No more unique ideas: How to make your content stand out in an exhausted crowd

Back in the days of black and white TV, smile-free photos and computers that weighed more than The Rock, creativity strode down an untrodden path. The early adoption stage of technologies took years, and marketing material featured men in suits and women in aprons. These days, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to have unique brainwaves thanks to every second person posting their every thought on social media and patents being taken out for five-year-olds. The value of originality is slowly turning into a goldmine.

We in the PR world realise this predicament, and whilst it’s our job to come up with creative concepts to get our client’s noticed by their target markets/publics, we also know when it’s time to get back to basics and adopt a different approach. One such method is discovered in the overwhelming question of ‘why?’- Why is this brand or product different? Why would people like it? (Why am I in PR???)

It all comes down to how much you can make people care. Quality content has been recognised as an upcoming trend for communications and marketing in 2015, which we at IOPR fully endorse. It has the power to push past the other messages being put in the spam pile by your consumers and make yours stand out. So, how can you make your content stand out amongst the noise?

1. Understand your brand. How are you going to make people laugh, cry, scream or click on a link if you don’t keep a consistent brand message and really drive home your overall message?
2. Know your consumer. Target the right markets. Find out what your niche likes, what they do for fun, and how they spend their time on the internet.
3. Add relevant value. Inform, entertain, assist, amuse. Don’t just sell.
4. Assume everyone skims. (This blog post is probably too long) and we assume that most of you have skimmed over the wit and focused on the bold font first. Don’t feel bad, everyone does it. Make your important bits stand out.
5. Research and review. Get your facts right. Get your spelling right. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!
6. Visualise everything. Pictures are mandatory, help make your point, and grab your audience’s attention. Just make sure the images relate to your amazing content.
7. Get online, but don’t compromise your content. Social media is taking over the world. That doesn’t mean that your content can slack off just because you’re posting seven times an hour. When it comes to social media follow the golden rule of “quality over quantity”.