New Year, New Beginnings!
A Happy New Year! May 2022 be productive, happy and healthy.
Content creation has shifted over the past 18 months. When I set-up back in early 2017, most work was written, and for internal use mainly. Now, it's a range of content, with reach and engagement being important goals. Here are the three key trends we've noticed within our workload.
1. Support around reputation branding, creating content to show an inclusive, diverse culture, especially with remote job recruitment.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we started working in ways that were completely new to most of us – but now, we’re seasoned pros at virtual and hybrid working.
Several clients new to remote interviewing have requested digital information downloads to be put together. These, they'll share with potential employees they’ll never actually meet in person, apart from in Zoom calls, or at annual get-togethers, when that becomes possible.
These include: putting together audio snippets of teams talking about the culture and what it’s actually like to work there and videos from leadership team members talking about future plans and benefits. We create the virtual interview scripts and online simulations and handle the processing and analysis.
Online tools support engagement, onboarding, and the building of an online culture. They can streamline outdated processes too. It makes sense to consider where you can create efficiencies and build better communication opportunities.
With remote job numbers on the increase, we're dealing with a global talent pool, so it may be a mindset shift to consider where and how you can access this new source of talent.
2. The number of requests for audio versions of longer-form content increased by 600%. Typically content from 5 to 20 minutes in audio length, equivalent to around 700- 2500 words.
Listening to content, rather than reading, has grown in popularity, and the audiobook market has imploded as a result. Interestingly, it was Thomas Edison who created the first spoken word phonograph record in 1877, and he predicted technology might one day allow books to be listened to “with great profit and amusement by the lady or gentleman whose eyes and hands may be otherwise employed.” Edison could never have predicted how popular the medium would become.
University of Virginia psychologist, Daniel Willingham, argued that when it comes to your brain, there is no real difference between listening to written content and reading it. Listeners may get to skip the decoding process (referring to how the brain figures out words from print), seemingly doing less “work” than visual readers. This can help those who struggle to read letters, and create greater accessibility to your content. It's not just a case of one or the other either. If you write an ebook, you can place it on Kindle for free or as a paid book, and you can also offer an audio version too, via Audible, or through your own website.
For clients who prefer to listen during their daily commute, podcasts have become more widespread. However, we’ve discovered that clients want white paper content, business information, and longer-form articles provided in audio versions too. Neural voiceovers are pretty good nowadays, with pauses and natural inflections, and we offer these as low-cost options, with manual checks for quality. However, nothing beats a natural-sounding human tone. It’s easy to embed audio on your site as long as you can host it and there’s lots of options for hosting too.
3. Copy and content for online membership content, intended to build communities, provide support and access to wellbeing tools.
The idea of community-building isn’t new by any means, but with virtual and solo working, it’s easy to feel more isolated. While it's difficult to ask for help virtually, providing helpful resources has supported employees to access tips and worksheets, be engaged in online team-building sessions, and to feel part of a team through fun activities.
With no-code membership sites helping those who aren't tech savvy, freelancers and SME’s have built with peer-to-peer portals, accountability partnership meetings, and coaching sessions too. We’ve developed video and written content on a range of subjects, with wellbeing, mental-health and self-coaching tips, and guidance for managers, being at the top of the list.
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