Be like a snail to be found online
I’ve only lived in two places where slugs and snails outnumbered humans. One was the Staffordshire Moorlands, where rain meant paths and roads you walked and drove along quickly became the equivalent of pebble dash or snail shell dash.
The second is home now – Bradwell in Great Yarmouth – with a climate and soil very different to the wet clay of Staffordshire.
Now why draw an analogy with content marketing and snail trails?
Simple, really, well it is in my head.
When you’re weaving content for online readers, you don’t have to produce text that runs in straight lines. Think how slugs and snails leave silver lines, on damp paths, and emulate them. I’m not arguing that your content needs to be worthless like a slug trail or unattractive or pointless but the nature of your website should be meandering and head off on tangents.
Too often, companies ask for linear blog posts, that provide information in straight lines with little veering from keywords. I prefer snail trails or rabbit holes on this website and, judging by 3000 visitors on average each month, many others would seem to like this style too.
I could write a blog every single week about freelance web design and watch a steady climb up Google for that three word phrase. I do think though that, although traffic may improve, given there are 1700 searches a month for that term, bounce rate would increase too, as no one, I repeat, no one wants to read robotic copy designed for search terms and search terms alone.
Snail trails do better than A to Z lines.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I do occasionally mix in instructional articles with slug ones. I do talk about email copywriting, website speed, the importance of a company email address and have routinely ticked off search terms with decent search volumes. But to do that every week would bore me as a writer and you as a reader.
There’s another aspect of snails and writing too that relates to marketing.
Many companies only produce content and create ads when sales are low. It’s the wrong way round, in my opinion. When your sales and leads are healthy, you must continue to promote your services.
Example, my next web project is scheduled to start in February 2022.
November, December and January are looking full but instead of pulling out a laurel bush and reclining on it, I continue to promote my service offerings through blogging and paid adverts on Meta (how up to date am I?)
I could easily don slippers and pipe and take it easy but because I love what I do, I don’t put up the guesthouse NO VACANCIES sign. I have become better at spotting time-wasters and mood hoovers and am pretty adept, now, at rejecting advances from messers and micro-managers, though it’s not always foolproof. I do get clients who I think are sound, turning into irritants, but I’ve learned, at last, to prioritise those who pay on time and leave me to do my own thing.
So the next time you’re wondering what content to write, how to phrase it, what ideas to generate, don’t sit there wasting your time.
Outsource it to a skilled writer and web designer like me.
I won’t write by numbers, I won’t rigidly follow briefs, as I do think snail trails work best.
If you disagree, pack in with me after a month and scrape me off the bottom of your shoes. I’ll only be annoyed for a week and then I’ll find another path to navigate.
