4 Unique Content Marketing and Link Building Techniques for Boring Industries

How can we convince interesting and powerful people who run blogs with authority to link to what the majority of people call boring. It is very difficult to define what boring is as there is always going to be a group of hardened activists who will die for their interest, ok maybe not die but suffer mild inconvenience to defend their interests. Train spotting for example, which in the UK represents the poster boy of what the average person describes as boring.

Except did you know there are 100,000 trainspotters in the UK with blogs which have large amounts of Google Juice ready to spray onto any website it deems worthy. Train spotting is not boring to Trainspotters.

What people really mean when they say boring industry is that it’s a subject that bores them. If you are a link builder or a content creator you must not think in this manner of self-interest. It is not about what interests you, it is about what works. Therefore there are no boring subjects that are hard to build links too, only subjects you find boring and have not yet researched.

What defines a good content marketer is the ability to take these hard subjects that people consider boring and create something which works.

Important to point out that I did not say that we should create something that is “not boring”. But something, “that works”.

Idea 1: Content Convergence

Merge one boring, dull topic with a more exciting topic, whilst giving it a theme which gets attention.

Take one piece of boring content, such as plumbing supplies.

Focus down on one everyday item that is a keyword for the website and mash it up with an interesting news story. For “plumbing supplies”, we are going to go with “toilet”.

We take a hot topic keyword that is very interesting, such as “smartphone”.

We find and research a number of articles regarding these

Flush With Your Smartphone
Smartphone-Controlled Toilet Features Remote Lid, Speakers, App
Luxury toilet users warned of hardware flaw

We design content around these themes, citing the articles as it is the polite thing to do and linking out is always a good thing.

We give the content a snappy title, and make it more about the reader than about the website : “How Smartphones are taking over your Toilet Time”

We reblog what was in the researched articles.

We explore the costs involved of installing a smartphone, controlled toilet and use it as an opportunity to talk about the website store.

We then outreach to smartphone blogs and ask them for a quote about the subject of the article and promise them a link. The smartphone and mobile phone niche are more competitive than plumbing supplies, so you will find a number of willing participants.

Don’t approach the big boys who are dominating, but the up and coming, hungry players who are active and have a good social media following. They are more than likely to announce your content when it is ready and possibly even link to it if it hits the spot.

Thus by introducing a new element to the narrative you’ve made a boring item more interesting and opened up your website to getting links from places your competition would find hard to replicate.

Idea 2: Biographical Content

Inspiring story of rags to riches

You can’t get that much more boring than accountancy software, although for those who are involved in accountancy it must be very interesting. But add the fact that the creator of a successful, UK invoicing company Kashflow.com was once an international drug dealer and you have an interesting story.

Biographical content is often ignored by content marketers, but this is often the most interesting part of the business narrative. There is usually an interesting story in the back pocket of an experienced business person that is worth telling. Most people who build a business are able to tell a story and understand the power of storytelling, so it’s a far easier sell for a content marketing consultant or agency to propose creating biographical content.

Of course they may not be as saucy as an international drug deal, that’s at the extreme end, but a good story teller can craft a good tale into a fantastic tale. You only have to look at the mainstream business press to see that they use biographical content as a main part of their publishing output.

Idea 3: The Shocking Truth

Data driven infographic

Uncover an interesting fact and turn it into an infographic. An infographic is the best communication device for data and people who give links and social signals love data. Shocking data is highly attractive to those who like to share infographics. As there are still plenty of infographic directories which are worth getting a link from and those people who place the infographic on their own site will usually give a link back and if they don’t you can soon make them with a polite, firm email.

An example of how to take a boring subject, give it an interesting narrative spin and then pulling the data, turning it into an infographic.

Adding a comparison theme into the data of Good vs Bad can give an interesting narrative to a boring subject, as seen in this infographic from Marketing Land.

Idea 4: Get Artful

Taking the Excel spreadsheet and giving it a WOW factor

Why does content get shared? Whilst you are thinking about that, consider those who share content they either do not like or do not understand. People who hate Kim Kardashian love talking about Kim Kardashian, most people have only basic knowledge of the Hadron Collider and yet eagerly share content about the project.

The WOW Factor induces the content sharing ninja to do their thing, as outlined by this article from Lisa Barone.

We see a curation of the fact that people create interesting art with the accountant’s best friend, Microsoft Excel. Something of a conversation point in itself.

We see from the cognitiveSEO Backlink Explorer that the page has over a 100 links.

Jump off point

A very good jump off point when creating this type of content marketing is Econsultancy’s Periodic Table of Content Marketing by Chris Lake.

Here is the section on “sharing triggers”. These are an excellent reference point when trying to create interesting content out of boring industries.

What type of Content Creating/Link Building method is Most Searched For

Every type of link building method has at some point worked very well. But this does not mean we should consider every type of link building method as the list is huge and some do not work as well as they once did, whilst others are working very well. What is more useful is if we look at some data of the methods used to build links and of course social signals.

Whilst social signals are not in themselves important links for ranking in search engines, they are important for:

• Raising awareness of the brand
• Attracting people who can give links
• Getting real people to come to your website
• If they are talking about you they are not talking about your competitor
• Generating leads

Content which gets links will also be content which gets talked about on social media. Content creation is the key to both links and social signals and it is what people are interested in that matters. After all, they are going to be giving both the links and social signals.

What methods of content creating are people searching for? Although finding out what type of content creation/link building people are searching for does not tell us what works, it informs us of what people are interested in and what is the zeitgeist.

You could argue that people are increasingly interested in certain methods because they work or you could say it’s simply what is in fashion and what the “gurus” are trying to sell at that point.

However, for us to observe interest to consistently increase, we must assume that it’s a technique that is achieving success and is actionable.

The following “trend graph” sequence is not meant to be definitive or even draw explicit conclusions. It’s more to demonstrate how techniques and methods come and go out of fashion and to factor that in when it comes to creating link building content.

For example, I had expected the “infographic” craze to be over and on the decline, but according to this data there is an increased interest. If I believed my Twitter feed I would have expected it to be on the decline. Which raises the question, “Are Infographics more than a fad” and what are you doing to take advantage of them?

Content Marketing

This term gets a lot of flack from the SEO community, possibly because it seems that it is taking the attention off SEO and onto content. But this is where the focus should be, giving the audience what they want to allow the aims of the website to be achieved.

But what is striking is the rise and continuing rise in interest of content marketing.

Content marketing – Link building

Here are a series of graphs from Google Alerts to highlight the mechanics of the content delivery system. In other words I’m using Google Alerts history, to reveal information about how interested people are in different ways of presenting and delivering content to them.

Links are still the main signal in the Google algo, plus real people click on real links to visit a website. But the interest in link building is waning, this may be due to the practices that invoked a drastic change in the Google algo being so abused. Many a digital agency has gone from pumping crappy articles out for a bit of link juice to creating content for real people, and so I would contend that the focus is shifting from a link building methodology to a content building methodology.

Content marketing – Link building – Infographic

This graph honestly shocked me, I have had great success from infographics, but if I listened to my Twitter feed you would think they are useless. This is probably because my feed is constantly bombarded with infographics and because the high cost of initiating them in a successful way, many have not yet found the method useful. But step out of the the SEO Bubble and the level of interest the way the crowd has in them is remarkable.

And the interest in infographics seems to be growing.

Content marketing – Link building – Infographic – Blog Post

It was inevitable that interest in the blog post would peak and then retrace. This does not mean it’s a less useful method, simply that it is reaching a more stable point on the chart. Obviously this is my interpretation of the data and should be understood as such.

Content marketing – Link building – Infographic – Blog Post – Social media marketing

Looks like social media marketing is here to stay with us.

Conclusion

There is not really a “boring”, industry but there are absolutely certain industries that may be boring to you. The skilled content marketer will be able to be objective about such industries and apply various methodologies which are able to construct content which gets the required attention.

Things to consider

1. Theme
2. Trigger
3. Type of content

1. Theme is the type of idea, be it biographical, convergent or shocking.
The list of potential themes is huge and not always helpful to list them all as the many options can paralyse creating the content.

2. The trigger is what motivates people towards the content, to read the content and then to share the content in a link or a social signal.

3. Type of content, is more mechanical in nature, an infographic, a blog post, etc. And then you can focus down even more, a listicle, a “how to”… etc.

The rule of thumb is you go with what works, you analyse what has worked and you implement a fresh look at something which interests your target market.

Regarding content marketing and link building

• Find out what people want.
• Find out why people want it.
• Find out how people want to consume it.