You’re tasked with creating content that attracts publicity, links, and social shares. You come up with great ideas for content that you’re confident could accomplish these goals.
Content marketers, does the following scenario sound familiar?
You’re tasked with creating content that attracts publicity, links, and social shares. You come up with great ideas for content that you’re confident could accomplish these goals. However, any ideas that push the envelope or might offend anyone in the slightest get shot down by your boss or client. Even if a provocative idea gets approved, after feedback from higher-ups and several rounds of editing, you end up with a boring, watered-down version of what you originally envisioned.
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Given the above, you're not surprised when you achieve lackluster results. Repeat this cycle enough times, and it may lead to the false assumption that content marketing doesn’t work for the brand.
In this post, I’ll answer two questions:
How can I get my boss or clients to sign off on envelope-pushing content that will attract the attention needed to achieve great results?
How can we minimize the risk of backlash?
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Why controversy is so powerful for content marketing
To get big results, content needs to get people talking. Often times, the best way to do this is by creating an emotional reaction in the audience. Content that deals with a controversial or polarizing topic can be a surefire way to accomplish this.
On the other hand, when you play it too safe with your content, it becomes extremely difficult to ignite the emotional response needed to drive social sharing. Ultimately, you don't attract the attention needed to earn high-quality links.
Below is a peek at the promotions report from a recent controversial campaign that resulted in a lot of high-quality links, among other benefits.
Overcoming a client’s aversion to controversy
We understand and respect a client’s fierce dedication to protecting their brand. The thought of attaching their company to anything controversial can set off worst-case-scenario visions of an angry Internet mob and bad press (which isn’t always a terrible thing).
One such example of balancing a sensitive topic while minimizing the potential risk is a recent campaign we created for apartment listing site Abodo. Our idea was to use Twitter data to pinpoint which states and cities had the highest concentration of prejudiced and tolerant tweets. Bigotry in America is an extremely sensitive topic, yet our client was open to the idea.
Want to get a contentious idea approved by your boss or client? Here’s how we did it.
1. Your idea needs to be relevant to the brand, either directly or tangentially.
Controversy for the sake of controversy is not going to provide value to the brand or the target audience.
I asked Michael Taus, VP of Growth and Business Development at Abodo, why our campaign idea got the green light. He said Abodo’s mission is to help people find a home, not to influence political discourse. But they also believe that when you're moving to a new community, there's more to the decision than what your house or apartment looks like, including understanding the social and cultural tone of the location.
So while the campaign dealt with a hot topic, ultimately this information would be valuable to Abodo’s users.
2. Prove that playing it safe isn’t working.
If your “safe” content is struggling to get attention, make the case for taking a risk. Previous campaign topics for our client had been too conservative. We knew by creating something worth talking about, we’d see greater results.
3. Put safeguards in place for minimizing risk to the brand.
While we couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be a negative response once the campaign launched, we could guarantee that we’d do everything in our power to minimize any potential backlash. We were confident in our ability to protect our client because we’d done it so many times with other campaigns. I’ll walk you through how to do this throughout the rest of the post.
On the client’s end, they can get approval from other internal departments; for example, having the legal and PR teams review and give final approval can help mitigate the uncertainty around running a controversial campaign.
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