Making content different from your competitors is essential to standing out and reaching your target audience.
But it’s not easy! Particularly if you’re in a competitive industry or niche.
It can often feel like what you’re doing is ‘the same’ as everyone else! And honestly, it can be!
So, I thought I would share some easy ways you can make your content different to highlight the uniqueness of your business, and also stand out.
1. Talk About YOUR Products or Services
Even in a saturated market, there’s always something different about what you offer, otherwise you wouldn’t sell it! Whether it’s your location, price or customer service (or something else) look at your USP (unique selling point) and leverage this in your content.
Areas to look at:
- What are your current marketing approaches, and have you included your USP?
- Is it easy to find your USP on your homepage, services or about me page?
- Do your social bios have your core USP present?
- Have you addressed questions within this unique area in blog posts, social media live streams or social content?
You’ll find it easy to differentiate yourself when you start focusing on yourself!
2. Define Your Tone of Voice
When coming up with different content, consistency is key! Your audience will start to recognise the tone you use, and associate it like a personality to your brand, so make sure it’s authentic!
Much like your personality, your brand’s tone of voice forms part of the criteria for making you unique. It’s also particularly important when there’s more than one person managing your content!
The easiest way to define a clear, coherent narrative style for your team is to set writing guidelines.
First, you’ll need to decide a tone and stick with it. This makes your content memorable, and people will begin to recognise it. Note that it’s important not to jump between styles. It’s perfectly fine to adopt a more formal, corporate tone, but don’t switch between that and something more fun and quirky on a day-to-day basis. Pick one and stick to it.
Once you’ve established your brand’s voice, make sure your team can both understand and replicate it. They’ll be posting on behalf of your business, so it’s crucial for them to deliver your message in the right tone.
3. Avoid the Obvious
Let’s say your company sells pens. Everyone knows the benefits of owning a pen, and your competitors have probably covered all the bases when it comes to ‘beneficial pen-related content.’ If they haven’t, there’s probably a good reason why!
Don’t go for the glaringly obvious when designing your content. If you’re desperate for filler, a post that’s just about the benefits of your products is OK, but it’s not really worth wasting time and resources on content that’s relatively low-value.
Unless you’re selling a product that people have never heard of before, don’t bother with a style of content that’s already been done countless times. No matter how good your writers are, it won’t make your brand stand out.
Instead, ask the deeper questions and expand, using this example you could instead go for blog post ideas like these:
- What are the benefits of pens to [insert target audience here]
- How [target audience] can use pens to [for example ‘show authenticity’]
- 5 Weird ways pens can be used to…
The list goes on.
Good content takes a second to look a little deeper and actually add value! So if you want to make your content different, take a few moments to scratch below the surface.
4. Use Social Proof & Real Experience
The most important piece of advice is to integrate user experience into your content!
You’ll gather an infinitely more valuable and unique perspective from real-life experiences – whether your customers’ or your own – than from the same internet research that everyone else is using.
Bring testimonials and positive feedback from your customers into the forefront to act as social proof and drive conversions. But also remember use feedback to help your content strategy and choices!
For example, if you receive constructive criticism, use that to create content that solves a potential problem for your customers. Pre-empt any issues and resolve them straight off the bat.
This way you’re delivering value to your audience, whilst also keeping a stream of content ideas!
There you have it; four useful tips to make content different from your competitors, even in competitive markets. If you need help coming up with content ideas or finding your USP, drop us a message and we can help!
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