Errors and solutions when writing "corporate" texts: 7 tips

The other day, I stumbled upon an e- book on content marketing, published by Russian experts at one of the studios. I myself keep several blogs on Habré and Hiktames, and the information presented in it seemed to me quite interesting and useful (this is achieved by the presence of examples), so for the readers of Megamind, which may be too lazy to read the whole book, I made squeeze its main thoughts.

Content - what is it all about?

The authors give some examples of what forms “content” can take:
')

• Expert experience - project descriptions, research, “how everything works” style stories, materials from speeches at conferences (for example, presentations), expert columns for the media - any materials that may be of interest to a potential audience.
• Opinions - people love to learn the opinions of other people or entire companies that interest them. Companies can comment on sensitive topics for publications in the media (tracking press journalists' current requests allows Pressfeed.ru) to create their own sets of opinions, for example, for a blog (an example of such publication is given in an IT company blog ). Opinion can be recorded not only by text - some companies use video or audio to communicate their position - for example, one of the largest Russian retailers of audio equipment helps to develop a themed podcast (its transcripts go to Hicktimes).
• Educational materials - lessons, tutorials and help-pages that allow users to learn how to work better with the proposed product or service, as well as simply expand their horizons.
• Unique "features" of the product - often the project team members are embarrassed to talk about some know-how or interesting solutions used in the product, believing that it will not be interesting to anyone. However, examples show the opposite - it is interesting for people to learn about original solutions. For example, the publication of a blog messenger for team work on the mechanism of hot keys, which was borrowed from the cult Unix editor Vim, received a good response.
• Interviews - Another way to draw attention to a company is to create interviews with internal or external experts. An expert may be a celebrity - this will give an additional PR effect - or just be well versed in the subject and have an interesting opinion. Such interviews can be spread out, for example, in blogs - this is an example of such a publication about the creation of robot programs for trading on the stock exchange in a blog of a financial sector company.
• The world around us - even the walls of the office can be content! A couple of years ago, a well-known Russian UX-company published a material about its office decorated in a “designer” style. The material turned out to be so popular that, despite its Russian speaking, due to the beautiful pictures, it was able to attract even foreign readers. Among them was the well-known UX-expert John Maeda, who shared a link to a post on his Twitter with several hundred thousand subscribers.

What not to do

Many companies spend serious resusry on the maintenance of marketing and PR, but do not achieve the desired results - there may be a number of reasons. Here are just the main ones:

• If resources are scarce, it is better not to spend them on public relations managers in the state - small companies should not spend resources on maintaining marketing specialists in the state. As a rule, the rank and file employees of the marketing department have very limited opportunities to create truly high-quality content - developers and executives are not eager to spend their time with them, and without this you can’t do an interesting article. In the case when the money for the work of the contractor has already been paid, it is more difficult to refuse.
• Considering signs is not the best idea - If a company cooperates with external authors, the last thing it has to do is to tie the payment for their work to the number of written signs - such a scheme provokes a specialist to include unnecessary information and simply unnecessary “water” in the material. only increase the payment. Even articles that are “too short” at first glance may attract a wide audience, and longrids, who have had to kill a lot of time, remain completely unnoticed.
• Do not hesitate to write about things already known - in order to have a return on content, the regularity of the output of materials is important, for example, in a corporate blog. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of topics about which the company can talk, one way or another have already been touched by someone before it. But this is not a reason to just sit and wait for the large-scale informational campaign to happen, with the help of which it will be possible to “blow up” all the blog sites and attract the attention of the best media.
• No one is interested in boring company news - people are interested in something that has some value. If a company tells you how to learn to do something, or how to use certain products to solve your problems, this is in-demand content. And from the news about sales growth in the third quarter of last year, no one has any benefit. And this must be remembered.

How to achieve good results: 3 main tips

In addition to listing common mistakes, the authors give companies starting content marketing three main tips:

• Your blog is a great starting point - you should not immediately strive to get into all the major media. It will not be so easy for an unknown company whose employees have no experience writing articles or commenting. It is better to come to journalists, already imagining their needs and their capabilities in terms of providing invoice. To learn how to create compelling content, you should try to run your own blog - this way you can build up a content base (in the future, some of this may become the basis of a column for a well-known publication). In addition, this practice will help to understand which topics are closer to the target audience, and what it is not interesting to read about.
• Attracting the first readers can be without great expense - there are several ways to make the texts of an unknown company begin to read. First of all, you can publish a link to such materials in thematic groups in social networks - now in the same Facebook there are groups for marketers , restaurant workers, entrepreneurs , etc. You should not disdain and repost materials on sites where content publishing is allowed (recycled posts can be sent to blogs on Habré, Giktayms and Megamozg, articles about business on Spark.ru, marketing information is published in the Sandbox section on Cossa.ru) . Well, the most effective method is to add comments from market experts. You can get such a comment just by writing a message to the right person on the social network, and when the article is released, it is highly likely that it will share a link with its subscribers, which may be many thousands.
• Advertising needs to be earned - Marketing expert Guy Kawasaki claims that companies must earn the right to advertise their products. Only by giving users and readers something valuable, can you then reclaim your products or services. If you start a conversation with advertising, then no one will be interested.