask enough of the right questions?

Stephanie discusses the importance of asking yourself questions about your business day in and day out.  She says that you need a system that forces you to ask and to capture core questions about the running of your business:

Once you get proficient at capturing and answering these questions you’ll be on the road to really growing your business.

Click here to read more about what Stephanie has to say on questions–and about how to market successfully in a Web 2.0 world.

From my parochial sales and marketing perspective, you cannot hope to develop a successful strategy without asking questions that make you an expert on your customer’s problems–and how to solve them.

This is the most fundamental component of content marketing: you must have a deep understanding of your customers most important concerns.  Only then can you hope to develop content that is relevant and valuable.  Only then will you be able to serve in the role of trusted advisor and supplier.

Now I know how to attack the chapter on developing a content marketing mindset.  It’s all about asking plenty of the right questions.  Thank you Stephanie.