Creating a content calendar is hard enough. It is even harder if you have to create content for an industry that is seemingly boring to death. If you are tasked with promoting an accounting company, or a manufacturer of brass piping the chances are you’re stuck on creating engaging content. This article gives you a couple of useful tips on how to change your perspective and style your content in a way that will make users engage.
Learn that there are no boring industries
Millennials react to content way better than other forms of marketing. This means that SEO is a better long-term strategy than PPC. You’ll have to create engaging content for your brand to succeed no matter what. The number one best way to do that is to understand that the industry you are promoting isn’t actually boring.
How can accounting or roofing be interesting? It already is. You just have to think about what makes it attractive to people. Roofing will never be Buzzfeed-interesting, nor will it attract as much traffic. It is very exciting, however, to people who want to get a roof done. They may be looking for specific details, general information, or advice. Regardless, their interest in the topic will make them read even tremendous guides. The general approach in making engaging content for boring industries is to look for things that your target audience finds interesting and write well about them.
With that in mind, here are 5 tips on how to do the writing part best.
Make it short
Brevity is the key to success, this B2B digital marketing survey finds. This is especially important if you are targeting other businesses as your clients. What an average business owner or a CEO lacks is time. Taking their time by explaining something with too many words is not the best strategy to win them over. If you are really proficient in your field, you should be able to explain things to an outsider in simple words. If a question needs 2,000 words to be fully answered, don’t make 5,000 just to sound smarter. Take a look at how it’s done on a page on apartment rentals at Rentberry. It contains everything a reader might need to know on the topic and links out to tangential articles.
Make it easy to consume
Your site’s visitors are not reading your blog for pure fun. They are looking for information on a topic they are interested in. Giving them this information in the simplest form possible is the key to success. People are busy nowadays. This means they have less time to try and understand what are you saying. Make it easier for them.
Best practices of easy to consume texts are:
- breaking long sentences into short ones
- not using more than 4 sentences in a paragraph
- using subheadings to structure the text
- compiling information in bullet-point lists
If you are working on 1,500+ word read, it might be necessary to give readers mental breaks. Make a part of the text in the middle less challenging to the reader, so that they can go through the text in one go. For even longer content, you want to make it as structured as possible. The best way to do that is to create a table of contents at the top of the page with links to all chapters. This way, users who are looking for specific information in your article will have no troubles finding it.
Use visuals
The same B2B digital marketing research indicates that people want information to be organized in the most simple way possible. In visual form. It might be beneficial for you to invest a small sum in a freelance artist. Create infographics, or illustrations to underpin the point you are making in an article, and it may be shared by more people. Considering that you can find a decent artist for a small price on Fiverr, this investment is a wise one.
Show personality
Many blogging guides tell you to write like you speak. What showing personality means in this context is sounding like a human being. There are too many texts out there that are hyper-optimized for SEO. They sound like a robot wrote them. Don’t create this kind of content. Make an effort to show that you care about your readers with the tone of your text.
Create clear calls to action
Do you want users to engage? Show them how.
Nothing is as easy as suggesting your readers the next thing to do. Depending on the stage of sales funnel they’re at, it can be subscribing to your blog, downloading an ebook, sharing the post on social media, or buying a product. Whatever it is, make sure you communicate it clearly. There will be little to no engagement if your users just don’t see that as an option.
Final thoughts
Creating engaging content for boring industries can be a challenge. Make it a challenge you can take. Remember that you are not making the news or viral content. You are answering the question people are desperate to find answers to.
Use these five simple tips, and you’ll be off to a good start!