Trust us
People make posts
What sources of information do your target audience trust? Chances are they will say: friends, family and journalists.
They probably won’t say: TV ads, generic social media posts or robots. This is especially true in financial services.
All these trusted sources have one thing in common. They are all warm and human. The less-trusted aren’t ‒ even if they offer more knowledge. It isn’t entirely logical, of course, but we are people. No face, no connection.
All this is important when it comes to devising and creating content* for your site. First, because it shows that content – voiced or written by the right people – reaches places traditional advertising can’t. Second, it is superior to anonymous sponsored posts on social media, the solemn pronouncements of robots or your new invisible friend Alexa.
In a way, good content from the right people is a bit like a farmers’ market. We know the provenance of the fare, because we can see the fine, upstanding human beings involved.
We know it’s good quality, so we’re happy to pay a little more for those venison and apple sausages. So the lessons are clear. Pick writers who have a presence, authority, expertise and humanity.
(It goes without saying that Highbrook offers just such writers. Sorry.)
Enjoy the grain, pace and flavour of good writing. Encourage journalism and film-making which has heart, head and soul. Don’t edit the character out.
Yes, yes, but why is this so?
The celebrated psychologist Daniel Kahneman says human decision-making is based on two processes. One that is intuition-based: fast, associative and metaphorical; the other which is rigorous, slow, effortful and deliberate.
Picking writers who have trust, expertise and humanity hits both brains. The same applies whether you’re bringing in good journalists, hiring a high-profile blogger or having your internal experts ghosted.
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We are simple creatures guided by simple emotions. We react to a face more than any other image. So ensure your writers’ names and photos are prominent in your articles. Have a contributor page so readers can learn more about them. Of course, getting the right journalists is only the start. Exactly what they write is quite another adventure. We can talk about that, so do give us a call.
* Actually, we don’t much like the word “content” but that’s the shorthand so we’re stuck with it. Journalism and filmmaking are so much better descriptions
