Content Marketing – Reporting vs. Thought Leadership

Vanilla contentWe talk all the time about creating content for your website. Search engines love content. It helps them understand what it is you do, what your website is about and how much of an authority you have in your space. That is why we encourage updating content on your site regularly and blogging.

As you know, there is more to adding content to your site than just throwing it on there. I wanted to take a couple minutes to share a few things to keep in mind when you are creating content for your website.

  • Reporting content – We see reporting style content frequently in website copy and press releases. Reporting content is strictly facts, fair to every side and is lacking in personality. This can be good for being found for specific search terms but it may not be as helpful for encouraging people to link to your site.
  • Vanilla content – As we create content for our websites, many times the content comes out so politically correct and full of ‘gobbledegook‘ that the message in the text is lost. Don’t be afraid to speak the way you do in your regular life, on your website. Use the same tone and vocabulary you use when you are talking to your best customers.
  • Have an opinion – What makes your business different from your competitors is your staff and your opinions. By leaving your opinion out of your website and blog copy you are hiding who your business really is and what you stand for. Don’t be afraid of inserting your opinion. You will never make everyone happy or have everyone as a customer so don’t waste your efforts by being vanilla. Instead, attract the people who want to do business with the real you.
  • Thought leadership takes opinions – Establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry is going to take some personality, some original thought and opinions. Thought leadership lends to your content being shared more among the internet and the more shared the content, the more points you get in the search engine’s algorithm.

That is it. Just a few thoughts on creating content for your website. Don’t be afraid to inject a little personality and retrain yourself to not write like you are reporting but like you are educating customers about what it is you do.

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