Three Ways To Brag About Your Treatment Equipment Without Being A Narcissist

Many talented people find talking about their successes in a job interview difficult. Some of our best character traits, such as honesty and humility, make selling oneself feel awkward. In her recent article, “How to Brag about Yourself without Being Obnoxious,” Vanessa Van Edwards pondered the question: How do you toot your own horn without blowing it?

Many of us in the water and wastewater market are facing the same dilemma when it comes to our marketing efforts. As our audience’s media habits have begun moving away from reading editorial interspersed with advertising to consuming content with advertising filtered out, we’ve had to adapt. Now we’re hiring writers and creating pages of keyword-enhanced support literature that can be indexed by Google and other search engines.  

Traditional display advertising is all about being big and bold. Readers accept the premise that the article they are reading about secondary wastewater treatment in a trade magazine is laid out around advertising pages. And those advertising pages can brag about your new product or service without risk of losing the reader. They are more focused on the article they are reading in the first place. You have to be somewhat obnoxious to capture their attention.

However, the obnoxiously-written article is another thing altogether. You’ll quickly lose the reader if you wordsmith your display ad features into a lengthy article. It doesn’t work. An article-reader forgives the inserted ad because it stands alone from the story. But embedded into the words of the article they are reading will not be forgiven.

So how do you craft a compelling read that not only educates and informs your reader but gives your brand the credit it deserves? A vendor-neutral article might be a great read but if there is nothing of your brand in it, you won’t gain any traction.    

Dedicate Yourself to Reporting Great Work

A great starting point is the Case Study. Case studies demonstrate how your product or service was used to overcome a problem for another reader. What is unique about the water and wastewater industry is that one municipality isn’t competing with another municipality for water or sewage disposal customers. Water and wastewater utilities are geographically segregated and largely willing to share their wins with other operators.

It might take some effort to get your customers to agree to be part of your story (and often times your customer is an assorted mix of utility, engineering firm and contractor), but there’s nothing more humbling than your happy customers discussing the virtues of your solution.

Wrap your Brand around your Content

Many companies have one or two industry geniuses who really know their stuff. Often times, it’s your Company Founder or President. It took some foresight for them to see an opportunity in the market and this can be an indicator of thought leadership. It’s important when you have industry leaders in your midst that you utilize them for the good of your brand without forcing them to be promotional. One way to do this is to have them craft vendor-neutral, reader-inspiring content and simply put your brand wrapper around it. Creating the definitive guide to something your readers care about is a way to associate your brand with great content without boasting.

Be Relevant

Being relevant requires writing about what matters to your desired audience. The difficulty with relevance is that it’s often a crowded forum. Recent incidents such as the Flint MI water quality tragedy or the concept of water reuse in drought-ridden California have been covered relentlessly in the press and trade journals alike. However, if you can find your own content niche and story angles within the topics of today, it’s another great way to tout your accomplishments within the context of today’s news cycle.