It’s late at night and your home is entirely shut down. Except you can’t sleep, so you’re reading industry blogs and articles trying to find ideas for your next post. There’s this blog you’ve never heard of, and you just found a post listing the same five tips that you’ve seen everywhere else. You’ve now seen these tips enough to know they’re important, and your readers should know about them.
You sit there and think that tomorrow when you get some time, you’re going to rework these five points into a blog post of your own. Problem solved. You’ve got the idea for your next post covered. Go to bed. Turn out the lights, and sleep comfortably.
Or, don’t.
Everybody’s Read This
There’s probably a reason you’ve never heard of the blog that you found those five tips on. Because they’re the same tips that you read on all the industry news sites with all the traffic, and all the comments. Why does their audience need to get the same information from you?
You can publish that same blog post. Trust me, I’ve done it. Chances are, your traffic will dip, and no one will really be that interested. Why? Because they’ve seen it before.
I see lots of companies try to repackage their competitor’s post. Or maybe they try their hat at something that’s been published in the major blogs and magazines from their industry.
Some businesses just want a blog post about ____________ product. After all, the product is the keyword, and the post will raise their place in the search engines.
You’ve been told that content is one of the great factors in search engine optimization. It’s time to try something else instead of the content mill approach. What good are all of your content-producing efforts, if when it comes down to it, you really had nothing to say?
Content mills suck. There’s no shortage of companies in the content game solely for the search ranking. That’s what’s clogging the field. When you’re publishing the same information that everyone else is, you’re just a content mill.
It’s like trying to sell a house in a neighborhood where they all look the same, and 10 other houses are for sale. Not easy.
Instead, why not try and attract the search engines, AND appeal to your audience at the same time? It’s not as hard as you think.
Put Your Stamp On It
If it’s industry news, what’s your take? What does the most recent development really mean for your readership? If you own a health club, maybe there’s a diet fad that’s been talked a lot about in the news that’s a bunch of baloney. If you own an accounting firm, maybe recent changes to the tax code need some major clarification.
This is your chance to be open and honest with your readers. It’s your chance to build up some trust, set yourself apart from your competition, and become a thought leader in your industry.
If it’s consumer tips related to your industry that you’re looking to publish, don’t just recite what’s already been written. Your readers can find that on WikiPedia, eHow, or About.com. They can find it scrolling through the top-rung industry blogs. If you want to get noticed, you have to make this type of post stand out.
Best case scenario, find new, original tips that your readers will not have heard. That’s not always the easiest thing to do, so if you do include some of the same tips, personalize the reasons. You can provide anecdotes for some of the examples that will help the readers to understand where you come from. Try writing the reasoning for the tips in a way that reflects your business.
For example, if you’re an informal company, maybe there is an opportunity to inject humor, or imaginative language into the post.
The most important thing is to make your post your own. After all your marketing materials are what will make your business stand out. If it’s the same as everybody else’s than you haven’t given your readers a reason to choose you.
Matt Brennan is a Chicago-area marketing writer and copy editor. He is also the author of Write Right-Sell Now.
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