As a writer at Vertical Leap, I’m intimately familiar with one stone cold fact about content marketing. If you’re going to create content, you need a subject to write about – and really, it should be something new.
This isn’t exactly a profound realisation. Look at every blog ever written; sure, there’s a central topic (be it search engine optimisation, a travel diary or just a public transcript of your entire life) but that central topic has to be explored in a new way each time.
If there’s nothing new to add then really, you could just throw up something you wrote a year ago. But will anyone want to read it?
There’s a fairly easy solution to this though: news.
There’s one thing that’s true of all subjects and which plays perfectly into a content generation strategy: nothing stays the same. Everything changes. And if you’re going to actually reach an audience at any step in your content marketing activity, you need to reflect these developments rather than rehash familiar subjects in the same old way.
Using news to drive topical content is a pretty good way of sourcing new content – it gives rise to new topics relevant to your audience, as well as new ways of looking at the existing state of affairs. At the very least, it will ensure that your content is updated on a regular basis and that your site reflects the current state of affairs, rather than being forever frozen in its first appearance.
It’s also possible that through news content, you can actively engage with topical issues, potentially building your reputation among readers as one of the more authoritative online news providers for your specific subject. Even if all you do is demonstrate that you’re aware of how things are progressing in the wider world, you’ll be subtly reassuring your readers and prospective customers that you can be trusted to at least keep up to date with the latest developments.
Still, using news as the basis of your content generation requires a little forethought and planning. You’ll need to develop an editorial strategy for your coverage – if you’re too inclusive, then your content will be drowned out by sheer volume and a lack of focus.
If you’re too exclusive, you could leave yourself with nothing to write about in a slow month. And slow months will inevitably happen; whilst nothing stays the same, change is by its nature unpredictable – and news is all about change.
So what’s the answer? Planning. Research. Identify what kind of wider contexts affect your business and where you can tie developments there back into your central subject; identify what potential readers would be looking for if they visit your site – and identify what you can do when news coverage slows to a crawl.
After all, the mainstream news publications cover almost every type of story under the sun and they still have to pad out their reporting with commentary, editorial, opinion and entertainment pieces to fill pages. With a bit of flexibility and a bit of forethought, news can be an indefinitely sustainable source of content for your site.
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