Why Proprietary Content Is the Future
Stand out in a sea of online writing.
You can’t go anywhere on The Internet without reading about AI content these days. And while many tools promise to “generate content faster” savvy writers know that quality content will ultimately win the attention war.
But what does “quality content” mean anyway? Great writing, sure — content that contains nuance and depth that AI writing lacks. But many AI writing tools are still in their infancy and will probably improve over time.
The future of content is proprietary: knowledge, data, and ideas that are unique to you. It can’t be replicated by AI and will become the content differentiator.
Whether you’re writing for yourself (like a newsletter or blog), writing for an employer, or writing for clients, proprietary content is the future. And you can’t rely solely on yourself as a writer: you’ll need some outside resources to help.
Surveys or research reports
Writers are often instructed to “include a stat” in blog posts or other content. It adds credibility and bolsters the argument.
What if your content is the source of the data that other people use for their content?
The value of surveys and research reports lies in their exclusivity and potential to be referenced by others in the industry. As the original creator, you’ll position yourself or your company as a voice of authority. And as more people cite the findings, the reach and impact will grow.
If you have a large audience on your own, you can send out a survey. I worked on a project about data maturity within organizations of different sizes. My client surveyed their clients and then the results were compiled into an eBook. Or you can work with a research company to survey people.
As you prepare to publish to survey or report, you can send the findings to other industry experts and ask for their feedback. Include the quotes in your final content or ask the experts to comment publicly or share the content when it is published. You’ll benefit from the experts’ network and increased visibility.
Marketers are forever debating the question “gated or ungated?” when it comes to longer content. Surveys and research reports have good arguments for both options.
Readers will often grumble when they have to provide an email address and then an eBook isn’t valuable, but you’re offering some exclusive insights in this report — which might make gating it worthwhile to generate leads and build your email list. But you’ll also have a larger reach with ungated content.
A third option is to partially gate the content. Offer the first section of the report as ungated content and then put the rest behind the gate. Your audience gets to decide if the content is worth providing an email address. But either way, you’ve benefitted from the interactions with the report.
Insights from internal data
While you own the results from a survey or research report, competitors can do the same. A different twist is relying on proprietary data from your company or product that only you can access.
Whether you have a software product with data points or sell an e-commerce product, you have unique insights about your customers and the industry. All you need to do is mine the data to generate some meaningful insights.
Think about the data you have that might be meaningful for potential customers or the industry as a whole:
- Seasonal fluctuations in business (for e-commerce)
- Changes in won deals (for sales)
- Number of tasks completed per user (for productivity tools)
- Average email open rate (for marketing platforms)
- Newsletter, client, or publication stats (for solo or freelance writers)
After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, I saw the CEO of a fintech write about a spike in online account opening that his company saw. He wasted no time in finding relevant industry data, and it sparked interest in his company.
And unlike surveys and research reports, you’re relying on data that isn’t self-reported. People may say one thing, but do something else. The data might tell a different story.
In addition to sharing your data in your blog posts or eBooks, you can turn the data into easy-to-consume infographics for social media or presentations.
Interviews with subject-matter experts
While data can boost your authority, it shouldn’t be the sole focus of your content strategy. Like any type of writing, each reader has unique preferences. Some will like data; others will prefer more narrative-driven. Or a combination of the two.
Interviews with experts can offer new insights and perspectives. Quoting an interview conducted by another company doesn’t make the content “yours” — you’ll want to conduct your own interviews with subject-matter experts. Their input can be invaluable for shedding light on complex topics or emerging trends.
Subject-matter experts don’t have to be external. You may have internal experts that can speak to customer service, products, or the industry. Interviews can capture their knowledge. Just don’t present it in a way that comes across as overly self-promotional. You’re relying on their expertise in the field; not as an ambassador for the company.
For the same reasons, I also rely on interviews for my newsletter (about the future of work). Rather than making the publication only about me, I’m drawing in experiences from other people.
Interviews also give you a wide array of content options. In addition to using quotes in a written article, you can repurpose clips as a social post or publish the entire interview with a transcript. I started collecting interviews a few months ago so that I can create a series to run later this year.
Whether your interview source is internal or external, it’s another opportunity to leverage the network of that person. Expand your reach by tagging the people in social posts when your content is published or asking them to share. Distribution is everything in getting content into the world.
Anna Burgess Yang
Thought leadership
Lots of brands lean hard into thought leadership content. But do all marketers have a clear idea of what thought leadership means?
Thought leadership content expresses the expertise of a person (the thought leader) but goes beyond simply sharing knowledge and experience. A thought leader offers something new — something that other experts in the field don’t have or aren’t saying.
As Diego Pineda, author of The Solo Thought Leader, writes:
Writing like a thought leader requires you to actually have strong opinions and take a stand.
If you’re writing for a company or client, a thought leadership strategy can be tricky because you need 1) people in your organization that actually have original, opinionated thoughts and then 2) a way to get those thoughts into the world. And not all thought leaders are writers (or have time to write).
Fortunately, you can get a thought leader’s ideas into the world through ghostwriting. Conduct a series of interviews with the thought leader and then turn those ideas into content: blog articles, LinkedIn posts, or submissions to industry publications.
If the thought leader is a good speaker, you can arrange for podcast appearances and panels. Then repurpose the heck out of that appearance by sprinkling the ideas shared into your own content.
If you are writing with yourself as a thought leader, keep Pineda’s advice in mind: you must have an opinion. Your content still needs to be unique to stand out from other Voices on the Internet.
Thought leadership should never be self-promotional. It’s rooted in a desire to educate and inspire. The audience will draw their own conclusions based on your thought leadership content.
Strategically manage your proprietary content
Like any content, you need to bake proprietary content into your content strategy.
That might mean planning for a quarterly theme or topic (like my upcoming newsletter interview series). You might create a pillar piece of content, such as an eBook based on a survey or research. Then you plan around that content, including interviews and thought leadership.
You can also combine your proprietary content with unique art (yes, here AI can help) to make it stand out more.
Because proprietary content is more involved than the typical “research and publish a blog post on this topic” content, make sure you have a systematic approach for planning, creation, promotion, and measuring results. Don’t let an ounce of your effort be wasted.
Check out my free eBook — a guide for creators looking to better manage their time and content across multiple platforms.