Creating high quality content that cuts through the noise
Lauren Kelly
by Lauren Kelly
In today’s digital world, producing content that stands out from the crowd is extremely challenging. With millions of blog posts, videos, and social media updates published daily, creating high quality content that resonates and engages with your audience requires strategy, skill, and, most of all, consistency.
Here I share some tips that we follow at Gerald Edelman that can help you create content that captures attention.
Understand your audience
The foundation of all great content lies in understanding your clients, their needs, and their pain points. Listen to your clients. Pay close attention to the questions and concerns they have.
These topics are great for content ideas that you know will resonate:
Frequently asked questions: Are you consistently fielding similar questions? These topics are prime candidates for in depth articles or explainer videos.
Industry changes: Keep ahead of legislative, governmental, or tax changes that may impact your clients. Proactively addressing these issues positions you as a valuable resource. For example, we proactively plan for each federal budget, providing our predictions before the event, a summary on the day, and a post analysis. We then distribute content across different mediums, including video, blogs, infographics, and more.
Market trends: If your clients are in a particular sector, they’ll appreciate articles that help them navigate emerging trends and challenges. We have created set newsletters and bulletins for sectors where we have the most experience and expertise.
As you consistently produce content that answers your clients' pressing questions, you'll build a reputation as a go-to source for valuable information.
Keep it simple
To effectively connect with your audience, you need to speak their language. This means using appropriate terminology that resonates with them while avoiding overly technical jargon. Striking the right tone is equally important, whether your audience prefers a formal or conversational style; and aligning your voice with their expectations (as well as your brand tone of voice) fosters engagement.
I always say, if in doubt, keep it simple. If someone was to stumble upon your content, would it make sense?
Also, providing relatable examples can further enhance understanding, making complex ideas more accessible. Incorporating case studies into your content is a powerful way to illustrate real-world applications. By presenting a client’s challenge, the solution you provided, and the positive outcomes achieved, you create a narrative that your audience can relate to.
Focus on originality and value
Less is more, don’t create content because someone else has and you feel you need an update too. Stop and consider the relevance. Does your content offer unique insights or solve a specific problem?
Strive for originality. Leverage your unique position by incorporating data, client insights, or original research to support your content. Again, illustrate your points with case studies from your client base. Don’t simply report on industry changes – offer practical advice that clients can use to address or limit the impact of those changes.
It is also worth noting that Google in the future will penalise content by AI, so now is the time to invest in upskilling in copywriting or working with an agency to make sure your content is unique.
Optimise for search engines
Content is a great source of new business. We still have pieces of content that draw in new enquiries years later. If you’re creating the content, you might as well make it discoverable through online searches. This can be done through:
Keyword research – identify and naturally incorporate relevant keywords that your audience is searching for. Useful resources include Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Moz Keyword Explorer.
Structure your content – use headers, sub-headers, and bullets to make your content easy to scan and understand. This helps your audience and also search engines to interpret your content. Creating guidelines for content writers for your website will ensure this structure is kept consistent.
Plan around your core content – as mentioned above, we often plan our content around key dates such as the federal budget, or key content pieces such as guides or e-books. By marketing content a few months in advance of it being released, you build momentum and awareness, making it more likely that people will come back to read it. Consider teasers of the content, “coming soon” posts, email reminders to clients, etc.
Maintain consistency
Try not to produce one piece of content and then nothing for a few months. Regularly producing high-quality content builds trust and keeps your audience coming back for more.
Consider implementing a content calendar, which will prompt you on when to post. You can also split the calendar and give each quarter a theme to maintain consistency and give you a structure to follow.
While consistency is important, never sacrifice quality for the sake of frequency. It's better to publish one exceptional piece per month than four mediocre ones.
Get more from your content
You’ve put the time and effort into creating a great article, but what else can you do with it? You could ask a partner or team member to speak on the topic – not only does this help raise their brand, it also provides another channel for your content. Or what about creating a carousel on LinkedIn with the key points? Once you have your content, don’t publish and leave it. See what else can be done with it.
If you regularly produce longer, more in-depth pieces and still struggle to get the traffic you expected, set up tags in tag manager and sync these to Google Analytics. This way you can identify the sections or topics in the piece that are being engaged with most frequently. You can then spotlight certain sections of your report or guide to increase overall engagement on the page.
As you generate more content, I recommend auditing your content annually. This will help tidy up your website and ensure your content is always relevant.
Content audits are also good for:
Identifying underperforming content;
Discovering content gaps;
Aligning content with business goals; and
Improving SEO performance of existing content.
Remove anything that is dated (e.g. a legislation update now passed and no longer of importance). Can an older article be updated to be more relevant to now? There are some great tools out there to help you audit your content, such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Looker Studio.
By focusing on these strategies, you can create content that not only stands out from the crowd but also provides real value to your audience. Remember, cutting through the noise isn't about shouting louder – it's about saying something worth listening to.
Lauren is leading Gerald Edelman's marketing team. Before she gained experience in different Marketing roles. With a Diploma in Professional Marketing from CIM and a degree in English from the University of Exeter, Lauren has a strong educational background to support her extensive marketing experience.
Contact Lauren
XLNC member firm Gerald EdelmanLondon, England, UKT: +44 20 7299 1424
Audit, Accounting, Tax, Corporate Finance, Strategy, Management Consulting
