So, you have a snazzy new website that you’ve just rolled out.
It features your entire catalogue of services and products, quirky bios and pics of your team members, and your organisation’s mission and values.
You have also opened accounts on every social media platform imaginable.
You hope to use the digital world to draw attention to your online home, ramp up your brand’s recognition, and drive sales all the way to Saturn’s outer rings.
This all sounds hunky-dory, but it is bound to fail without one crucial element.
Eye-popping, astute, and useful Content. Yes, with a capital C.
You’ve heard it a gazillion times but we’re going to repeat it one last time for the back rows (or those of you who remain unconvinced).
Content is king, queen, prince, and jester, all neatly rolled into one.
What are some of the main benefits of having great content on your website and splashed all over your social media channels?
Advantages abound, but here are some of our personal favourites!
Take Your Clients to School
Educating your clientele and providing them with whatever information they need to reach a decision—hopefully one that will include them paying for your product or service—should be one of your content’s driving purposes.
You want to present your products and services in a flashy, informational, and easy-to-digest way.
This can be done via blog posts (such as this one), short video tutorials, landing and product pages, infographics, and any other online tool that is near and dear to your heart. No, having a tiny airplane map out your logo with coloured smoke on a cloudless Tuesday sky does not count.
By clearly explaining your products and services to your clients and highlighting their benefits, you’re more likely to make a sale and bring them onboard your growing family.
Keep in mind to always stress how your goodies offer them a solution to a problem or make their life easier.
Make Your Ideas and Opinion Count. Times Two.
What is thought leadership, you ask?
Thought leadership, as explained by Leslie Truex for The Balance Small Business, refers to “a person or business [that] is a pioneer in thought, an intellectual capable of generating ideas that inspire and influence others,” or “someone who is an expert in their field, who publishes new ideas and leads people and organizations into new eras.”
Putting out insightful and intelligent content on a continuous basis can help position your company as a thought leader within your industry.
You will be viewed by your partners, clients and competitors as a business that is at the cutting edge, ready to deliver innovative ideas and strong opinions that will carry the sector forward and influence the market at large.
You want to become a valuable resource for everyone out there looking for information on your sector, answering their questions, posing solutions to challenges, and driving the change that is being clamoured for by the masses.
All these thoughts, which should be clearly expressed via your content, can then very easily turn into new products or services that might further contribute to your industry and humanity as a whole.
Plenty of trade associations like AGRC are thought leaders in their respective industries.
For instance, the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) has established itself as the premier thought leader on all things related to international and cross-border taxation, issuing on a weekly basis a plethora of content ranging from white papers to training courses and beyond.
BYOB (Boost Your Own Brand)
Attractive and informative content that is viewed and shared by millions will reward your business with plenty of visibility.
This visibility, in turn, will make your company’s brand more recognisable and, let’s say, popular among consumers. This will then drive sales, growth, and even more notoriety.
For example, Yes Theory, a YouTube channel that challenges users to face their fears and “seek discomfort,” has made a living releasing entertaining, interactive, and highly addictive videos that have come across the screens of millions of people throughout the globe.
Their brand has grown so much thanks to their excellent content that the team has managed to release a unique clothing line, work on feature films and podcasts, and even bungee jump out of a helicopter with Will Smith. Yes, seriously.
So, spice up your content, whether it’s in written, video or audio form, and disseminate it widely using your social media outlets. The more it’s out there, the more likely someone will interact with it and remember you the next time your paths cross.
Feed the SEO Monster
Let’s face it, the better your content, the higher you will rank in search engines.
For Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes, your content must be highly optimized. It needs to include solid keywords, plenty of backlinks, and a host of visitors to move up in the Google rankings.
The best way to accomplish this is to make your content as engaging, creative, and useful as possible. Longer (upwards of 1200 words) and 100% original pieces perform better in searches, so keep this in mind when planning a blog post, article, or other such piece of content.
And targeting the appropriate keywords is always a must. So run as many keywork searches as needed to pinpoint what your clients are looking for and then tailor your content to reflect this.
Obviously, once your awesome content ranks higher and is highly visible to the masses, it’s bound to lead to a hike in sales.
Just remember to always keep up to date with Google’s algorithms as these change on the regular and you wouldn’t want your rankings to suffer because you haven’t done your homework.
Contribute to AGRC’s Blog or Interview Series
With all of this in mind, we’re open to setting up interviews with our members or guest blog posts penned by our extended network.
Also, on a biannual basis, we publish The AGRC Digest, and we’d be thrilled to include one of your articles, opinion pieces, or investigations covering AML, compliance, risk management or governance.
These are great opportunities for you to generate content that you can then share on your social media channels and set in motion some of the advantages we have highlighted above.
If you’re interested in contributing a piece, being interviewed, and/or sharing some industry insight with our growing community of GRC professionals, email us at info@igca.org and we’ll be in touch to get the ball rolling.
