Marketers have a tough crowd.
Busy people who are being pulled in a thousand directions at all times.
You’ve got the challenge of not only grabbing but holding their attention long enough to provide value and warm them up to your brand.
This is a difficult feat for anyone, but it becomes much more difficult if the topics that resonate with your business tend to be, well, boring.
Let’s face it. It’s a lot easier for a fashion, beauty, or sports brand to come up with fun and interesting content than it is for someone in the infrastructure or milling industry.
There are so many topics out there connected to important businesses, but they just aren’t super exciting right off the bat. So how can you transform a bland or technical topic into an entertaining piece of content?
Expand to Relevant Topics That are More Interesting
Even if you’re a tire brand, you can write about a lot more than tires. We shared this lesson about branching out in our recent article about Michelin’s star rating system. As a tire brand way back in 1900, they had a difficult task of getting people interested in cars and buying tires during a time when more people owned horses than cars. Do you think it would have worked for them to write just about tires or cars? Probably not.
Instead, Michelin created a travel guide that did include some tire changing tips but was filled with local restaurants and attractions on the most common routes in France. Were they in the restaurant industry? No. But a travel guide encourages travel by car and is still related to tires in that way. You can read all about how this turned into the infamous Michelin star rating and boosted their brand awareness HERE, but the important takeaway today is that you can expand your content to ancillary topics that are more interesting than your core business.
Keep it Simple, Stupid
Whether you’re a B2C or B2B business working with high-level professionals, you want to keep your content simple. Just because someone knows the jargon or technical information does not mean they want to parse through it. Keep your content simple and clear. Use subheadings and bullet points to make it easy on the eyes, and don’t overcomplicate it.
Storytelling
Listing out a bunch of facts or diving into a dry, complicated topic is no fun for the writer or reader. One of the best ways to make “uninteresting” content engaging is to tell a story. You can do this in several ways, but case studies are a great example. Let’s say you’re an auto repair business. Instead of just explaining the importance of a certain repair, tell the story of a customer that you helped with the repair.
Be Funny (or at least try to)
Of course, you’ll want to stay true to your brand voice and keep a certain level of professionalism, but a little laughter never hurt anyone. One of the easiest ways to make a dry topic interesting is to make it a little funny. Add some humor in where it makes sense, and keep the overall tone a little lighter.
Let Someone Else Write For You
While some topics may be more challenging than others, an experienced writer can make any topic digestible and interesting. Perhaps the best way to make an unappealing topic interesting is to hire a professional to do it for you. Instead of spending hours trying to write an entertaining piece of content about infrastructure, you can leave it to us while you take care of the other important aspects of your business.
We’re up for the challenge no matter how unappealing the topic may seem. Check out what we can do by requesting your free sample blog post!