Quotable quote:
“Don’t you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There’s one marked brightness but it doesn’t seem to work.” Eugene Gallagher
The Demise of Television…
Recently I was working on a project and decided to have some lunch in front of the news for a break. As I flicked between the channels I was appalled to discover that the only Australian content was parliamentary question time. Even the commercials were largely overseas-based with Australian voice-overs. It reinforced for me how fast traditional media was declining, and how dramatically we can expect now central entertainment areas to be vastly different once internet-connected television is mainstream.
…means you must build an engaged audience
The Resources Roadhouse is a website dedicated to emerging and established companies in the growing Australian resources sector. It is the brainchild of the experienced mining journalist Wally Graham backed up a team of great writers. Emergination has helped with digital strategy, design and site build.
Wally has experienced consistent and substantial growth in readership since the site was created in April this year. Growth in readership has been from 360 visits and 2585 page views in April (a great result for any new website) to 5785 visitors and over 12486 page views in August. Readership is now in 60 countries, with the largest audiences in Australia, Japan and the US.
How has he done this?
This has all been around creating and disseminating quality and very current content that gets behind the facade. Great content leads to growing readership and a high pass on readership factor.
An important factor is the tone of voice used. There is plenty of good humour and useful insight which is a mile away from carefully polished corporate profile pieces.
Wally says, “starting off as a total website luddite, I’ve now been able to generate a huge volume of traffic to my site that has exceeded my expectations for such a small time. I’ve also got a clear idea of the path to keep people beating a path to The Roadhouse each week…”
Readers want a pragmatic insight into what these emerging businesses are really up to – and Wally provides that in spades. If you want to see an example of how to do it well (and also get some great insight into the innovation in Australia’s resources sector) I recommend that you sign up for his free weekly email at resourcesroadhouse.com.au
The Takeaways for You
Many businesses are now looking to e-mail newsletters as a means of keeping in touch with their busy clients (and we are no exception). In addition, some are putting solid effort into creating great content for their company or personal blog.
Whilst the Resources Roadhouse writing style may not be exactly appropriate to your business, the principles of writing engaging and interesting content certainly is.
