When I suggest that businesses should think about creating some content I’m frequently met with objections like -

“But my niche is boring – no one cares!”

Actually I don’t think that there’s such a thing as a ‘boring’ niche, but I do understand where they’re coming from. It’s definitely the case that coming up with ideas for great content is tougher in some than others – but there are companies out there doing it already. As such I wanted to put together this post highlighting some companies who are already doing great things in tough markets. Undoubtedly some of them you’ll have seen or heard of before, but I’ve deliberately tried to come up with some other examples that hopefully you won’t already have heard of.

I hope this will serve as inspiration or food for thought if you will.

Got your tea / coffee / gin and tonic at the ready? Let’s do this.

Companies Enriching / Leveraging Existing Online Communities

Reader Sheds

Garden sheds – that’s a tough niche at first glance. Except of course that people are really passionate about their humble sheds and some people’s sheds are pretty damn amazing. With this is mind, to appeal to all the sheddies out there Reader Sheds run an annual competition to find the shed of the year – they have over 1800 entries this year.

Here’s my favourite:

Plus this gets absolutely amazing coverage – e.g. Guardian and Daily Mail - plus they have celebrities decorating their own sheds too.

Fiskars

Fiskars started out way back in 1649 and originally produced iron. In 1967 they were the first company to produce plastic handled scissors. Today they’ve diversified somewhat but their mainstays are still scissors and other paper cutting tools and they also do gardening equipment.

In terms of content Fiskars have elected to tap into the community of people who use their products – namely those interested in arts and crafts. The Fiskarettes blog contains loads of art and craft ideas and readers are also encourage to submit their own projects – in Fiskar’s own words: “We want to offer you an environment where you will be able to exchange your love of crafting with others, to share your passion, showcase your creativity and share your expertise.”

What can we learn from these companies?

I think the key message here is - go big or go home. If you want to get the attention of an existing community of people you’ll need to spend significant time and resource creating awesome content or in Reader Shed’s case – running their annual competition. You’ll also need to work hard in terms of outreaching to that existing community to get them involved. Plus of course in order for this to work there needs to already be an active community out there. Whilst it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted, or those who are light on resources the potential benefits are huge.

Companies with Customer-Led Content Strategies

Simply Business

Simply Business are an insurance broker in the UK. Rather than creating content exclusively around insurance, instead they’ve taken the approach of creating content and resources which small business owners will find useful. In addition to creating short-form blog post content they’ve also created guides for social media, PPC and productivity –

Click image to open interactive version.

Landlord Law

Tessa Shepperson is a landlord and property solicitor in the UK. She started blogging back in 2006 and uses her blog to comment on legal developments, new regulations, answer reader’s problems, and discuss relevant reports and consultation papers issued by government and relevant organisations. She also runs a school for landlords and creates resource content like this questionnaire that explains which sort of tenancy agreement you ought to use

Salesforce – Social Success

Salesforce have created some fantastic content around how businesses can harness the power of social media including expert interviews, how to guides and case studies. Kieran has already published a post explaining their strategy and how it worked for them.

What can we learn from these companies?

I’m a huge fan of content strategies focused around a particular business’s customers – creating content your customers need or want; or will just plain love – it’s a no-brainer, right? What’s interesting to me is that you don’t need to see your own product or service offering as a limitation in terms of what you can create. Just because you sell insurance doesn’t mean that all your content needs to be about insurance.

Landlord Law is an interesting example as the content seems to have led the business in different directions – what started out as a single solicitor’s blog is now a business in its own right – three different sites, some subscription content, training, tools etc.

Companies using Content Tactically

Kogan

Australian online electronics store Kogan has launched an IE7 ‘tax’ – use a crappy browser? Get charged more when you checkout :)

MahiFX

Forex is definitely a tough niche, and their You vs. John Paulson infographic was immensely popular and successful – read more about it in Sam’s post.

Iscars

Iscars make cutting tools for metalwork. This video of theirs recently went hot on Reddit -

Mind = Blown

Hippobag

These guys offer an alternative to skip hire – skip-sized bags... How strong are they? They tested them out with a SMART car... Nice use of video to demonstrate the product.

AirConCo

Air conditioning might not be sexy, but this company definitely has a great sense of humour. Way back in 2009 they published a post about a woman who saw the Virgin Mary on her air conditioning unit - pictured above. Ashton Kutcher tweeted their post and it went hot on a whole bunch of social networks.

Dollar Shave Club

These guys definitely are owed an honourable mention for shaking up the shaving market with *that* video :) I’ve elected to put them in the ‘using content as a tactic’ bracket as to date they’ve only done the one video – albeit a very successful one.

What can we learn from these companies?

I think that the examples above highlight that even in tough niches you can create great one-off pieces of content without breaking the bank.

And then there’s BlendTec – Will it Blend

I’ve struggled to categorise BlendTec. Some might disagree, but I think BlendTec create those videos for the YouTube community rather than their key customer base. Are the people who watch those videos in the market for a blender right now? Probably not. But one day they might be, and when they are they’ll probably remember BlendTec.

What can you learn from them? Think outside the box and have fun.

Bonus! Great content; but arguably not a tough niche...

Uke Hunt

I’m not sure if ukuleles really count as a ‘tough’ niche or not; but either way Al Wood has created an amazing resource. Rand’s dubbed it the SEOmoz of ukulele playing.

Hopefully you’ve found this useful, I’ve certainly had fun pulling it together. Got some more examples? Do let me know via the comments.

Need some content ideas? Leave a comment explaining your product / service & your target market - myself and the awesome Moz community will try and come up with some ideas for you.