For the longest time, the phrase ‘content is king’ has been the driving force for many brands across the drinks industry - and that hasn’t changed at all. The only thing that has changed over the years is the different platforms, and way of communication.

In the 12th episode of the Wine, Whiskey & Weed Show, host Sid Patel sat down with Richard Siddle - Editor in Chief & Co-Founder at The Buyer. Siddle has been in the content world for the drinks industry for over 25 years - and in this episode, he shared his secrets on how to create top-quality content for today’s platforms.

Check out the entire episode on SoundCloud: The Wine Whiskey Weed Show Episode 12:  How To Create Content For Today's Platforms - Richard Siddle!

Know your target audience

Whenever you’re creating a new piece of content, you need to have a plan in place. The question here is, how do you start creating a plan? According to Richard Siddle, the key here is to have your brand strategy identified. You need to know who your audience is, and you need to know what kind of audience you’re hitting towards. One of the best ways to identify your brand strategy is by pulling yourself out of the equation and focusing on the audience that you’re targeting your content towards. Keep in mind that you need to keep 100% of your focus on what benefit your content will have to the person reading. This is a solid way to keep your audience in check and start building a plan for your content strategy.

Relating to different platforms

A lot of brands make the mistake of creating one piece of content, and distributing it to every platform that they can find. However, this is the wrong approach to take. Keep in mind that these days, every platform has a different target audience, and your content might not end up working everywhere that you end up putting it.

What you need to do is figure out what platforms work best for your brand, and then curate your content accordingly. For example, let’s take a look at ‘I Heart Wines’. This brand is particularly focused on 20-35-year-old working women. If you take a look at their distribution strategy, you will see that as a brand, they align their content towards platforms that end up attracting their target audience. So, some of the places you might see I Heart Wines’ content is usually around social media, magazines that attract their audience, and shows such as Love Island as well.

Not every platform works for every brand, so as a brand, you need to know what platforms your audience is most active on (whether it’s social media, print, tv, etc) and create your content according to those particular platforms. There’s a high chance that you might only find 2-3 platforms that work best for your brand, but it’s better for you to push content there, instead of putting it out everywhere, or else it would make your content and brand irrelevant.

Focus on titles

Titles are the first thing that attracts a reader towards your content, so make sure that your title catches the reader’s attention. Here, you need to show the reader that reading your content is going to be beneficial to them. People only read something if it’s going to bring some sort of benefit to them, so make sure you let your audience know that what you’re providing is going to be full of value.

Images are key

Images are something that the audience tends to look at a lot. This day and age is all about visuals, and if you don’t have the right type of images in your content, then you might end up boring your audience. So once again, it all boils down to the personality of your brand. Your images are going to have to depict what your brand is communicating.

Let’s look at I Heart Wines once again. They’re using the ‘I Heart’ symbols across their packaging to attract their audience. You need to know what is it that your brand wants to say, what are the values you want to portray? Your imagery has to bring your brand to life.

As Richard Siddle said, clothing brands such as Nike and GAP are great at bringing their brand to life with their imagery. In the wine and spirits spectrum, brands such as Guinness and Johnnie Walker have a similar strategy. All their images and branding content have had the same personality for ages. The execution might be different over the years, but there’s a constant personality that you can see through - which is what you need to focus on as a brand when creating content.

If you’re a smaller brand struggling to get your images and communication out the right way, take a look at Orin Swift Wines. It’s been less than 5 years and Orin Swift has found a very significant place in the large wine industry. They’re doing some amazing work, especially with their innovative labels. Their labels have created their brand’s personality. In fact, you can even say that their labels are more of a brand than their wines.

Build content around your audience

Siddle has repeated this several times during his chat, and it’s definitely one of the most important things to keep in mind while creating content for today’s platforms. You need to make sure that you build your content around your audience. In the end, they’re the ones you’re creating for - so really find out what they want.

Target your content around how you can help your readers, whether you’re a B2B business or B2C business. To make this easier, do a little bit of research on your customers:

• What’s happening with the customers?

• What are they looking for?

• What are the challenges they’re facing?

• How can you help them?

• How is your content helping them?

These questions will make it easier for you to create content that your audience would genuinely want to read.

A good way to put your content into place is by working backwards. Think about what the consumer wants, and work backwards from there. Include your customers in your content. You can use testimonials, quotes, and success stories as well. This will make them feel like they’re a part of your story (which is very important), which will make them inclined towards your content.

Amongst all the other tips Richard gave, he also mentioned to put yourself in the audience’s shoes. Take a look at your content from a different perspective. If you were your own audience, would you click on it? Would you want to read your own content? How is it going to help you? Once you start thinking that way, it will make it easier for you to create good content.

In the end, from what Richard has said, it all comes down to one thing - your audience. You need to focus on what your audience wants to see, and where they want to see it. If your content is targeted exactly towards your audience, and it’s not a general type of content, then you’ve got yourself good content in your hands.

Check out the entire episode on SoundCloud: The Wine Whiskey Weed Show Episode 12:  How To Create Content For Today's Platforms - Richard Siddle!