Content Marketing Today

Two Essential Elements for a Professional Services Website

A typical professional services website will explain what services the professional provides, offer a brief bio of the principal or principals, provide basic contact information, and perhaps show a list of clients.  That information is necessary but sadly insufficient.

By adding two simple but powerful content marketing elements, any professional can stand out from his or her peers. 

1. Provide a basic primer on the subject area in which the professional is an expert.  For example, an accountant could do basic articles on the importance of cash flow, how to minimize tax exposure, and what to look for in a business loan.
2. Provide regular news about topics that would be important to clients.  For our hypothetical accountant this might be the impact of new tax laws, health insurance changes or new withholding requirements.

Check out a live PR website prototype to see what’s not just possible–but easy

To illustrate what’s not only possible but easy to do, I created a quick prototype website for two friends who run a small, successful public relations firm.  Not surprisingly, I used WordPress to build out the prototype in just a few hours.  Adhering to the principles above, I included not just basic information about their company but:

1. examples of articles they could write to demonstrate their expertise:
   1. how to write a press release
   2. how to deal with the press
   3. basics of social media marketing
2. In the public relations and marketing arena there is plenty of news to report and to digest.  Thus, my PR friends could distill what’s important to their small business clients.  Moreover, because they are a public relations firm, they can even publish news about their clients on their website thus making those press releases available to the world. They become heroes to their clients with almost no extra effort

Why these two content marketing elements are so critical

The majority of professional services organizations have websites today.  The majority of those websites are glorified brochures. 

All of us want to stand out in the minds of our current and future prospects as unparalleled experts in our field.  There is no better way to make this happen than by providing enough extra content to show just how smart and knowledgeable we are.  The proof comes not from bragging, but by providing intrinsically valuable and relevant content that will help our clients while simultaneously proving that we know what we’re talking about.

Does this require extra work and extra thinking?  Yes, indeed.  But will the extra effort pay off?  You bet your boots.  10 times over.

If you’re interested, here is an actual link to the prototype site, Public Relations 2.0.  If you’d like to learn more about how you can do this for yourself, call me: 239-494-8597 or fire off an e-mail: newt@succeedingtoday.com.