3 min read · Oct 26, 2016
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When I say I write content, a lot of people ask me what exactly I mean by that. It’s simple — I string words together into sentences, and those sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into pieces of writing that are hopefully helpful to a business’ customers and potential customers. This could sound like a blogger, and I do actually write a lot of blog posts for businesses. However, there are some types of content that I write that provide more oomph than the average blog. Here’s 4 of ’em.
Long form content can be white papers, e-books, or an *actual* book. They go into more depth than blogs and contain valuable information that the reader needs to be more successful at their job.
Why it’s smarter: long form content has a better return on investment than blogs.
- It can be gated — meaning that you can ask for prospect information before they are allowed to read it).
- It can be promoted — meaning that you can pitch it to other blogs, add it to industry forums and generally spread the good news).
- It can be recycled— After creating long form content, it’s easy to slice and dice the content like a Thanksgiving turkey to generate blog posts, cheat sheets and guest posts. It’s much more difficult to take short blogs and compile them to a meaningful, cohesive piece.
Customer Guides are How To (or Why to) content that give value to people who use your product or service. They are more value driven than traditional Help Center articles, but more customer focused than blogging.
Why it’s smarter: If you have customers, you probably want to keep them. Creating content that makes your existing customers more successful is good business. It’s also shareable and evergreen — this type of content will keep giving back month after month, and endear your customers to you in the long term. Make your users power users with customer guides.
Ghost writing is, perhaps obviously, having someone else create content using your voice. It’s common for CEOs and thought leaders to use a ghostwriter for their guest posts. This means that a writer takes their ideas and converts it into written, shareable content. Good ghostwriters will tell *your* story in *your* voice.
Why it’s smarter: At some point in your business’ life cycle, you will need your CEO to have name recognition value or a personal brand. Whether it’s wanting them to speak at an industry conference, network with strategic prospects or promote a new product launch — a well known founder can give your marketing team powerful ammunition. Think Rand Fishkin from Moz, or Hiten Shah from KissMetrics. These are well known individuals who are able to open doors for their company by simply being them. Not all CEOs are natural writers (or have the time to write!). Ghost writing amplifies the company brand and has more return than a nameless blog post.
Case studies tell a story about how your customer benefited from using your service or product. Often based around a specific feature, use case or industry, case studies illustrate benefits in a way that prospects can identify with. They can be publicly posted on the website, or used as sales collateral when speaking directly with leads.
Why it’s smarter: Case studies speak directly to prospects. They are the most powerful form of social proof. “Look!” they say, “I’m just like you, and this product fixed my problems.”
If you aren’t currently building these four strategies into your content strategy, you’re missing out! Drop the blog for a couple weeks and focus on these high value content pieces to really power-up your marketing. Or — add some freelancing resources to your team to build up a few of these projects. Sometimes all you need is a writing machine to help get the content out the door!
Contact me at sarah@supportedcontent, or on Twitter @sarahleeyoga
