Is It Better to Play It Safe with Your Content, or Stand Out?

Should You Rethink Your Content Strategy in the Digital Echo Chamber?

Open a new tab and search for any type of business – electricians, movers, HVAC companies, financial planners, it doesn’t matter. As you scroll through the search results and click on a few sites, you’ll start to notice something: everyone is saying the same thing. Almost verbatim, they describe themselves the same way. The service pages list the same features. The blog posts all have the same five generic tips.

It’s a digital echo chamber. It stems from the fact that so many businesses, especially small ones, are afraid of coloring outside the lines. It makes sense on the surface – it’s working for them, so it should work for me, too. But in an era when SEO is more competitive than ever, and customers can get generic answers to questions in seconds from AI, this strategy is beginning to crumble.

Getting your business seen isn’t enough anymore – you have to get noticed and remembered. 

Why Businesses Play It Safe with Content

Many business owners who want to play it safe with content strategy have a few things in common:

They misunderstand how modern SEO works

Have you ever been taught the “Keywords x Links x Content = Rank” model of how SEO works? Where, as long as your page is well-written and optimized for the keywords you want, you could expect to be crawled and searched?

This is an outdated model. In addition to having those basic SEO optimizations, engagement is crucially important to search rankings. When your site engages users, search engines can see that and they start to trust your site more, which leads them to recommend it more. 

If, for example, Google serves your page to a user and they click back in seconds because they recognize the same generic content they’ve seen everywhere else, it sends a powerful negative signal.

The fear of a unique voice that connects with customers

It’s human nature. When you get noticed, you get judged, positively or negatively. If you use a distinctive brand voice, it might not land with everyone. The fear of alienating a potential customer is so powerful that most businesses would rather be ignored than disliked. 

Crafting a unique brand strategy isn’t for everyone, but for many businesses, a distinct voice that reflects who you are, telling personal stories, taking a strong stance, or using humor, can be exactly the shot of energy your marketing needs.

They are focusing solely on high-intent consumers 

Attracting customers ready to pull out their credit cards needs to be a crucially important part of your marketing strategy, but it should not be the only part. You also need higher-funnel content to build trust.

When you create high-funnel content aimed at a specific audience, it’s your opportunity to showcase the usefulness of your site. It builds trust with potential customers who might come back to you later and call you, and once more, as users engage with it, search engines recognize that positive engagement, and they’re more likely to recommend your site more often in the future.

The 3 Biggest Risks of Safe Content

It’s never been easier to create safe website content. You can just copy what the most successful websites in your industry are doing. Or better yet, you can copy it into ChatGPT, get it to tweak some details based on your business, and voila.

Therein lies the problem. It’s easier than ever, so there’s more of it, which means it’s inherently less valuable than ever. And it will only continue being less and less effective as a strategy for three main reasons:

1. Algorithmic invisibility: Search algorithms can tell with mathematical certainty when a webpage is rehashing the same content that’s covered on a much more popular and trusted page. New pages that don’t have anything to offer typically remain buried in rankings.
2. User blindness: Put yourself in the shoes of the person doing the searching. When you’re staring at your search results and a dozen or more pages have the same titles and meta descriptions, you tune out. Something that breaks the pattern is like a beacon in the fog.
3. The continued evolution of AI: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are the undisputed masters of safe and generic content. As they continue to become a bigger and bigger part of the user experience on the web, the surest way to prove your value is to offer something they can’t.

How to Create Unique and Interesting Content That’s Right for Your Brand

Standing out isn’t about being outlandish or trying to get attention just for its own sake. It’s about being strategic. The best ideas for unique, interesting, compelling, and valuable content are most likely already inside your business, waiting to be discovered.

Here are a few quick ideas for helping bring them out:

1. Commit to an authentic voice.

Sometimes, it’s better not to try to be for everyone. Generic is forgettable. A real voice will connect with the right people in the right ways. 

2. Share your hard-earned wisdom. 

AI can research facts, but it can never replicate your perspective. Nobody knows better than you what your customers are interested in talking about, and what surprises them. Think about questions like these:

• What’s one thing customers always ask?
• What’s a common mistake that could easily be avoided?
• What’s a surprising industry “secret” you’re willing to share?

3. Take a contrarian stand on a popular issue in your industry.

If all your competitors are saying the same thing and you disagree, say so! Don’t write another “Top 5 Benefits” post if it’s not what you believe. Write one that makes the user stop and reconsider.

Let Our Digital Marketing Experts Help You Stand Out

When you choose 100% safe and conventional content, it feels like you’re keeping up. You have what your competitors have. But you’re not, and you don’t. Those competitors’ sites that are succeeding already have trust, which gives them a massive head start.

These days, the best content strategy is a balanced one. Many of the old rules of SEO and content marketing are still valid, and understanding when and how to use them can have a powerful and immediate impact on lead generation.

At the same time, it’s important to know when it’s OK to break the mold and try to stand out by being yourself, rather than a clone of all the other companies in the digital echo chamber.

At City Ranked, our digital marketing experts will work with you to help you create content that doesn’t just stand out – but gets noticed for all the right reasons.

Call us today to schedule a quick chat about your business goals. Let us show you how we can help you meet them by creating a unique and unforgettable digital presence.