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Episode 20 - Part 2: Common mistakes to avoid in content creation!
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In part two of episode 20, we're discussing common mistakes to avoid in content creation!
Nigel Lewis joins us for episode 20 discussing everything content and how you can better engage your audience.
Nigel is Head of Content at The Negotiator, an industry magazine focused on the estate agency sector. The Negotiator provides a daily newsletter and a monthly magazine.
Nigel writes for a number of other outlets as a freelancer and has an extensive career in creating newsworthy content.
In part 2 we look at:
🗞️ Relying too heavily on press releases
💦 The impact of watering down content to play it safe
🎧 Changes in how content is consumed
💡 Opportunities to stand out and engage
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Transcript
Engaging the Audience: Presentation Mistakes
00:00:00
Speaker
Are there, I suppose, common mistakes people make with the way they try to put stories and content out? And I suppose, I mean, there's more from the angle, if you'll see a lot of content that gets sent in and you have to decide what you think is going to be of interest to your readers or your audience. Are there common mistakes people make with the way they present information for it to be engaging enough in the first place?
The Origins of Journalistic Content
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:28
Speaker
I suppose just from a journalistic point of view or writing point of view, obviously a lot of the information we get is not in regional stories, it's press releases. That's probably the output from companies who want publicity and that 60% of your stuff comes from that. 20% comes from
00:00:47
Speaker
uh other sources other third-party sources but not companies so maybe other media or a national newspaper's broken story and you've got something you could add to that or you need to report on it because it's relevant to your readership who may not read that newspaper and so on and so forth and then the other 20 percent is sort of is original digging and and that sort of I think most people would admit that's percentages or those are the percentages but and the mistake most most people put
00:01:12
Speaker
take with press releases. Another material that they're given is they tend to take the spin that the person writing the press releases and it's not unusual in some areas of particularly trade media for press releases to be regurgitated verbatim and it's rather depressing actually because the writer involved either is too busy too under resourced or
00:01:39
Speaker
are too bored by their own job to sit down because quite often I always say to our reporters and other people who want to be you know or people who come to me and say they all want to be a journalist is that quite often it's always it's a running joke that quite often they'll put a quote from a chief executive at the end of the press release he will then drop in a bomb at the end of the second paragraph of their quote which is much more interesting than the rather dull stuff they put in they're trying to get out of the top which annoys the
00:02:06
Speaker
PR people intensely, but that's their fault for putting it in the end of the quote.
Evaluating Press Releases: Spin vs. Story
00:02:12
Speaker
So all it is required to do is read the press release properly and go, is their angle actually the most interesting piece of information on this piece of paper or PDF? And is this what we should report? Well, if that was the case, because they just launched a whole new business, that's fine. But it does annoy them when the chief executive says at the end of that,
00:02:33
Speaker
Oh, by the way, our competitors' ones are rubbish. So we thought we'd launch a better one. And then you go, so you therefore have your new headline, which is, you know, chief executive major, major estate agency says competitors are rubbish as he launches new.
00:02:45
Speaker
business. Do you see what I mean? So a common mistake is to not rank the information you're sent, whether it's in a press release or an interview or whatever, and just not always take the line of the people who are feeding that information as being the correct blind to take in the content or the story.
00:03:04
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. So as an editor, there are things that you see in terms of, I don't know, blog posts that get put out by different firms. It's all obviously all trying to generate interest around a topic. Are you finding that it's all often quite samey and hasn't looked at the audience properly in terms of the bit that you mentioned earlier?
00:03:28
Speaker
Or do you see that actually generally people do quite well at trying to tailor the advice? Or does it look like it's just been spat out of an AI? No, that's a very good question.
Challenges in Blogging: AI and Audience Engagement
00:03:38
Speaker
Well, for a period five years ago, which is good fun and stuff, but I probably wouldn't do it as a career. But I worked for a major UK bank as doing content for them via an agency who I was employed by. And the trouble with the said bank, who I won't name,
00:03:57
Speaker
obviously even but you know I just but was that they were incredibly conservative about what they put out they were actually petrified that anything they put out was going to be picked up by the national media and they'd be crushed underfoot you know so so consequently all of their content was interesting and useful but certainly had nothing really that picked up the general readers interesting so they had to spend a lot of money delivering that information via social media paid paid social media and paid
00:04:27
Speaker
paid CRM marketing campaigns, which is true of estate agents as well, you know, to try and get the cut through. The problem is that limited companies and corporations alike are understandably afraid of reputation damage from content that's a bit too fruity. And I get that.
Content Style: Reputation vs. Engagement
00:04:46
Speaker
I've got no good problem with that. It's not a bad thing. It's just a fact of life. And I remember I helped out once with a South London estate agent who wanted some blogs written.
00:04:55
Speaker
And he was a sort of friend of mine, and still is, but he said, can you write some blogs for us and we'll pay you. I went, okay. And I suggested they do, and I did write a piece about how the fact that most of their patch was absolutely teeming with celebrities. And they had sold several properties on behalf of celebrities very successfully, and they were very happy with that. But sometimes they wouldn't do it, because they didn't.
00:05:17
Speaker
Because they're going, oh, no, what happens if all of our celebrity clients take offense to the fact that we're sort of highlighting how we work for them? What would happen? Oh, no, we'll lose them as customers. They might complain. Which is understandable. But that is a difference in content for a commercial company. And content for a commercial journalism output is the two are very adrift when it comes to reputation. Because other than being sued,
00:05:45
Speaker
No newspaper has any reputation to defend really because you're supposed to be a neutral commentator on what's going on in your industry and you're supposed to write stuff when companies are doing bad things.
00:06:06
Speaker
So whereas the estate agent has a different reputation too and a very, you know, their business is their reputation. Yeah. So it's a very two different, two very different things. It's tough.
Reputation Risks: Misattribution and Misconstrued Content
00:06:18
Speaker
I think you're right. Cause you want to put content out there that's interesting, but you do need to be able to showcase a bit of personality with, I think as a company brand, whatever, but it's, there is that.
00:06:30
Speaker
inherent fear of will it get misconstrued taken out of context. I get that because I actually have this with
00:06:38
Speaker
a PR piece we put out years ago as a different company, not as a survey booker. And a lot of the content that was in the post got attributed to me actually as things I'd said. And there was only one single quote I'd made within there. So factually it was completely incorrect and it got torn into different bits and segments that took things out of context. And it was quite damaging actually. And they ended up taking it down.
00:07:04
Speaker
completely because they acknowledged that it was, you know, factually. They've been creative with what was quote and what wasn't quote. Yeah, very, very creative. And so I can see why companies would fear that, but I suppose at the same time, it's an opportunity to stand out and, you know, not everyone's going to be your customer, so that those that then resonate with the type of message and personality you've got are more likely to engage.
Safe Content Creation: Conveyancers vs. Celebrities
00:07:33
Speaker
Well, actually, the liveliest amongst all of this are the conveyancers. And so conveyancers have this reputation for, you know, they are legal professionals, so they're respected.
00:07:46
Speaker
And quite often, you know, there's two things which exercise them. One is government in lack of action in their industry to make it better. And also the other one is that they like to moan about estate agents who make a mess of their, well, they claim, make a mess of their, you know, their sales and stuff. Sorry, their pipeline. And this sort of thing. And during COVID, there's a lot of sort of, you know,
00:08:12
Speaker
Bomb-lobbing over the wall by both sides because they're getting frustrated by the slow pace of sales drinker. But conveyances are quite good at doing that sort of output and that sort of content because A, everyone respects them because they don't have a reputation problem. Also, I suppose the learning would be for anyone who wants to do content is they talk about topics which
00:08:35
Speaker
They feel they would never be criticized for being fruity about you know, so so they might say, you know The housing secretary Michael Gove has done nothing for us the last four years, you know Why you put his finger out and help conveyance help general public by helping conveyances sell homes quicker
00:08:52
Speaker
You know, and they, because Go's not going to see them and everyone's going to applaud them for having a corporate government. You see what I mean? So that you pick your subjects carefully, whereas celebrities are much more dangerous areas because celebrities are incredibly sensitive people about their their own private lives and their own houses and where they live and who lives near them and who sells their homes. So, so, yeah. I completely get that.