How to write content your audience will actually read (Part 1: diagnosing leech content)

In the early 2000s, I spent a year living with my in-laws in a former Soviet republic. I won’t get into all the strange details just now. The only thing you need to know is that the telephone service was sporadic.

That’s why my father-in-law began every call the same way:

“Hello? … Hello! … Hello? … Hello!”

It’s very important that you imagine this one-sided conversation steadily increasing in volume and irritation.

Because this is exactly what happens to B2B tech companies if they are not thinking carefully about their audience as they develop their marketing materials and content.

The louder they yell, the more apparent it will be that they are shouting into a void.

This is never for lack of good intentions. You have a website, you’ve built out content, and according to Google Analytics it sure looks like someone’s downloading it. And yet … you’re not getting the traction you figured on getting.

In other words, you’re conducting a one-way conversation. Your content is landing shy of your target market. And that could well be because you’re writing for a kind of surrogate audience.

Writing to a surrogate audience leeches your marketing bandwidth for little return — for diminishing returns, in fact, because slowly but surely, you’re training your real targets to ignore you.

6 types of leech content — and the tell-tale signs

There are 6 distinct types of leech content, each with different characteristics driven by the audience you’re actually writing for.

Here’s the list, ordered very roughly from most likely to least.

#1 Content written for yourself

Tech companies in particular are prey to inside-out thinking (as opposed to taking “outside-in” cues, i.e., from their market). This kind of thinking derives from a fatal “build it and they will come” mentality. Even if you’re aware of the danger, it can be difficult not to fall victim to it, particularly if you’ve been with the company for a while.

Characteristics of the content include feature-heavy copy and a preponderance of jargon. And, just as in any relationship that’s beset by narcissism, if the use of “we” outweighs the use of “you,” that’s a red flag.

#2 Content written for an internal committee

In younger companies, it’s not uncommon for content to circulate widely for approval. Whatever the benefits of this organizational structure, the output from a content perspective often resembles a document written by committee.

If you’re a reader that has experienced a document written by committee, it almost certainly did not hold your attention for long.

If you’re a copywriter that has experienced a document written by committee, you will recall the pain. There is not a human being alive who can resist the temptation to edit someone else’s draft. This means that what emerges after a chain of three or more reviews will be akin to a rag doll that’s been torn apart and repaired by bits of Atomic Barbie.

It’s a surefire way of inviting your audience to go and play elsewhere.

#3 Content written for bots

There’s no pursuit nobler than making it easy to discover and acquire knowledge. That’s what search engine optimization (SEO) ought to be. But SEO has morphed into the art of making it easy to produce keyword soups that resemble knowledge.

This is why content that has been aggressively optimized for search engines often feels repetitive, if not outright spammy.

By all means, use the words your target audience is using - but if you don’t talk like a human being, human beings won’t listen to you.

#4 Content written for your sales team

It’s hard, especially for young companies, not to give the most oxygen to whomever in the room has landed the biggest contract. However, big contracts come with their own issues, particularly the outsized impact they have on current and future product development. And that’s OK — as long as those contracts truly do represent your ideal client.

If they don’t, you have issues, especially on the content development side, where writing for the biggest fish is a recipe for alienating the rest of the ocean.

That aside, sales-driven messaging is too far down the pipeline for most marketing content. That’s because it addresses an audience that is:

a) aware they have a problem that needs solving,

b) aware that there is a solution category for their problem,

c) aware that your solution belongs to this category, and

d) aware of the merits of your particular solution.

Your content creation efforts, on the other hand, should primarily be driven by the need to address audiences bucketed by a) and b), so that you can grow c) and d).

If sales support materials are all you’re producing, that growth is going to prove extremely challenging.

#5 Content written for your star client

Every tech company has that one client. The client that vibes with you, that gets you, that loves you. You talk to them often. You pay extra attention when they tell you what’s working and what isn’t. Their characteristics and preferences become a proxy for real analysis of ideal buyer personas and firmographics …

… and before you know it, you’ve built a content library to a single client profile.

Now, there’s no reason why your star client should grow in lockstep with you. In fact, they won’t.

There are only two outcomes, neither of them good. They’ll grow more slowly than you, in which case your messaging will stagnate. Or they’ll grow faster, in which case your messaging will soon become irrelevant.

#6 Content written for investors

Certainly there are times when you need to produce content for potential investors, but it needs to diverge widely from content written for your target buyers. Investors are looking for results within a given window of time, whereas your buyers have problems that need solving immediately.

This difference shows up in your copy. Content written for your target buyers needs to reflect urgency. Investor-driven content, on the other hand, doesn’t. It’s typically dense in visionary concepts and weasel words (e.g., “can,” “can be,” “virtually,” “up to,” “as much as,” and other words that generate hope by generating wriggle room).

Content that resonates: The guiding principle

For the sake of argument, let’s say that you are producing leech content. Is that really so bad?

Yes.

If there’s one principle you must take away from this blog post series, it’s this: Your audience is always busier, more distracted, and more stressed than you are.

If they have to struggle to understand you, they’ll leave. If your empathy for them is suspect, they’ll leave. If it seems likely that you may not be able to remedy their pain, they’ll leave.

To sum up: If you give them a reason to leave, they’ll leave.

The basic human principle at stake is that people need to feel heard … so your content needs to demonstrate that you’re hearing them. If you can do this, you will see improved top-to-bottom funnel results, from branding and lead generation to conversion and established customer relationships.

If you can’t … they’ll leave.

And you’ll be left holding a conversation with yourself.

In Part 2 of this blog post, I examine what it is you need to know about your audience, how to get this information, and what you should do with it.

This blog entry is from the Content Writer’s Handbook series.

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