Create something of value that your competitors can't replicate

Barry says: "It's hard to stand out nowadays in a very crowded internet, where everybody is doing the exact same thing over and over. It is about finding something that sets you apart from your competitors, makes you different, and attaches people to your brand. For example, I work with a lot of news publishers, and news is a bit of a commodity nowadays - you can read it everywhere. My UK clients ask me how they can compete with the BBC, because they are everywhere. My answer is: don't compete with the BBC.

The BBC does what they do extremely well. They produce neutral tone news at a huge scale, which you can't replicate. You have to find a different angle, and present your content in a way, that differentiates you from the BBC. Maybe it's a certain tone of voice. Maybe it's a slightly different perspective on current affairs. Perhaps it's covering things that the BBC doesn't necessarily cover. I think you can extrapolate this example to pretty much any industry out there. It's about creating something that your competitors can't replicate, that is unique to your business, and your corporate personality. This gives you something that sets you apart."

How do you determine what that difference should be? Do you create content for purpose-built personas, undertake some customer research, look at the SERP or just decide internally?

"This can be fairly hard to define. Some companies find it very easy because they have an internal persona, and a personality as a business. It's about translating that personality into content on a website and social media channels that engage with the audience. You don't want to necessarily force this too much. If a company like Vodafone is suddenly starting to go 'cool and hip' - that won't jibe.

It has to be authentic, or appear to be authentic, to what you do as a business. I have seen companies specifically create sub-brands for that purpose, and you'd be surprised to know who actually owns some of the brands you think are really cool. They're often spinoff brands from big established companies so they can adopt a specific persona.

I think it's very easy to get lost in building personas and doing market research. The problem is that you end up with recommendations based on stereotypes, which don't accurately reflect the people in your actual market, or you end up with an artificial personality. You have to be wary about this. It's better to see what you are like as a company, rather than trying to fit what your market is trying to do.

Look at your own organisation and try to determine what you want to achieve as a business. Nowadays, corporations are expected to be more than just personality vacuums - and pure capitalist enterprises. They should have a social and fundamental purpose. It's about trying to be confident enough as a business to adopt that purpose and use it as your external personality in everything you do. SEO and content are just one facet of this."

How do you encourage more people within the organisation to be better promoters of your brand?

"I don't think we should be obliged to do this, and a lot of employees just want to do their work and go home - which is fine. Companies shouldn't always try to encourage employees to be more than employees. However, every organisation has leaders, and they don't have to be senior managers. Leaders are people who take ownership of specific things and carry a certain message. It's important the business listens to these leaders at all levels of the organisation, because they set the corporate personality and the corporate culture.

Sometimes you find these leaders may not be the right fit for your company, in which case you have a different problem to solve. You don't want to let people carry on unchecked. On the other hand, you will have people who represent you on social media who have a very strong voice. This voice can be a benefit to your business because it aligns with what you as a company. However, they can also do something you don't want them to do."

Do politics and SEO mix?

"Politics is very polarising nowadays. I have a nuanced perspective on this because I don't think that companies should always be activist organisations. It's okay for a company to not be political. You can have a corporate personality without having a political stance on current social issues. It's okay for you to draw boundaries. As a business, you can have a certain personality and culture you want to promote - that makes you unique from other companies doing the same thing - but stay within your boundaries.

Basecamp is a good example here. They've made a very strong position and said, 'We're not going to talk politics and only talk about issues that affect us directly. We'll talk about IT and internet regulation, but we're not going to be internally talking about politics.' At the time, there was a big backlash, but it was fairly brave and probably the right thing to do. They knew exactly what their position and personality was, and they knew what they didn't want it to become. They drew a line in the sand and made it very clear to their employees where that line was. Some of them disagreed and left the company, but others felt relieved as they knew what they can do and what they can't do.

It's probably an exercise that a lot of companies should be doing, so that they don't run into that problem later down the line. You don't want to suddenly discover your company has morphed into something the employees don't recognise anymore. You don't want to end up like Enron, where fraud and deceit were part and parcel of the company culture because that's what they've been doing for decades. They never took that step to look at themselves and ask, 'What do we want to become?' This is because nobody was monitoring what was happening with the business."

Brand value is extremely important, but how do you select content that's likely to resonate with your target market? Should it be long-form, video-based, or something else? How should you launch your piece of content?

"A lot of this is trial and error. You'd be surprised sometimes about what works and what doesn't. As an example, I work with news publishers, and I have strong opinions on news and publishing, and how Google works in the news ecosystem. A couple of years ago, Donald Trump was tweeting about how Google News was biased against him, and I thought that was nuts. I wrote a detailed 2,500-word post about potential bias in Google's news algorithms and how it might impact what they say, and what they don't show me.

I was really proud of that piece of work. I published it literally within a day of Donald Trump's accusations, but it didn't really get any traction. This surprised me because I thought that it tapped into my target market. It was what people wanted to read, and what I do as a consultant. That was lesson one. Google ranked my Google rant

A couple of weeks later, I got triggered again. This time, by Google sending out announcements about Accelerated Mobile Pages via Search Console: Google thought the AMP version of an article didn't match up to the real version of an article. I wrote a very angry blog about Google AMP - it was really just for therapy, getting something out of my system that made me angry. I had no real expectations for the blog.

Unexpectedly, this post went mental. It got posted on Hacker News, it went viral on Reddit - it crashed my hosting for a short period of time and I had to upgrade to a better hosting package. It even ranked first for 'what is Google AMP'! I was totally surprised, and it was a lesson learned as well. It told me that people expect that contrarianism from me - which I've always done. That's why I named my business 'Polemic Digital'.

Both examples were an educational experience, both for myself as a business and for how I advise my clients. Just try stuff out, see what does and doesn't resonate. Sometimes you'd be surprised, maybe it's video content or long-form content. Maybe the type of content will surprise you - whether it's educational, inspirational, or argumentative. You can never be sure what will gain traction in your target market and what makes people resonate with your business."

Can you formalise this trying-out process?

"Probably not, because it will become artificial. You can have a content calendar, of course, and have a structure to how you produce content, but there needs to be flexibility built into it so you can react to stuff that happens. Ultimately, your content needs to come from the heart. This is why you need a corporate personality. It has to mean something to the content creators, or it's not going to have the same impact, and could feel like a PR stunt.

You have to be open to taking a risk as a business and sometimes putting the wrong message out, as long as you say it from the heart and with emotion. Too many companies are too focused on avoiding potential Twitter storms, and they become very insulated and bland. There are so many bland companies that, by taking that risk, you will automatically stand out from your competitors. It's okay to court a little bit of controversy. Have the confidence to step outside of your comfort zone as a company, take those risks, learn from your mistakes. Be more open and honest about what you are, and what you're not, as a company."

What's then one thing an SEO can stop doing to spend more time taking risks and creating content your competitors can't replicate?

"A lot of the standard tasks are just treading water, or even a total waste of effort and resources that has no meaningful impact on the website's performance in search. I'm talking about everything on the monthly checklist: writing one blog post a week, fixing the internal redirects, and making sure every page has a proper title tag.

The big impact stuff is the difficult stuff. That's what you should spend your effort and your resources on. All the smaller, standard stuff doesn't really do anything. It doesn't actually improve the website or traffic. You need to put those things in context. Yes, you need to write content, but make sure it's great content that's actually worth reading. Yes, your website needs to be technically sound, but nobody cares about those last two dozen internal redirects. Google doesn't care about them either. Focus on the stuff that has an impact and actually moves the needle."

You can find Barry Adams over at PolemicDigital.com.