At Feedsy, we hear this a lot: “I know we should be writing more of our own original content for our newsletters and Facebook – but we find it hard to come up with story ideas“.

If this sounds like you, keep reading for some quick content hacks to get the creative juices flowing…

But first. Let’s quickly talk about why writing your own content is worth it in the first place.

For one thing, we know that your clients, referrers and prospects love consuming it.

We have observed that original articles written by businesses have up to 400% higher click rates in their email newsletters and better engagement on social media that curated articles (eg Feedsy auto-curated stories).

Whilst people love our Feedsy-supplied stories, it is original content that consistently performs better.

And original content can help people get to know your brand on a deeper (and in some case, more personal) level. It also makes your brand more attractive to Google when people are searching for businesses like yours.

Let’s face it, even though you can see the value in original content, writing a blog is not your main gig and you really don’t have the time to sit and ponder about where to start.

So wouldn’t you like to know the kind of original content that get all the clicks?

 

Here is a “content hack” cheat sheet to generate clickable topic ideas for you:

Now some of this is the kind of stuff you may normally go straight to Facebook Page to publish. Why not put it on your FeedsyWeb blog first so it can also be included in your next auto FeedsyMail newsletter as well as shared on social media?

With Facebook making it more and more less likely for your Facebook Page “Likers” to see your Page’s content in their feeds, email is a far more reliable channel when it comes to actually getting your message seen by people.

OFFICE/TEAM ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Welcoming a new team member or farewelling a retiree.
• Celebrating a birthday (and even how you celebrated it).
• Births, weddings and even funerals.
• Moving to a new location.
• Staff work milestones – eg 5 year work anniversary, job promotion, etc.
• Staff profiles – get to know their hobbies and interests outside of work.
• Staff achievement (outside of work) – eg playing in a netball grand final, attending a royal wedding (yes, someone actually did that – with photos to prove it!), etc.

CHARITY AND GOODWILL

• Celebrate team charity activities (eg Relay For Life, Biggest Morning Tea, Pink Ribbon Day, etc).
• Profile piece about a pro-bono charity client.
• Profile (or even provide regular updates on) a sporting team that you sponsor.
• Charity tips: seek personal cause/connections or look online for ideas, eg:
  • Beyond The Boardroom
  • Fundraising Directory
  • Australian Cancer Research Foundation
  • My Cause.

HELPING PEOPLE

• Client profiles – promote the businesses of your clients (bonus: they will probably share it with their community too).
• Client testimonials or case studies.
• Profile a pain point (that your business solves) – empathising with people having the issue (and their barriers for solving it) rather than providing (jargony) advice – invite them to contact you for help.

NICHE SUBJECTS

• Do your provide niche services or serve a specific target audience? Then write about it. POWER TIP: mention the niche in your story title (eg “…Church…”, “…Ethical…”, “…Retailers…”, “…Start-ups…”, etc).
• Niche personal interests to add personality to your brand (eg bike riding, fun movie reviews or sporting commentary, gardening, recipes, etc).

TOPICAL/SEASONAL

• Reminder notices for people to engage with you before a mandatory or seasonal date. POWER TIP: mention the date in your story title (eg “Are you ready for the superannuation changes on 1 July 2017?”, “It’s BAS time again [15 May, 2018]”).
• Celebrate annual events (eg Christmas, Summer Holidays, Easter, Anzac Day, School Holidays, Melbourne Cup, AFL Grand Final, etc).
• Famous birthdays (that are the same date as people in your office).
• Welcome the seasons.

VIDEO

• People LOVE video.
• Don’t like writing? Why not do a selfie video instead using your laptop or mobile? Doesn’t need to be too polished (eg one of our clients has had the most success from videos shot from the front seat of her car using her iPhone (not while she was driving, of course)).
• Keep your videos short (1-3 mins).
• To publish, upload them straight to Youtube (so people can discover it there too). Copy and paste the Youtube URL in your blog post and then share the post on Facebook.
• If you are doing a video try using the word “Video” in the title (eg put “[Video]” at the start or end).

These topics will make your brand attractive and more relatable to customers, referrers and prospects. Another side benefit is positioning your business as an “employer of choice” – a brand with a soul and one that cares.

With Feedsy, it is easy to create an original story:

• Title
• Story text
• Image
• Category
• Publish!

And with FeedsyMail and FeedsySocial these can be included with Feedsy’s curated content in your monthly auto-email newsletter and your weekly social media posts.

Also, if you have topic ideas (from concrete to vague) FeedsyWrite can even write your original articles for you.

If you want a hand getting started either book some TRAINING or a GETTING STARTED SESSION.

 

Gavin Klose

(Brand Strategist, Feedsy)