For those of you who have watched the speed skating, you will have noticed the benefits of hanging out in the leader’s slipstream, but it’s not just in sports that you can improved your performance by using the ‘pull’ of a leader. You can use a leading story, such as the Winter Olympics to ‘hang’ your social media and blogs to, as we have done with this one.
Our job is creating websites for small businesses, so we speak to a lot of customers about how they use (or should use) their website. And one of the biggest complaints we hear from our clients when it comes to creating content is that they don’t know what to write. One great way to come up with topics for content is by simply reacting to what is going on around you. Keeping an eye on what’s topical and receiving coverage, is a great way of not only creating posts, but you can also tag in the story to draw more traffic to your post – using their slipstream of news interest. Not sure where to start? Have a look at what’s trending on Google: Google Trends, Facebook: Facebook Insights, Twitter: Explore / Twitter and news stories, both national and local, then see if you have a way of hooking into those stories. If you know there’s going to be something big coming up (like the Olympics) then you have the benefit of being able to plan ahead with your posts rather than being reactive to fresh news stories.
Relevance is key.
You do need to be able to find some way of connecting what you do to what is happening. For example, if you’re an accountant, reporting the results of the Skiing event isn’t going to be interesting or relevant to your audience. However, reporting on how much an event like this costs compared to previous events, alongside some savvy financial insight would tick all the boxes.
Your post could lead to a longer blog on your website, increasing visitor numbers to your website. Plus, if it’s carefully worded it can be used in various ways in social media, getting multiple uses out of the same story. In the case of the Olympics, you have a full two weeks to reap the benefits of the public interest.
Be it political, Royal, commercial, environmental, sports or news story, see if there’s a slant to tie your posts in and ride in the slipstream.