The "Big 5" Content Marketing Challenges Equipment Manufacturers Face
Why waste a sentence saying nothing. –Jeff Godin
Recently, Villanova won its 2nd NCAA college basketball championship. For those not familiar with college basketball in Philadelphia, Villanova is part of what is known as the “Big 5.” It’s a league within a league that centers on the five college basketball programs in the greater Philadelphia area.
But the “Big 5” I’d like to touch on here, and in the next few posts, refers to the top five challenges I see most water and wastewater manufacturers facing when trying to produce content as part of a larger Brand Publishing plan.
The first challenge of the five is almost always not knowing what content to produce. Nearly every business struggles with how to produce engaging content. Coming up with a theme, topics, angles, and something new is challenging.
Videos, podcasts, written articles are all good formats but what represents the substance of the content is where most of us get stuck. How can we continue to create fresh content on a consistent basis? How can we continue to produce content that our target audience wants to consume? While there is no magic bullet, here are some things to consider as you get started and try to get past the “writer’s block” commonly associated with producing good content regularly.
1. Lists
This has quickly become the “go to” format for most successful pieces of content. It’s all about expectation setting with the reader wanting to know how much time they need to commit before reading a piece of content. A list format and headline is a passive way of letting your potential customer know that they can interact with your important content without committing a lot of time.
Example: 10 Things You Probably Don't Know About Cone Meters (But Really Should Find Out)
2. How-Tos
How-to content offers step-by-step, process-driven information to help your engineering or operations audience do their job better or more efficiently. It’s short, specific and gets right to the point (all things appreciated by readers in 2016)
Example: How To Install pH Sensors
3. Questions and Answers (Q&As)
These types of articles have become THE most read format of advertiser-driven content on Water Online, producing over 400 leads/engagements per piece. That is a groundbreaking number based on today’s extraordinarily short shelf life of content.
Example: VSD Value: Why You Should Invest In Variable Speed Drives
4. Case Studies
Is there a sweeter sound than the voice of your customer relaying the benefits of your products? Start with simply asking for the reference and go from there.
Example: AnoxKaldnes MBBR Reduced Wastewater OPEX At Meat Processing Facility
5. Predictions
Articles around prediction are informative, funny, engaging and somewhat addictive to an audience. Think about how popular mock drafts, Oscar predictions, etc... are and capitalize on the format.
Example: The Top 5 Predictions For Content-Based Water Marketing In 2016
mage credit: "Writer's Block," andrew smith © 2012, used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/