The Client And I

Posted by Tom
Screen Shot from film - The King and I

Every website has one thing in common, they all need content. Content comes in all different sizes, shapes and types, whether it’s a simple piece of written work, an infograph or even a cartoon. Companies across the web are in a constant battle to have better content shared across the web than their competitors as it is an important aspect of SEO and claiming that coveted number one spot on the Google search results.

At ThoughtShift, we love writing content. We have a dedicated team of writers that spend their days researching and writing (as well as nibbling an extraordinary amount of biscuits and slurping an unhealthy amount of tea and coffee). There’s nothing more exciting than getting to grips with a great client who has a fantastic company and want to share it across the web.

But what happens when you’ve run out of options, or when you have a great client who doesn’t really lend themselves to web based content or isn’t exactly share friendly. They might be a great client with big plans to get online and just want to give the whole internet a big hug and a kiss. But when you actually come down to writing the content for a blog or offsite content hub you end up sitting at your laptop asking yourself how you’re going to get people to actually interact with a piece of content about custard suppliers, or a company that provides the packaging machines that puts cat litter into bags.

You could spend the next week producing what is now commonly known in the industry as crap. Uncreative, uninspiring bog standard pieces of content that serve no other purpose than to sit on an offsite content hub linking back to your client’s website. You’ve done all the research you can and you’ve produced what a DJ would call a mash up, all the best pieces of other peoples work, spun in your own way, shoved and shuffled into a word doc and then posted online.

This isn’t good, but what else can you do? You’ve looked at all the platforms and the types of content you can produce for them and find yourself at a loss. The answer to this problem has been staring you right in the face the whole time.

Remember the happy go lucky custard manufacturer, or the bubbly cat-litter-bag-putter-inner-man? Well they love what they do! They’ve spend their lives dedicated to doing what they do, and I bet you they’ve got some pretty interesting tales to tell. What’s better is that they’re just on the end of the phone, or on the other side of a quick email. They are a gigantic untapped source of brand new fresh data, anecdotes, facts, figures and records unblemished by the world of SEO and content creation.

With their help you could produce all kinds of quality content on a number of different platforms that is sharable, interesting and most important of all, original. We love our clients at ThoughtShift, there’s nothing we like more than inviting them round to help us demolish a pack of custard creams and have a good old chin wag about their business, where they want to go and how we can help them get there. It’s all part of the make up at ThoughtShift Towers.

Image from: http://photopin.com/