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Helping Your Business by Helping Others Understand the CoVID-19 Impact
The world, including your customers, prospects, and investors have become hyper-needy for information. Many businesses have slowed or are doing what they can from remote offices, their contact with the thoughts of others is much lower than it had been. At the same time, their wanting to understand is high. One way you can firm your relationships with those you most want to continue to engage when this is over is through filling their need for content.
Here are three thoughts for finding the best topics to develop meaningful content and build readership that will want what you offer them next time.
Meaningful
Your readers don’t need to be told what they just heard or read at a news source with journalists and deep resources. What they can benefit from is that information distilled through the lens of your expertise. Before writing on a topic, ask:
- Who am I trying to inform?
- What do they already know?
- What piece, using my in-house expertise or knowledge, makes what they know more pertinent?
Then proceed in writing from the angle of how what is going on impacts or is impacted by a piece the journalist would not have covered. Your business has its own niche. There is no reason to wander far from that niche to attract who you want to.
Brevity
If you’re writing about the Novel Coronavirus and you are certain 99.99% of your audience doesn’t need an explanation what it is, don’t spend a paragraph defining the situation. Ten years from now someone may come across your content and benefit from the explanation, today’s readers are who you are writing for.
Keep in mind the person reading your blog post, article, or email update wants to skip to the meat. Readers aren’t returning to you because you give them the obvious, they are there because you are provide uncommon insight.
Brevity, as used here does not necessarily mean brief. if you can go beyond what is readily available. If you have particular expertise in an area that is not otherwise being covered, make that information known. Just be as concise as possible, no one has time to waste on “common knowledge.”
Take-Away
Self-promotion during times of national crisis is a turn-off to readers. However, strengthening your relationship with certain people is important to your company. If the piece is useful and holds your firm out as having expertise in the subject, if the reader develops a hunger for something else from your company, you’ve satisfied your content goal. Don’t ruin it by trying to “close the deal.” At the end of your posting, remind them what they need to remember about what they read. This shows you care that they have understood the salient points.
Developing or firming relationships with those that may have never heard of your company is easier when we’re surrounded by turmoil. The bright side of turmoil is it provides opportunities to “meet” those that may not have heard of your business before. During periods of “business as usual” your target is doing what they usually do and not looking beyond that. This difficult business period we are all pushing through. As readers get to know you better through content, being genuine in helping fill a void and connecting what is going on a different, useful way, will cause them to open their door to you later on.
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