Writing about tech isn’t easy.
Writing about tech when it’s your main offering you’re never be 100% sure what level of tech knowledge your audience has. As a small business, you most likely rely on your content to make it through to your audience so you can generate more business, so you can write more content, so you can generate more business.
One way to mitigate the issue is to tune your writing has to cater to a wide range of possible knowledge. Then comes the concern that your writing will ‘dilute’ the power of your tech. But there are ways around this.
Here’s a few ways to make sure your content always hits the right marks.
Publish different kinds of content.
A good content strategy doesn’t build itself on one kind of content only: it works in different types of blogs, surveys, personal posts, outbound links. This will help on two fronts – it’ll keep your audience engaged if they’re not quite sure what they’re going to read about at any given point in time, and it’ll make it a lot easier for you to put out excellent content every time.
Consistent brand voice.
People follow your brand for a reason, and that reason may vary between audience members. The only way you can capture and hold their attention without knowing why they follow you is to make sure that your brand is as much itself as it can be – and that means creating a consistent brand voice for your audience to connect to. The familiarity can help push a connection to audience members that will take the heavy lifting out of establishing trust between your brand and your audience.
Light on the jargon.
This doesn’t mean don’t use any kind of jargon: as a company with a specific purpose, sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. What is important is to make sure that the jargon you use has a place and a purpose in its use, and you’re not just throwing out difficult concepts for the sake of establishing yourself as the cleverest brand in the room. Your audience needs to know what you’re talking about. Your audience also has other things to do.
Think deeper about current issues.
One of the best things about the tech industry is that it’s a constantly growing, adapting, changing industry, and good ideas come out of nowhere. One of the worst things about it is that it can easily become an industry where thought leadership gets put on the back burner in favour of just giving an opinion on what’s currently happening. For your brand’s sake, go deeper than that. Make new connections, come up with solutions to current issues, think farther than the limits of what’s being spoken about.
Establish yourself as a thought leader.
Opinions are great. Thought leadership is better. Establishing your business as someone to follow not to get an opinion, but to get the idea of where the current tech landscape is heading off to is an excellent way to build up both your own and your brand’s social currency – and to keep people following you not for the latest news, but for understanding the latest news and how it impacts their lives.
Avoid sales speak.
You have to generate revenue, and that’s understandable – but humans are storytelling creatures at their core. Speaking to your audience as a storyteller instead of a salesman helps you build trust, and making sure that they know they can follow you because you have their best interests at heart, rather than because you want to make a quick sale.
Use visuals.
With tech, text can be confusing to follow along, especially when you’re trying to explain a concept that might be better explained with a diagram or a graphic. Besides the ease of explanation, having visuals included in your content breaks up text-heavy feeds, and makes it more likely that your audience will remember and interact with your offerings.
Follow up and interact with your audience.
When all you do is publish content, it can be easy for your audience to think of you as only a business. Interacting and following up on your content will help build a connection to your audience, which can then help your content stand out further on their feeds.
Use your own experiences and case studies.
Tangible proof of your expertise is an excellent way to amplify your position of authority with your audience, and can go a long way towards building your credibility and your business’ ethics online.
Create interactive content.
Content, by its definition, tends to be a broadcast rather than an interaction: if it’s a blog, video, or graphic, your audience can’t really interact beyond commenting. However, polls and quizzes can help add a much-needed element of interactivity that can break up a normal pattern of non-interactive content, and thus create a deeper connection with your audience.
