Errors and decisions when writing "corporate" texts: 7 tips



    The other day, I accidentally stumbled upon an e- book on content marketing published by Russian specialists of one of the studios . I myself have several blogs on Habré and Giktayms, and the information presented in it seemed quite interesting and useful to me (this is achieved by the presence of examples), therefore, for readers of Megamind, who may be too lazy to read the whole book, I made an extract of her main thoughts.

    Content - what is it all about


    The authors give several examples of what forms “content” can take:

    • Expert experience - descriptions of projects, studies, stories in the style of how everything works, materials from speeches at conferences (for example, presentations), expert columns for the media - any materials that may be of interest to a potential audience.
    • Opinions - people are very fond of learning the opinions of other people or entire companies that interest them. Companies can comment on sensitive topics for media publications (pressfeed.ru service allows tracking journalistic requests from journalists), create their own collections of opinions, for example, for a blog (an example of such publication in an IT company’s blog is provided ). An opinion can be captured not only in text - some companies use video or audio to convey their position - for example, one of the largest Russian retailers of audio equipment helps to develop a thematic podcast (its transcripts go to the Gimetays).
    • Educational materials - lessons, tutorials and help pages that allow users to learn how to better work with the proposed product or service, and simply expand their horizons.
    • Unique “features” of the product - often members of the project team are embarrassed to talk about some know-how or interesting solutions used in the product, considering that it will not be interesting to anyone. However, examples suggest the opposite - people are interested in learning about original solutions. For example, a good response was received by the publication in the blog of the messenger for team work on the hotkey mechanism, which was borrowed from the iconic Unix editor Vim.
    • Interviews - Another way to draw attention to a company is to create an interview with internal or external experts. An expert can be a celebrity - this will give an additional PR effect - or just be well versed in the topic and have an interesting opinion. Such interviews can be spread out, for example, on blogs - here is an example of such a publication about the creation of robot programs for trading on the stock exchange in the blog of a financial sector company.
    • The world around us - even office walls can become content! A couple of years ago, one well-known Russian UX company published material about its office , decorated in a "design" style. The material turned out to be so popular that, despite its Russian-speaking, due to beautiful pictures, it was able to attract even foreign readers. Among them was the well-known UX expert John Maeda, who shared a link to a post on his Twitter with several hundred thousand subscribers.

    What not to do


    Many companies spend serious resources on the maintenance of marketing and PR departments, but do not achieve the desired results - there may be a number of reasons. Here are just the main ones:

    • If there are few resources, it is better not to spend them on public relations employees in the state - small companies should not spend resources on the maintenance of marketing specialists in the state. As a rule, the rank and file employees of the marketing department have very limited opportunities to create truly high-quality content - developers and managers are not eager to spend their time communicating with them, and without this an interesting article cannot be made. In the case when the money for the work of the contractor has already been paid, it is more difficult to refuse.
    • Counting signs is not a good idea - If a company collaborates with external authors, then the last thing it should do is to tie the payment of their work to the number of written signs - this scheme provokes a specialist to include extra information and simply unnecessary “water” in the material so that only increase payment. Even articles that are “too short” at first glance can attract a wide audience, and longreads, which took a lot of time to kill, can go completely unnoticed.
    • There is no need to be shy to write about already known things - in order for the content to return, the regularity of the publication of materials, for example, on a corporate blog, is important. The problem is that the vast majority of topics that the company can talk about have already been touched by someone before it. But this is not a reason to just sit and wait when a large-scale news feed happens, with the help of which it will be possible to “blow up” all blog sites and attract the attention of the best media.
    • No one is interested in boring company news - people are interested in something that has some value. If a company tells how to learn how to do something, or how to use certain products to solve their problems, this is popular content. And the news of sales growth in the third quarter of last year is of no use to anyone. And this must be remembered.

    How to achieve good results: 3 main tips


    In addition to listing common mistakes, the authors give companies starting work in the field of content marketing three main tips:

    • Your blog is a great place to start - do not immediately strive to get into all the major media. An unknown company whose employees do not have experience writing articles or commenting on this will not be so easy to do. It is better to come to reporters, already imagining their needs and their capabilities in terms of providing invoices. To learn how to create popular content, it’s worth trying to keep your own blog - this way you can develop a content base (in the future, some of this may become the basis of a column for a famous publication). In addition, this practice will help to understand which topics are closer to the target audience, and what it is not interesting to read about.
    • Attracting the first readers can be done without big expenses - there are several ways to make texts of an unknown company begin to read. First of all, you can publish a link to such materials in thematic groups on social networks - now on Facebook there are also groups for marketers , restaurant workers , entrepreneursetc. Do not disdain reposting materials on sites where content is allowed to be published (processed posts can be sent to blogs on Habré, Giktayms and Megamozge, articles about business on Spark.ru, marketing information is published in the Sandbox section of the Cossa.ru site) . Well, the most effective method is to add comments from market experts. You can get such a comment simply by writing a message to the right person on the social network, and when the article is published, with a high probability he will share a link to it with his subscribers, which can be many thousands.
    • You need to earn the right to advertise - Marketing expert Guy Kawasaki claims that companies must earn the right to advertise their products. Only by giving users and readers something valuable can they recycle their products or services. If you start the conversation with advertising, then no one will be interested.

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