You may not have a product/service launch or the start of a new financial year to plan for, but you still need content to ensure your brand doesn’t get lost/forgotten in the noise of a competitive market.
When you’re deep in business-as-usual, it can feel hard to think up useful/interesting/entertaining content for your audience. But I’ve got 10 strategies to help you stay ahead and stand out.
Strategy 1: boost your blog
For your site to rank high on Google, your content needs to demonstrate EEAT:
🧁Experience
🧁Expertise
🧁Authoritativeness
🧁Trustworthiness
One of the best ways to do this is in how you structure your content – starting with a central ‘pillar’ page, which links to lots of additional content to explore the topic in depth.
This content structure aligns nicely to the ‘hub and spoke’ technique.
In the centre of a blank sheet of paper you place your key theme (hub) and then brainstorm anything and everything you can cover on that subject (spokes). These ideas can then be moulded into blog titles for you to eventually draft.
As well as help boost your SEO, it’s a fabulous way to position yourself as a thought leader by demonstrating your skills, knowledge, and experience in action.
| B2B blogging cheat sheet | SEO checklist |
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| Download your copy… | Download your copy… |
Strategy 2: re-visit your SEO
Your website is a channel that needs to be constantly tweaked and refined to maintain a drip feed of leads.
Start with your current keywords. Search for them incognito to see what content is ranking highly – both the type of message and type of content.
Compare it with your landing pages to identify areas where you could finesse your copy to make it clearer, or gaps that you could fill with additional copy/videos/graphics.
Then go back to basics with a little keyword research – specifically longtail keywords. These typically have lower search volumes, but if someone’s searching for ‘freelance B2B copywriter specialising in cloud computing’ and you’re in position #1, it’s a quick and easy conversion.
| Keyword planner | Landing page template |
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| Download your copy… | Download you copy… |
Strategy 3: leverage a trend
What’s topical in your industry right now?
Byline thought leadership articles to your subject matter experts to gain greater coverage. Better still, use it as the basis to form a campaign around and use the article call-to-action to get your target audience to commit to something bigger.
For example:
Strategy 4: plan new case studies
Your quiet periods are the best time to work on your most valuable content assets, which stand the test of time and can be used across all your channels.
To help you get started, this is my case study process:
🧁Big idea: the core thread that hangs everything together. This could your client’s purpose, one of your capabilities, a company value…
🧁Payoff: pick the top 3 outcomes the client experienced. These will become the key sections within your case study.
🧁Key metrics: what are the specific results the client experienced. These will become the highlights in your case study.
🧁Tell multiple stories: don’t wait for the end to share the big payoff, tell a mini story within each section.
🧁Opening section: summarise the case study in 1-2 sentences, or use 3x bullet points to highlight the key outcomes.
🧁Section structure:
- What’s the big problem? What impact did it have on the business?
- How did the product/service overcome the problem? Include concrete examples.
- What was the result? And what does that now mean for the business?
🧁Quotes: don’t waste client quotes on saying something rubbish, like, “I’d really recommend Company ABC.” Instead, tell the story through the client’s words.
| Case study template | Testimonial template |
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| Download your copy… | Download your copy… |
Strategy 5: draft your social content
Build a bank of ‘bread and butter’ content so you always have something useful/interesting to post on your social channels. Use your posts to drive towards your website, blog content, downloadable assets – anything and everything that ensures you remain front of mind, always.
Strategy 6: give a sneaky peak behind the scenes
Encourage your audience to emotionally invest in your company by making them feel part of your team. Use your social channels to share all the wonderful things you do as part of business-as-usual:
🧁Training
🧁Events
🧁Product development
🧁Team lunch n learn sessions
🧁Planning meetings
Strategy 7: bank your content
Subject matter experts and c-level executives are notoriously busy, so you can’t expect them to say “yes” the minute you need help with content.
This is where your schedule helps.
If you know you are pushing a particular product/service in 3 months, and the person with responsibility for that product/service is coming off a client engagement now – grab them now!
Interview them for an hour and use that time to crack open their head and gather as much information as you can. Now you have all those lovely insights to start planning and writing several pieces of content, which are ready to publish when the time comes.
| Briefing questions |
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| Download your copy… |
Strategy 8: use new channels
Give your wonderful existing content a new lease of life by transforming it for other channels. For example:
🧁Recording blogs as videos to share on LinkedIn.
🧁Turning webinars into white papers for your PPC campaigns.
🧁Creating a nurture flow for your email marketing, using your existing assets as the call-to-action.
| Repurposing content template |
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| Download your copy… |
Strategy 9: talk to new audiences
As well as repurpose your content for different channels, have you thought about repurposing your content for different audiences?
You can read 3 techniques for how to tweak generic content to speak to specific audiences here…
Strategy 10: try something new
One of the best things about being a marketer is the license it gives you to experiment! So is there something you’ve always wanted to try? A tactic that works well for a brand you admire? Or an ‘old’ trend that’s due a resurgence in popularity? For example:
🧁Create a podcast series. You don’t need to make a huge commitment or investment, simply start small and record a series of 6 episodes to try it out.
🧁Pitch some PR. You might not have anything you deem ‘newsworthy’, like a product/service launch, but you still have lots of valuable insights to share through editorial or speaking opportunities.
🧁Host a webinar. Pick a topic – any topic. A discussion on the latest industry trends, a product demo, an ‘ask the expert’ session, invite guest speakers…etc.
| Editorial template | Event campaign template |
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| Download your copy… | Download your copy… |
Top tips for creating content during business-as-usual
🧁You don’t always need to write new content. Audit what you have and see what can be tweaked, updated, and refined – it could be as simple as adding a different headline.
🧁Make something newsworthy. You might not have a launch looming, but you could tie an existing product to a new trend to make some noise.
🧁Be prepared. Get your content ready and in the bank when you have the time – you can always add more stuff ‘in the moment’.
Still have a question?
I’ve been a professional copywriter since 2014, and before that I spent nearly a decade working as a B2B tech marketer – that’s a long time to maintain business-as-usual!
I’m genuinely an open book so you are more than welcome to ask me anything. All you need to do is…
