Publishing information that’s not been written about elsewhere is probably the surest method of promoting your brand in the era of AI overviews. Here’s the why and the how.
In the last few years, organic traffic to most marketing blogs has collapsed.
For example, analysis of 100 websites by Daniel Stanica, an SEO specialist, found that the median blog had lost 85% of its traffic between 2022 and 2026.
The culprit is, of course, zero click search. In the past, companies could publish helpful content, optimise it for search, and people would visit their websites to get an answer to their queries.
No longer. For better or worse, AI overviews (AIO) now answer the vast majority of those questions.
Does this mean you should pack the blog in? Not necessarily. A blog is still essential for telling the world about your company. And without one, you have even less chance of being cited.
But you do need to take a different approach to producing content. And that involves saying something new.
Newness is your content’s biggest differentiator
This is a bit of a simplification, but AI overviews can only really generate answers about things that have already been written about.
If you cover topics that have been written about extensively elsewhere, you aren’t adding anything new. There is little reason for an AIO to cite you.
Content marketers have found a couple of methods for winning clicks in this new era. But the approach I think is best, most interesting and most valuable is to simply include new information that’s not already out there.
Ideas for new information to add to your blogs
You don’t need to radically transform your blog strategy. You should still aim to answer common queries and provide useful tips. But for every blog you publish, you want to be adding something new that isn’t already well-known.
Here are some suggestions for doing that.
1. Use your customer stories
Include real customer case studies and projects in blogs wherever possible. This helps both readers and bots to better understand how your company does things, how you actually help people, what impact you have. This kind of content is interesting to readers. But it also adds fresh information to the general sum of knowledge online.
2. Interview your experts
Your employees are ‘at the coal face’ in their industry. They have war stories, insights, ideas, analogies and suggestions that are unique and invaluable. Interview these people.
Again, their ideas and opinions make your content much more interesting to read. But they also add information that isn’t yet out there.
3. Publish proprietary data
Many organisations gather large amounts of data about their customers, their industry or from fieldwork. Much of this data is not suitable for publishing. But some is.
- Could anonymised customer data help tell a story about consumer trends?
- Can you publish figures on the number of support tickets you resolve in a given timeframe?
- Are there other KPIs that you could shout about?
4. Get geeky with product or service information
If you have a fairly unique product or service, you may be able to turn this into niche content that some readers will love. For example:
- Could you share information about the unique fibre structure in your exercise leggings?
- How did you design your software so it’s that much easier for people to use?
- Could you produce articles about your employees’ specific approach to customer care? Is there a method you use that’s unusual?
5. Generate new data with surveys or snap polls
This requires more time and effort, but if you can produce new data by conducting snap polls or surveys, this is invaluable. AIO’s often cite published research, and so you’re more likely to have your content and insights appear. Also, surveys are a great PR tool.
Tell them something they don’t already know!
Publishing content that contains new information has always been important. But in a world where general knowledge has been commoditised, you really need to be saying something new to stand out.
Want help turning your unique insights and information into blogs, case studies or social media posts? Contact me today.