Would you like to share and write more technical content? Perhaps you want to promote your business and share technical content with a wider audience? Surveyors and valuers have a lot of good stuff to share that can make the world a better place. But sharing your expertise is not easy. It's a skill to learn.
Stacey Meadwell is a writer and trainer helping built environment businesses create better content more easily. She is also an experienced panel and roundtable moderator. Before setting up her own business she was a B2B property journalist and features editor for 20 years.
Writing Content for a Digital Publication
Stacey starts with an explanation of the difference in style and technique between writing for a digital publication and print.
“If you think about when people are reading digital content, they might be reading on a phone,” Stacey says. “It's very important to make it easily readable, by which I mean short sentences and short paragraphs. Also, people tend to skim read online more than they do in print. You want to drop in some subheadings throughout that will hopefully draw people in.”
“If you are reading something in a magazine, you've got a headline, a subheading, a picture with a caption,” she explains. “There are all these different things that are drawing people in and keeping people invested in that bit of content. It's much harder on digital because you haven't got that nice layout.”
“The other thing I would say is, when you're writing headlines, don't be clever with puns,” Stacey advises. “Think of what people would search for. When I'm doing my training, I call it the Twitter test or the tweet test. If you imagine it as a tweet on its own, would someone know what that is about?”
Posting Your Content on LinkedIn
Stacey continues with tips on how to build confidence about sharing your opinion out there on LinkedIn or other social platforms.
“LinkedIn and other social media is a good place to start,” Stacey says. “Start there and get used to commenting on posts and articles on LinkedIn or on Twitter. If you start off with posts, which can be quite short and pithy, move up to articles. Social media is not about broadcasting, it's about a conversation and treating it as such. Ask questions, engage in that way. That can spin off and give you ideas for stuff that you might want to talk about.”
Generating Visibility and Publicity
Stacey suggests getting in touch with panel organizers to register what you want to talk about and become more visible. Once you are visible to journalists, you can pitch ideas to appear in publications.
“There are two ways you can do it,” Stacey says. “If they have a comment or opinion section, you can pitch an idea. Have a look at the things they cover and the style. Initially, I would just come up with some bullet points or the angle. The key thing is to make sure you've got an opinion, that you understand your industry and you know what the pain points are.”
Bringing Personality Into Your Content
Stacey agrees that the kindness economy should be the backbone of content creation. She says that bringing personality and personal experience into content will elevate engagement and trust.
“You do business with people that you like and trust,” Stacey explains. “The way you get to know, like and trust is not by just talking about business. When you go to a networking event or a meeting, you talk about what the journey was like. Our personal experience is important. You can show your personality by asking particular questions. Get involved in conversations about working life and work-life balance.”
“Another way is to write how you speak,” she says. “I'm a huge advocate for being yourself in your content. If you're trying to please everybody, you're never going to please anybody. You might as well be more like yourself. If you've got your ideal audience in mind, how would you talk to them if you met them in real life? If you're not writing like that, then you're almost doing a disservice because you're being someone else,” she concludes.