Marketing Focus – Creating Exceptional Web Content
As I mentioned in my last marketing focus post, more and more emphasis is being put on content marketing and creating really interesting information which people can find and enjoy through search. But it can be difficult to write engaging information, especially in a field which might not be the most exciting to the outside world, so is content marketing really for everyone?
In my opinion, everything is interesting to someone, and if you’re a specialist you should be showing that off online, so fellow enthusiasts can find you and engage in your knowledge. However, be careful of being too niche or specialist, try and run your content by an outsider who might buy your product, but not understand what’s behind it.
My first PR job was for the engineering giant ABB and they had the most amazingly knowledgeable people working for them, but trying to get them to speak in a way that the world could understand was hard. My job was to try and take the knowledge and convert it into a benefit driven, global language which could be understood by the buyers of their equipment, even if they were not engineers. Translating and repackaging their information into a more easily digestible form created some really interesting stories and if that can work for flowmeters it can work for anything! So try and step outside your specialist bubble and think what your consumers want to understand or know and go ahead and share your knowledge.
Hubspot has put together a really good guide which identifies 16 typically “boring” industries and showcased how they are doing it right to give you ideas and inspiration to apply to your company. Click here to read the guide. The guide includes wacky examples like Old Spice having a Twitter profile from Mr Wolfdog making videos and really playing on social media, to Intercom using colloquial language to make their articles more accessible. The one which really caught my eye as applicable to companies on the Costa del Sol was the case study of vacuum cleaner Bissell who claim to be able to “tackle any mess”. They decided to engage social media users with a contest and campaign encouraging people to use their time wisely rather than waste it on cleaning. This emotional connection to the concept that cleaning is taking too much time away from family and more pressing matters is a clever twist on straight promotion and one I am sure other companies could use to good effect.
For a knowledge based service like consultancy, great content can put you ahead of the rest, let people find you and ensure your website is an excellent source of information. In this guide Hubspot highlights Deloitte as a great example of someone demonstrating their knowledge through a wide range of methods such as guides, podcasts, newsletters and debates.
Hubspot themselves are a great example and have the most amazing marketing library packed with guides – https://library.hubspot.com/.
At Shaw Marketing Services we try and do our bit to share our knowledge and create a strong presence, just check out our past marketing focus blogs which educate, help and of course improve our website ranking. It’s something all companies are able to use to their advantage with a bit of creativity and time, or you can get an outside agency to focus on it for you. Let us know if we can help you build great content for your company.