Nederlands
I often hear that organizations wonder ‘what to write about next’. I understand that it can be difficult and that inspiration does not always just come to you. But I am convinced that the content is all around us and we should look at our business or job from a different perspective. In this blogpost I’ll explain how you do that.
What to write about?
Make sure to create categories first. What categories you choose, depends a bit on your industry of course. Do you work for a toy store? You could pick ‘news’, ‘holidays’, ‘new products’. Real-estate agent? ‘News’, ’trends’, ‘figures’, ‘make over of the month’. An educational institution? ‘News’, ‘policy’, ‘student talk’, ‘events’. The categories provide you with guidance to set up a content calendar with which you can plan ahead. The categories I just mentioned are great for recurring content, that you then can supplement with current affairs.
Figures in particular are an interesting category to create content with. What’s happening in your industry or company? Are you a broker? Share figures on how the housing market is developing in your region. But also trends that you notice: blog about it. Whichever categories you choose, make sure you stick to the B1 language level in your content. This ensures that the texts do not become unnecessarily difficult and readers drop out early. It is a misunderstanding that the texts at B1 level are no longer interesting for theoretically educated people or experts in a field: those texts are read faster and more pleasantly for them as well.
Forms of content: how to present your content?
There is not one recipe for success. Don’t feel obligated to do everything your competitor does. Look at your target audience and what type of content suits them. And not every subject is suitable for every medium. A typical pitfall is wanting to do too much at once, so that after an enthusiastic start you quickly stop. There is nothing more unattractive than coming to a blog where nothing new has been posted for month or even years.
There is a long list of options for content creation. Sure, you can write blog posts or articles for your website. And it is a good idea to have a website where a potential customer can find what they are looking for. The basics of SEO have been described so many times, you can find that anywhere, so I’ll ignore that in this article. Below I mention some forms and shapes for content that many companies and organizations don’t use much (yet):
Podcasts
Super popular these days: podcasts. People can listen to it while they are doing other things and so this form of content offers many more options to be used than a written article. On the phone, in the car, while cooking, running, you name it. To record an interesting podcast, having some proper equipment helps. There are people who rent out their studio for this, but you can also buy some stuff yourself, including at least (a) good microphone(s). The latter certainly pays off if you want to make this type of content more often.
Videos
Do you sell or rent out products or services that could use some explanation? Then consider converting manuals into short, clear videos. People are Googling manuals these days instead of saving all those booklets. How nice is it when a movie comes up where you no longer just have to read and figure out everything yourself, but see it happen immediately. You also show your expert role more if you have such videos online. For example, do you supply tools? You could start with a guide on how to use them and what materials, but then you can move on to simple DIY videos that associate your materials with the professional result accessible to the DIY-guy or girl.
E-book or audiobook
Publishing an e-book can be interesting if, for example, you want to elaborate on a bigger topic. An audiobook or audiobook is the spoken variant of an e-book and also offers more options because it can be used during other activities just like a podcast. In the context of an e-book you can also think of publishing courses. For example, are you an audio equipment manufacturer? Maybe you can offer a course on how people can improve their recordings themselves? Do you provide training? You can see which training is very popular (in the search engines) and make a kind of entrance level trial version in an e-book. Does the reader (or listener) like it? Then he/she can be more motivated to continue with a paid training.
I would always advise to offer the e-book or audiobook for free and see this as an investment and form of marketing. You could choose to only allow a download if people leave their name and email, but that often results in fewer downloads. If you just have confidence in your business, you can also make it available without leaving any data. No strings attached, the truly interested people will come back to you anyway, is my philosophy.
FAQ
A FAQ list (frequently asked questions) is a good way to answer frequently asked questions, but also to rank higher in search engines. Users often look for things that are entered as a question in Google. If you pay attention to the search traffic to your site or in your industry, you can take advantage of that free knowledge. You have no idea how to? Ask help or think about the questions customers regularly ask you in person or on the phone. What are people calling for? If something needs to be fixed, what is it (usually)? What do people ask quotations or proposals for? That information helps to write down the most frequently asked questions, which in turn inspires you to create content that fits what your target audience is looking for.
Need help?
Do you still find it difficult to choose from all the options for content? I can think along with you in a non-committal talk (video call or on location). You will soon see that you have more content than you think.