As summer heats up, many of us on the East Coast are headed to the shore to cool down. If you’re a surfer, enjoy watching the pros hang ten, or your kids try boogie boarding, you know catching the perfect wave is all about timing. No matter the season, the same principle applies to content creation.
For organizations striving to keep their brand at the crest of their customers’ minds (so… all of us!) well-timed content can generate an ocean of online attention in the form of comments, re-posts and, ultimately, new leads. But miss that critical window and your piece is likely to sink to the bottom of the trough not long after launch. Do you have a strategy to prevent those lost opportunity costs?
3 Ways to Synchronize Your Content with the Current
1. Don’t Delay Paddling Out.
Giant swells can be intimidating. While you might have a great lead, you’re still looking to break in at just the right moment from just the right angle. We get it – you want to do your topic justice. But if you belabor every word and delay too long, you can miss the chance to catch your audience’s attention at its peak.
Media is a vast sea, and one with plenty of risk. Will your story end in a wipeout? Could it become chum on the water? What about the undertow of cancel culture? Can you handle a feeding frenzy? While all these fears may leave you feeling like shark bait, in reality they’re a part of the ecosystem of content creation. The sooner you come to terms with them, the faster you’ll learn to move with the tides.
This is especially true in the tech space, where digital development can feel like an incoming tsunami. While the continued applicability of Moore’s Law is questionable, predictions for upcoming advancements in technology are rushing in from think tanks everywhere, including the World Economic Forum. As those sea changes roll in, make sure you’re ready to use them to your advantage.
2. Watch for the Wave of Viral Trends.
While you may not have read David Meerman Scott’s books, you’re probably already familiar with the concept he calls “newsjacking.” As a PR technique, he describes it as the process of using breaking news as a platform to generate media coverage for your business. If you’re not already doing it, you’ve likely noticed how frequently (and effectively) it’s used across a range of industries.
Even if it only skims the surface, if your content leverages the momentum of a trend, it can really exert a pull on your readers. Creating and distributing the right piece at the right moment has a lot to do with alignment. If you can tap into current trends, events, and cultural shifts relative to the interests of your target audience, you’re much more likely to win their loyalty as readers and boost their engagement as customers.
3. Work Your Core to Build Balance.
So – the trend can propel you forward, if you have the right surfboard. What’s your audience’s primary motivation for coming to your blog or subscribing to your newsletter? In other words – what can they expect to get out of reading your copy? To increase both visibility and engagement, you have to identify your core value proposition upfront and keep it centered as you develop your content marketing strategy.
Capturing the zeitgeist of the time and aligning it with your audience’s appetite and your organization’s brand is quite a trifold balancing act. As anyone who’s spent significant time on or in the water will tell you, balance comes from the core and a sense of timing often comes from the gut. In other words, strength and intuition come from the same place. What does that mean for content creation? Like everything else, timing and balance take practice to develop.
When your core value proposition is strong and recognizable, it’s much easier (and more intuitive) to consistently produce timely pieces that connect your audience’s interests with the currents of trending topics and float them gently back to your brand’s welcoming shores.
To learn more about the art of content creation, visit Version A today.
