It’s not easy to get your voice heard in any sector. But in professional services – where competition is hotting up, and where you’re selling something that’s both complex and intangible – it’s an even bigger challenge.
So, with everyone vying for the attention of your target market, how can you and your firm stand out?
By recognising that content is king. But your competitors know this too. The web is awash with content from professional services firms.
To cut through the noise, you need to make sure that your content is relevant, useful and genuinely engaging.
Blogs are widely regarded as a great way to keep ‘your voice’ consistently out there. So, how can you ensure yours are relevant, useful and genuinely engaging? Here’s our three tips:
Focus on what you know
This may seem like an obvious point, but it can easily be ignored. There is always a temptation to have a comment on everything. Stick to your area of expertise. You have a target audience so focus on addressing their pain points and challenges. Keep it simple and keep to what you know. Share personal experiences and keep it real!
Write to your audience
You are not writing an academic paper so make your writing conversational and informal. This is your opportunity to get your personality over. Your ‘voice’ can be a big differentiator. People do not read blogs for the high amount of technical information, they read them because a topic is relevant, and your copy is engaging. In professional services your target market will typically be busy senior decision-makers so keep it short and impactful. There is no need to include a huge amount of content, data, graphs and charts, this will only decrease your readers’ attention span; less is more.
Also, remember your audience will typically be senior professionals so it’s ok to make some assumptions. There is no need to overly describe certain topics, trends or keywords. Write to your personas. Your blogs aren’t out there to keep everyone happy!
Have a journalistic approach
Try and keep your style and format consistent. Consistency is key in building a community of readers. This applies to timing as well. Where possible, post your blogs at the same time of day each week or month. This will help engagement as your readers will have a timeframe for your next blog.
Staying up to date on industry trends is also vital. Try and think and act like a journalist. Relevance is so important. Also, put your feet in the shoes of your readers. Challenge yourself. Will a certain topic genuinely relate to you, if you were a reader? Finally, where possible try and work to a content/blog calendar. This will help you overcome those last-minute topic headaches.
At PSM we have a team of experienced professional services writers who can offer great advice on all aspects of blogging and wider content marketing. If you’re struggling to find your ‘voice’ in your blogs, or don’t know what to write about, let’s have a conversation!