Content marketing should be a part of every modern business’s marketing strategy.
It offers an affordable way to reach consumers, build trust and raise awareness of your brand.According to a report from the Aberdeen Group, companies that use content marketing enjoy nearly 6 times the website conversion rate than companies that do not. That is a considerable advantage for a type of marketing that can be deployed at such a low cost.
But from working on a range of clients in a broad range of industries, I can tell you one thing for sure.
Some industries are harder to write great content for than others.
Below are some key tips on how to develop a content strategy for even the most boring industries.
Avoid using industry jargon
One thing that many of these industries have in common is that they all have a sort of insider language: terms that might be common in the industry, but don’t see much use in the general public. If you want to make quality content that a larger audience is going to enjoy and find useful, you need to avoid using industry jargon.
What you have to remember is that your content is probably not for other professionals in your field. If you are writing for people that not in the industry, this type of language is only going to make the content harder to understand. Use language that is more like the way you might speak to a friend. It will make the content more relatable and easier to understand.
Make your content scannable
When a reader sees a wall of text upon opening a page, it can make them feel a little overwhelmed. This is especially true if the subject matter is somewhat dense or complex. As a writer, it is up to you to make the content easier to digest.
If you want to make the content a little easier on the reader, the best way to do this is to make it easy to scan. To do this, you can use formatting techniques like breaking the content up into different sections using subheadings. You could also use things like bullet points and numbered lists in sections where they are appropriate.
If it is useful, it won’t be boring
If you develop content that is useful, then it won’t be boring to the people that need it. Some topics might be boring to 99% of the population, but if there is a group that needs the type of information that you are sharing, they won’t find it boring.
There is a lot of anxiety around trying to make content ‘go viral’, but I tend to find that gets people focusing on the wrong things. People tend to focus on the surface level elements of their content when trying to get that viral level of shares. But it is much more reliable to simply focus on providing value instead.
When a person feels like they got the information they needed or that they learned something useful, they will view the content as helpful. The key is to develop content that serves this role. Even if the content is still boring to most people, you will be serving the intended audience well, and that should be the goal with most content.
Get specific with your content
It might seem intuitive that it offers more value to go broad with your content, but this is often not true. You might be targeting a larger audience with broad content themes but you can have more of an impact on a smaller audience when you go narrow. Try to think of different situations that might relate to the experience of different people in your audience and then write to address the concerns that a person might have in that scenario.
The trick is to develop audience personas. Learn about the different types of people in your audience, consider the concerns they have when they are interested in your product or service. What are their pain points? What are they are trying to achieve? What problems are they trying to solve? When you have answers to these questions, you can then work on developing topic ideas for content that will speak more directly to a specific audience.
Analogies make complex subject matter more accessible
Part of the reason that some people may find your industry boring is because it might be hard for them to understand many of the core concepts. If you want to make these boring or confusing concepts more interesting, you need to make them more relatable. Once a person can understand the subject matter and relate to it, it will become more interesting.
As I mentioned before, one of the ways you can make content easier to understand is to remove industry jargon, but there is something else that can help – analogies that your audience can relate to. Analogies are great for removing the barriers that make complex concepts difficult to understand, and if you do it successfully, it will make your content more engaging.
It doesn’t have to be about your industry, it just has to be related
One thing that you need to realise is that you do not always need to write about your specific niche. It can be difficult to come up with good content ideas that are specifically about what you do, so it can help to look for topic ideas in related industries.
This can be helpful because it might draw in more people than your normal subject matter would, and it is a good way to get people in your industry interested in your content. If you are developing good content about these related topics, you might even be able to get some links from other websites in your industry or the related industries about which you write.
Aim for brevity
The average person only spends about fifteen seconds on a page. When some people see a page that is overlong, they quickly navigate away to find something else that is not going to take up so much of their time. In order to serve the average reader, you should try to make your content as brief as possible.
When you finish writing a piece of content, go back and try to edit it down as much as possible. Find any unnecessary information and edit it out. If you find places where you could have gotten the point across with fewer words, make the change. You may even want to hire an editor to help make your content more concise.
With some topics, there is only so much you can do to make the content interesting. You just need to keep at it and focus on developing content that is engaging while also offering value. It might not go viral, but if you are developing quality content, it will eventually get the attention of the target audience
About the Author
Alexander writes about the effective habits that make up a happy and healthy lifestyle. He is the owner and writer at Biz Think Tank. You can read more of his writing there or on his personal website.
