It’s a common misconception that big corporations and brands write the best content online. How many times have you visited a big company website and found seemingly irrelevant articles or ones that are just not that good? Recently, Rolex, Chapstick, and Tesla were in the spotlight for not ranking for “luxury watches”, “lip balm”, or “electric cars” but why is that? And can you create content that beats the big-time corporates? Absolutely!
The Bigger They Are, the Harder They Create Content
As an SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) or small-time marketer, competition with the big league corporates may seem like a losing battle… until it isn’t. Sometimes having a small team or company is your biggest advantage, especially when creating content. With big corporations, communication becomes much more complex and this can gravely affect a content strategy. For example, let’s imagine a big company wanting to write an article about ‘ice cube collecting’ and rank well for it. Sadly, it can never be as simple as idea → execution.
With big brands or companies, you have to jump through so many hoops to get any kind of content published. First, you talk to the marketing lead who talks to the acquisition department who talks to the content department who talks to their writers, and even after all that, it still has to be reviewed by tons of people. Usually, by the time these processes are over, that content idea would have fizzled out.
This long gap of time from conception to seeing words on a screen can make the original idea already obsolete. It’s like the broken telephone game at children’s parties when a word keeps getting whispered to the next person and the next and the next until it completely loses its meaning. This is where you, as an SME, come in to sweep the board. With that in mind, you’re far less likely to publish content that has nothing to do with your small business.
How Do I Start Making Relevant Content?
Now that we’ve established the fact that a smaller business can outrank big corporations by a long shot, here are the surprising tools you will need in your arsenal.
Zero SEO Knowledge
That’s right, it may seem strange, but forget everything you have been told about needing to perfect your SEO strategy to create relevant content. The best content is one that comes from the heart, and you’re far more likely to write good content if it’s something you’re generally interested in rather than something outside of your realm of interests, no matter how many keywords, links, and images you stack in.
Let’s take an example: Say you’re someone who is very interested in antique watches. Because you have a massive pool of knowledge about that topic, it’s easy for you to write thousands upon thousands of words coming straight from the heart. In this case, Google recognises that this is good, relevant content by the fact that it speaks to the reader. This content will also inadvertently answer questions readers would seek out since they are of the same interest.
On the other hand, say you are forced to write about antique baseball cards and you have no clue what that is about. Obviously, you will have to look up a ton of info for your keywords and ultimately, you will end up with an article that feels robotic, even though it’s 100% human.
Effective Communication and Trust
As we’ve mentioned, communication in a big company is very, very difficult with the amount of hoops you need to jump through. However, as an SME, you know your coworkers far better than a big corporate management team ever could. This means you know what the conversations around the office are about, and more importantly, you know what triggers people (in a good way). In this scenario, you build trust, authority, and leads; that’s what SEO is all about.
Agility and Quickness
As an SME, your work pace is much faster than any big company. Because your idea doesn’t need thirty different approvals, you can go from “We have this idea for content” to “Content published!” in no time without any corporate filters. This is especially useful when it comes to a change in your industry or news, as you need those published fast. The corporate world simply has too many checks and balances, but that’s just an opportunity for you to prevail over them.
Revisions and Improvement
Content that’s regularly updated and “fixed” will always be better. This means you don’t have to be incredibly perfect about the final version of whatever you publish on your website. You can always go back and fix things. Now, this doesn’t mean you can publish pieces that need a lot of work from the get-go, but you can publish pieces to go back to every few days or weeks to make sure they are still relevant.
This works well with Google because it loves revisions. A regularly updated article tells Google that this is good and relevant, and Google will repay you for this by ranking it quite high. This is the biggest advantage that makes SEO a David vs Goliath situation where a small brand or business can outrank a big one.
Why Do SEO Research and Content Strategies?
If all you need is to write from the heart, why bother doing SEO? Well, in this case, good SEO is just the cherry on top. Just doing SEO steps doesn’t guarantee that your content will rank, but if you do the SEO checklist on top of well-written content, then you will find your content ranking high. It also allows other articles to use yours with external linking and thus find a bigger audience.
Where Do I Get Content Ideas?
If you have a company website and are confused about getting ideas for the blog, there’s really only one place to turn to: Google! Always check what your competitors are doing for the same niche and find out how you can make the same topic different or more interesting. You can find inspiration in the unlikeliest of places, and a goldmine of ideas is always… people! Ask around, make a few calls; if you have a strong social media presence, use polls and audience questions; and so on.
A good way to diversify your content is by focusing on one “Pillar page” and then build several other pages about surrounding topics that all link to each other. For example, if your main pillar page is about ice cube collecting, you can then create smaller pages about, say, ice cube trays or how water affects ice cube collecting, and now you have got three articles that you can link through with each other.
There’s a perfect book for making sense of inbound marketing called ‘They Ask, You Answer’ by Marcus Sheridan. It’s a complete business strategy based on the questions of buyers. SEO and content are all about helping someone with a need, and there’s nothing better than finding out people’s needs from the people themselves.
Summary
All-in-all, writing content as a smaller business will always be an advantage over the major (slower) corporations. Working in tandem with your trusted team on content that you genuinely love and are passionate about are the sharpest tools in your shed. Your content strategy does not need to be perfectly technical and your final product doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Just start putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard), write from the heart, and let the domino pieces fall into place.
Last Updated on June 10, 2025
