content tips Archives - Stacey Meadwell

From yawns to yehs: Refresh your B2B content ideas and banish the boring

B2B content creation can feel like a treadmill, can’t it?

The constant need to feed social channels, websites and newsletters can zap creativity and have you scrabbling around for good ideas. And how do you make those dry topics interesting?

In the July edition of the B2B Comms Breakdown with my fabulous co-host Ayo Abbas, we went live on LinkedIn to talk about how to come up with cracking content ideas and get more creative.

Here are the edited highlights; scroll to the bottom to watch the video replay.

How do you find ideas when you have none?

Ayo Abbas: There are ideas all around you. I take stuff from my life, as I walk along, I might see an ad that I think: ‘Oh, that’s smart’.

Or what are they doing? How did they do that?

Also, think about the questions that clients are asking you right now: How do we do this, or I’m finding this really tricky.

Those answers that you’re giving are topics that become content.

There are tools you can use, like Answer the Public, where you search for keywords, and it’ll give you lots and lots of variations and questions around those keywords.

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Press releases, What journalists want

Finding a strong story angle for B2B press releases

‘How can I come up with a good angle for my press releases and content?’

It’s something I know PRs wrestle with, particularly as non-comms people in the business don’t always understand what is newsworthy or how journalists work.

And it’s something I faced as a regional features editor, visiting the same cities several times a year. Some markets hadn’t changed since the last time they were covered, but I still had to find a fresh feature angle.

I’d love to present a formula for making something worthy of a press release or coming up with a strong story angle, but there isn’t an easy one.

What I learned is to look at a story from different perspectives. So here are some things to try or consider which could help shape a story… or article.

Research

What sort of stories do your target publications typically run? What detail do they generally include, and what is the hook they use for similar stories?

You need to be up to speed with these things anyway, but a quick scroll through some similar story might reveal the angle you need to go for.

It will also highlight if certain information is always included and where there might be a barrier to certain stories getting picked up.

For example, for property investment deals, some publications/websites may only publish stories with the price paid and the yield.

Target audience

This should also be part of your research. Who reads the publications or websites you want to target with this release? What sort of information is helpful and useful to them?

I regularly used to get press releases from a company which made window boxes which was never going to be something that would interest commercial property agents and developers.

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Content marketing, General, Writing tips

What makes a clickable headline

A piece of paper in a type writer which has the word 'news' written at the top. — Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

People will decide whether to click on a story or article based on the headline.

You could write a brilliant article, blog post or press release, but if the headline doesn’t ‘sell’ the content to your target audience, it won’t matter.

Think of all the headlines you scroll past vs what you click on to read.

Headlines are so important that some national newspapers and magazines have specialist writers called sub-editors to create them.

So what makes a clickable headline?

Different styles work for different types of content, but the key is creating some intrigue or tapping into an emotion or need.

Headlines also need to give enough information so that the reader knows what they’ll get from reading on.

Here are four headline examples and a breakdown of how they work:

1. Pique interest news headline

This headline, from the North West Business Insider, tells the reader enough, so they know what the story is about but leaves out certain information to help create curiosity.

It tells the reader that it is a development deal, the size of the deal and where it is. What it doesn’t say is who was involved in the deal, the type of development and the details of the transaction.

To find that information, the reader has to click through to the story.

News headlines are a balancing act. Reveal too much, and there is no reason to click through; reveal too little, and curiosity isn’t pricked.

2. Challenge or surprise headline

Presenting a statement in a headline that is incongruous with common thinking or trend is a great way of getting people clicking to read on.

This headline on a LinkedIn article by Daniel Paulusma creates different levels of intrigue depending on your views of hybrid working.

It appears to challenge the thinking of advocates of hybrid working, potentially highlighting something they’ve missed: Am I wrong? ‘What is the evidence?’

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Video

Personality in B2B content and why its good

Some thoughts on showing personality in B2B content and if it’s ‘professional’

There seems to be a fear about showing personality in B2B content. Either that it doesn’t sound professional or makes people feel exposed.

Showing some personality can be using a particular turn of phrase or choosing more conversational words in your writing.

Or perhaps using an anecdote or talking about a personal experience or how something made you feel, something that shows some of your personality.

What is ‘professional’?

First of all, being professional isn’t about sounding or dressing a certain way.

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B2B media, Content marketing, Social media, Writing tips

Want people to stop scrolling and click on your B2B content?

Promoting your content on social media can be a great way of increasing engagement with your B2B content but there is an art to writing posts that get people to stop scrolling and click through to your content.

A row of people in suits all looking at their smart phones - picture is a close up of their hands. — Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash

Think of LinkedIn or Twitter as like a huge crowd with everyone shouting to be heard. You need to craft a few sentences that stand out and grab attention.

It’s not simply a case telling people you’ve written something and they will click through and read.

Doing this just lets down all the hard work you put into your creating your B2B content.

Look at it this way. If you were selling a book door to door, you wouldn’t simply say: “I have a book, do you want to buy it?”

You’d talk about what was in the book and why it was interesting or useful.

And yet it isn’t unusual to see a social media post that says something like: ‘Our latest report on the office market is out’.

Now context, the business brand or person writing the post might help.

But it may not.

And if you are relying solely on who you are to ‘sell’ your content to potential readers, then you are missing out.

Hint: People may not know who you are or have read anything you’ve written before.

You want to make people stop and pay attention and to do that you need to capture their interest or intrigue about your content, so people want to click through and read it.

Here are some ideas for how you can do that:

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