The Idea Mill
Insights + Observations About the Power of Content
Google’s recent algorithm update provides guidance on writing content that is deemed “helpful.” This is not only good SEO practice, this is just sound advice. This is who will win the content game, now and apparently into the future: real people who can distill complex subject matter and serve it up generously and consistently to help real people solve real problems.
Learn how to write helpful content…
The above is the title of a podcast I recently listened to called “7-Figure Small,” a podcast hosted by Brian Clark. Of course, it caught my attention, as any good title will. “What is the surprise, pray tell?! I just HAVE to listen to find out!”
So I did. And you know what? Brian was right on.
This somewhat counterintuitive and, dare I say, provocative headline is 100% true. And it runs counter to what most people think…myself (in the past) included.
Professional service providers like to think we get hired for our expertise. But that’s not the case…
Too often, the language we tend to use in marketing and advertising puts ourselves as the hero in the journey — the one coming to the rescue of the client or customer.
When, in reality, the client, customer or prospect truly only cares about his or her own journey…their own challenges, aspirations and coveted conquests.
Continue reading to see how this story can have a happy ending for you and your marketing efforts…
(If you’ve never seen the Christopher Nolan classic, Memento is a story that is told in reverse chronology. The first scene of the movie is actually the final event in the story. The second scene depicts the events that immediately preceded the first scene, or final chapter. The third scene depicts the events that immediately preceded that. And so on it goes, all the way to the final scene, which depicts the first event in the storyline — the one that kicked off the chain of events, told backwards, from back to front.)
Here’s how that would work…
What’s more convincing: If I told you how many times I’ve helped a client out of given problem, or if I told you a story about the person I helped yesterday?
Too often, we litter our marketing copy with statistics—facts, figures, bullet points, specs, product lists, empty promises—when we should be telling stories. Stories are magical tools that convince people that what you claim to be true is actually rooted in reality. Stories make people feel. They make people care.
There is an old quote, often misattributed, that is taken from a work of fiction: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” Here’s how you can apply that logic to your marketing messaging…
The goal of content marketing in the business-to-business world is not to convince someone who is not in the market for your product or service to buy from you when they’re not in need. B2B decision-making doesn’t happen that way.
Yet too many B2B marketers put too much pressure on themselves to identify success metrics in a way that consumer marketers and advertisers might. The mistake they’re making is applying consumer marketing methodology to an ecosystem with a much longer buying cycle, a much more sophisticated buyer, and likely, a much higher price point than a typical consumer product.
Content is becoming an ever-more-critical component to the marketing ecosystem. But as more and more content is being generated, good content is becoming harder and harder to find. Meaning, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to create content that stands out and sinks in. Quantity can actually beget quality, if you know where to find it…
"You need to build your content strategy on rented land. In fact, you have no choice."
This somewhat unconventional wisdom sparked some interesting thought and conversation between Jay Harrington and me on a recent episode of The Thought Leadership Project podcast.
At issue: Should you be putting your content on your website and placing it behind “gates,” or sharing it freely on social media and elsewhere?
