Content ideas Archives - Stacey Meadwell

Numbers in B2B content: How to enhance storytelling and clarity

Numbers are an important part of storytelling for my sector, the built environment, and B2B businesses more widely, but how you present data within your writing is critical.

Strategic presentation of numbers can enhance clarity and support the story; poor presentation can confuse and lessen the impact.

Here are 5 things to consider when including numbers and data in your copy:

1. Number order

Let the order of the numbers support the story.

Talking about growth? Write from X (smaller number) to Y (bigger number):

❌ Office rents have grown to £105 from £100

✔️ Office rents have grown from £100 to £105

Similarly, when talking about a reduction/decrease, write from X (bigger number) to Y (smaller number):

❌ Vacancy has decreased to 5% from 7% in the last year.

✔️ Vacancy has decreased from 7% to 5% in the last year.

2. Absolute numbers vs percentages

Choose whether to include the absolute number or a percentage based on the emotional impact of the point you are making.

Absolute numbers give a tangible scale:

We’ve added 378 apartments to our rental portfolio in the last 6 months.

Percentages can be used to indicate momentum or trend, particularly when the absolute numbers are small.

We’ve increased our portfolio of rental apartments by 8%.

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Audience engagement, Content ideas

How to make boring B2B content more engaging

Small black pug-like dog laying on a cushion with a bored expression

A business or individual announces something only they really care about, a few colleague hit ‘like’ and maybe a couple of loyal followers, but that’s it.

Is this sort of content worth the effort? It can be if you add value and/or a human element to give it broader appeal and something tangible for your audience to connect with.

Here are some ideas for how to flip a boring business announcement, turn it into something more interesting and boost engagement.

Announcement: We have a new website, logo or branding

Let’s be honest, the fact that you’ve got a new website or branding is of little interest unless you work in marketing or are going to remove all the vowels from your name like Abrdn did.

It won’t materially impact anyone’s scroll.

But you could add value by lifting the lid on how you got to the finished site/branding.

Are there versions that were dismissed? What were the highs and lows? It’s an opportunity to inject some all-important personality into your story.

Think about how you could make it useful to your audience. That could be lessons learned from the process or something you’ve learned about your business as a consequence.

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Content ideas

How a self-employed content writer is using AI

A struggle to find practical applications for using AI in my work, coupled with fear, led to a lot of scepticism about the technology. I love writing and don’t ever want it to replace that, but reading about how others in a similar position were using it for other things inspired me to experiment.

So here I’m sharing some of the ways I use AI as a freelance content writer and trainer, in case it’s helpful to others in a similar position.

Help with sorting through interview transcripts: Otter.ai

I’ve been using Otter to transcribe interviews for 6/7 years, but it now has an in-built AI chat function.

It means I can ask questions like ‘what did Jane Smith say about knitting with blue wool?’. It will summarise all the mentions with the time stamps so I can verify and pull out relevant quotes and particular phrasing.

If a bit of time has passed between doing the interview and sitting down to write, I might ask it to give me a summary of the key points as a refresher so I can sketch out my structure.

Technical topic research: Perplexity.ai

Perplexity is great for helping with research on technical topics. It comes up with legitimate business sources and the relevant links, so it’s easy to check the information.

I was updating a 7-year-old report on a construction-related topic for a client and wanted to find out what the Labour Government’s stance was.

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Content ideas

No planning, quick content ideas for trade shows or conferences

Given how much there is to do in the run-up to a big industry conference or trade show, content planning can fall by the wayside, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on juicy social media and blog content.

So here are some easy, no-planning content generation ideas just using your phone.

Take photos

There is always plenty to capture. You can post to social media on the hoof or collate for a slideshow or carousel. Think of themes, people, atmosphere, fun stuff – a picture can paint a thousand words.

Create a short, meaningful caption, and you are ready to post.

Don’t forget to mix it up a bit to keep people interested – six similar-looking photos of panel discussions will have people quickly scrolling on.

A stand-out picture can also enhance a text post on LinkedIn and help stop the scroll. Think differently, such as this panel selfie from fellow comms freelancer Eimear Strong.

Daily diary or end-of-the-week summing up

Write about the tone and atmosphere of the show. Were people upbeat? What were most people talking about? What did you hear that was particularly interesting?

What did you get up to? Who did you see?

Jot down reminders on your phone as you go. The additional benefit of this is it means you just have to flesh out and tidy up your notes to create a post.

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