Nick RojasThere is no excuse for boring, unshareable content. If your content is dull and flavorless, the only thing to blame is the person who created it. Look at GEICO and Progressive, for example. Insurance is one of the most unremarkable industries in existence, yet both companies came up with ad campaigns that contained some of the most memorable television spots in recent memory.
If your content isn’t getting amplified, your lackluster industry isn’t to blame. People are interested in what you do, you just need to revisit your content strategy.
Use these tips 8 to get shared, retweeted and noticed by your buyer base, no matter how boring the business.
1. Keep Things Positive
It may be hard to believe, since so much of what you see on Facebook and Twitter is negative, but one of the best ways to get your content amplified is to focus on the positive side.
Referring to a study of 7,000 news articles, Entrepreneur reported that people would prefer to share good news than bad news on social media. Don’t describe the problem that your product is designed to solve, which so many content marketers do. Instead, just focus on the bright side of what you do or sell. This is especially true for boring businesses.
2. Solve a Problem a Week for a Year’s Worth of Content
One problem with dull industries is the weekly challenge to come up with new subject matter. One expert content marketer came with with an interesting solution. Websites like Quora allow users to ask questions and provide answers. The strategy entails scouring Q&A websites for search terms and keywords related to your industry. Take the 52 questions (or answers) that interest you the most and create a piece of content for each of them. Not only will you have a year’s worth of content, but it will be highly shareable. Content that helps readers and enables them to take action is the kind of content that is amplified often — and the kind that earns links, which takes us to the third tip.
3. Don’t Dwell on Shares, Go for Links Instead
Moz reported recently that although on-page signals still dominate, link signals are a close second as far as overall page-ranking factors are concerned. If you’re creating content for a business in a boring industry, forget about cruising for shares and, instead, hunt for valuable links. Links are still the element that perform the heavy lifting behind conversions in businesses that don’t have the luxury of existing in glamorous industries.
4. Choose the Right Content Format Part 1: Slideshows
No matter how well you break up text with subheads and bullets, longform article become less and less effective the more boring your industry. Even novices can create stunning, image-driven presentations on Sildeshare with PowerPoint. Slideshows showcase your best selling points in brief, visual bits, instead of bombarding readers with boring text.
5. Choose the Right Content Format Part 2: Infographics
Infographics provide many of the same benefits as slideshows — they are image-driven, easy to digest, they pull out important nuggets of information in chunks — but they are even simpler and clearer. Brief, concise and fun, infographics changed the content marketing world, and boring industries have more to gain from them than anyone else.
6. Sell a Few Influencers, and You’ve Got Their Entire Audience
A handful of influencers hold major sway over virtually every industry, no matter how boring. Whether the influencers are product reviewers, bloggers, celebrities, experts or trusted reviewers, a few social media giants at the top can alter the buying decisions of their followers far more than your content ever could. Locate the heavy hitters in your industry, comb through their social media pages and discover what kind of content they are most likely to share. Then, design content just for them.
If you sell clothes, for example, design content that contains links to the social-friendly landing pages you built with Unbounce, Gospaces or whatever tool you used. Then, dispatch your content — embedded with links to your landing pages — to a non-competitor designer. If you get even one influencer to notice and share your content, those new landing pages of yours will see a huge bump in traffic.
7. Boring or Not, Customers Have Questions — Answer Them
If potential buyers are considering your service, they are going to have questions before they commit. One of the simplest and most underrated forms of content — especially in dull industries — are FAQs. Like infographics and slideshows, FAQs are a good alternative to articles in lifeless industries.
8. Branch Out to Other Blogs
It is important to write guest posts on the big blogs in your industry. The exposure and reciprocated relationships are crucial. This guide is a good place to start learning which blogs to pursue and how. When you link from other blogs, link to internal pages on your site and don’t use rich anchor text. This is the way to draw the readers who are most likely to amplify.
Whether it is plumbing supplies or data management, some industries just don’t spark emotion. But that is no excuse not to produce useful, compelling content. If your industry is soft on excitement, go off the beaten path. Focus on FAQs and other useful formats. Replace text with images wherever you can by using visual formats like slideshows. Chase liks, not shares and, no matter what, avoid wordy articles wherever you can.
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