Content That Sets a Standard

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Absolute perfection!  (That was my first thought upon reading this Patek Phillippe ad in a special issue of Forbes:

 At Patek Phillipe, when we make a watch, however hard we work, we can only go at one  speed. One that ensures we adhere to the high standards for which we are respected. 

We understand that some people express frustration at this. They want to us to go  faster. But at our family-owned watch company, fast is the enemy.  Because to accelerate the time it takes to make a watch, we would have had to cut corners  and lower our quality.

 And then the watch might be a very good timepiece.  But it would not be a Patek Phillipe and would not merit the Patek Phillipe seal.

Thierry Stern, President

Notice how the president of Patek Phillipe never puts down competitors, in fact never even mentions other watchmakers. For that reason, he comes across as a leader, not a follower.

In content marketing, we teach, negatives against competitors are a basic no-no. Sure, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition.  But, to get the point across that readers should want to choose your business or practice, or your products and services over those offered by the competition, it’s best to emphasize the positive.

An alternate approach to mentioning the competition in content marketing includes acknowledges that there may be alternative approaches to reader’s problem or need, then offering evidence backing up your own viewpoint.

A point I often stress in corporate blogging training sessions is that you’ve got to have an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up for readers. In other words, content, to be effective, can’t be just compilations of other people’s stuff, making that be your entire blog presence. Yes, aggregation may make your site the “go-to” destination for information on  your subject. The bottom line, though, is that Thierry Stern understands the power of thought leadership, of staying true to the care values on which your business or practice was founded.

Sure, your competitors’ products and services may be very good products and services, but they wouldn’t be uniquely yours, and your content wouldn’t set a standard.

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Infuse Your Content Marketing with Freudenfruede

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“Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune is what social scientists call freudenfreude,” Juli Fraga writes in Reader’s Digest, “describing the bliss we feel when someone else succeeds even if it doesn’t directly involve us. Freudenfreude can “foster resistance, improve life satisfaction, and help people cooperate during a conflict”.

When it comes to content marketing, it might appear that praising or even recognizing the accomplishments of a competitor is the last thing any business owner or professional practitioner would want to do in their blog content.  Yet, competitor-focused content can be some of the most profitable you’ll ever publish, Ramona Aukhraj of IMPACT writes, because prospective buyers need to know you’re aware they have other options, and that you can be trusted to  have their best interests in mind. (A side benefit, IMPACT adds, might be that, in writing content about competitors, you’re using keywords that might drive traffic to competitors’ sites!)

Alexander Chua of Kalungi.com agrees that, specifically with B2B blogging, there are good reasons to mention competitors, including showcasing your own confidence, controlling the conversation, and possibly generating mentions of you by those competitors.: Most important, Chua says, is that you’re providing value to your readers.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking, while all these posts mentioned valid and very practical reasons for referring to competitors, none suggested anything approaching the possibility of achieving pleasure at learning about or recognizing competitors’ achievements. The high road is the one to take in blog marketing strategy and tactics development,  we try to always remember at Say It For You. As Bing Crosby used to croon, “Accentuate the positive…latch on to the affirmative.”

Where content writers might find – and share with readers, that feeling of “freudenfeude”, I believe, is in celebrating the combined success in an industry or professional field. Your blog becomes a way to educate leads on industry trends and developments, informing readers about “what’s-going-on-and-how-do-we-fit-in”, celebrating how far we (as an industry or profession) have come in terms of both technology and human understanding.

Freudenfreude – it’s all about the “We”.

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