Longer, louder — what is better when it comes to content marketing? Writing articles that simply restate what everyone else is saying are certainly not it! Surprise your audience and give them a twist in a direction they didn’t expect.
Hire a Professional Writer Who Knows Your Audience
There are many studies out there reporting on the best time to post, the optimal word length and the hottest method to reach your audience. But, just like you wouldn’t write the same commercial for every target audience, your target audience has its own preferences. Writing and posting your content for the average customer is a mistake — know the audience you are writing to and try to figure out what their computer habits are.
Best time to post? The first part of this is fairly easy — what times should you avoid? Housewives may be home all day, but working women likely don’t get online during business hours. The exception in the office setting, of course, is often lunch time. High school kids aren’t going to be reading your content while they are in school, but college-aged kids will have a very sporadic schedule. Once you know when not to post, it is often stereotypes that will tell you when you should post (college kids don’t rise early, mother’s do). Experiment and see which posts tend to do the best (you will need more than one at each time because it could also be the day of the week or the topic of the content that makes the post popular).
Topic and voice? This is similar to writing a commercial — what appeals to your audience and will make them stop to listen? Serious content, tips, humorous posts, inspirational stories? Whatever it is, that is where you should be. Don’t be afraid to deviate a bit to make room for many audience types and keep your site from becoming monotonous, but stay consistent in how you approach material and keep your audience coming back, time after time.
See What the Competition is Doing
What are others doing that you could be doing better? Check out competition, and then check out the same business types in other cities. Don’t put out the same stuff your competition is doing, provide content that has your unique, branded spin on them. Try to look at material from a different angle.
Throw More Than a Fastball: Exploring the Curveballs
What questions can I answer? Your audience and customers will ask plenty of questions. Consider the best and most frequent questions for content topics. See how other companies answer (or don’t answer) those questions and provide a clear answer. You can even hold social media contests for top questions to be answered on your blog. Have fun with finding your content ideas!
What’s trending? Again, check out the competition and the articles that are most passed around on your own personal social media pages. Tie some of your content to pop culture references and don’t take yourself too seriously to make a ridiculous parody article or two.
How can I make this mine? Whether you are pulling content ideas from your competition or another industry altogether, you will have to ask yourself how you can put this into your brand’s voice. What will set you apart and how does the angle come from a professional perspective that only you provide? When you hire a professional writer to help you keep up with this workload, they can also become familiar with your content voice and copy a similar style.
How can I make this visual? What unique graphics, infographics or diagrams can you provide to keep your reader reading? Today’s audience is highly visual and you would do well to add graphics that peak interest throughout the content. Being unique is about more than just good writing.
Alethea M is a corporate blogging guru and freelance writer for WriterAccess. She often uses interesting facts from her article research to impress friends at dinner parties. Her husband is her biggest fan — though this may be because her writing income allows her to share in bill-paying each month.
