Posted on March 5, 2013 by Webfor By Sara Thompson Do you represent clients in niche industries that are niche for a reason? These companies provide technical products and complicated services that the majority of us wouldn’t understand. But, they need our help to create useful content just as much as the next guy. So, what is a copywriter to do when faced with creating informative, user-driven content on a subject like volumetric flow meters or electronic medical records? Research, research, research! The trick here is to do it in a reasonable amount of time. Let’s go over some tactics and tools you can use to drop some knowledge on a subject of which you have little-to-no knowledge to start with. Keep client communication like 7-11 Without a little (or a lot) of help from our more complicated clients, creating content that they would approve for their own website would be like actually trying to do their job? with the opposite skill set. Imagine getting hired to do medical billing when you don’t know the first thing about codes or insurance. The last thing you want to do is misrepresent your clients by marketing content that is uninformed and full of technical errors. Keeping the lines of communication open is crucial. Our clients often have many years, if not decades of experience in their fields and have gained loads of knowledge on numerous related topics. If you’ve got a topic to cover, they should definitely have the ability to shed some light on it for you. They can give you a great head start on your content and point you in the right direction for further research. When you’re in a fog, read a blog Industry blogs are a goldmine when you’re not exactly an expert on what you’re writing about. They can give you ideas for topics to cover and help you learn niche-specific jargon that will make you seem like you really know your stuff. For example, Law.com has a whole network of websites and blogs that would be a great resource to dive into before creating content for a lawyer. They even have a legal dictionary, lists, surveys and rankings you can use to fine tune and supplement your content. Keywords are key. Word. Its impossible to know what is going to be useful by web-surfers’ standards unless you are familiar with the keywords related to your client’s industry. Find out what words people are using in a search engine to find the information they want. Using the Google Search suggestion prompt is a great place to start. Enter a word or phrase and it will give you a list of keyword phrases that people have used in searches, both locally and worldwide, and give you an idea of how stiff the competition is to reach the people using those keywords. Not only will discovering relative keywords help you form ideas for share-worthy content, but it will also help you better understand your client’s business and its customers – which is goal numero uno. Once you’ve discovered your client’s most valuable keywords, discussed a topic with them and read a few industry blog posts, you should be well on your way to creating an article of your own that is informative, trustworthy and valuable to those who read it – not matter what complicated topic it covers. PRO TIP: To stay up to date on what’s happening in any industry, it’s a great idea to use a tool that will bring all of the blogs and articles to you. We suggest setting up Google Alerts, or Bloglines so you’ll always know what’s new and keep your ideas fresh. Do you have a tip or tool to add? Put them in the comments below.