Now that The State of (Dis)Content Report is finally out, I’d like to talk about a few of the specific data points and see if we can pick them apart and push past some of these challenges we've been having.
Over the next few days, I’d like to read between the lines and point out what I think are the root issues of content marketing, and provide suggestions on how to overcome them.
I'm calling the series: Dissecting (Dis)Content
You may agree with my assessments (I hope you do), you may not (that’s ok), but either way, I hope this’ll start a discussion.
Today we'll be kicking off with the first challenge
You might not be coming up with good ideas.
Specifically we'll dig into...
- Why generic ideas get produced and the only way to overcome it.
- A conversation that'll help you get more buy-in for differentiated ideas.
- How to reposition yourself from order taker to strategic partner.
Let’s do this.
From The State of (Dis)Content Report:
What are your top content creation challenges?
Imagine your boss Slacks you the 5 words most of us dread:
“We should start a podcast!”
They want something new, different, cheap, and pitches in their inbox by Friday.
You already know that cool docuseries you were thinking about won't be cheap, so that's gone.
You also know that your boss believes “podcast” = “interview,” so to make life easy, your mind goes straight to "who can I talk to, and what will we talk about?"
Eventually you might land on one of these three ideas:
- "We'll talk to our customers about their origin stories!"
- "We'll talk to internal SMEs about what our customers care about most!"
- "We'll talk to industry experts and get their raw, unfiltered opinions!"
Of course, you and I both know there is nothing new or different about these concepts, but they all seem cheap to produce, they seem to work for everyone else, and even better, you can have a dozen episode ideas ready for Friday.
Why is it so difficult to create differentiated ideas?
How confident are you that people can identify your content on voice and tone alone?
One of the most telling statistics from the report was that the majority of content marketers are either unsure or unconfident of their content's ability to stand out on voice and tone alone.
When I saw this it reminded me of a conversation I had with a marketing leader who was convinced it was only by divine talent that creators could come up with truly differentiated content ideas.
This mentality is one I wish were limited only to leaders, but I know plenty of creators who believe it too.
It's a dangerous one for two reasons:
- Some professional creators believe their situational awareness is enough to launch ideas without applying enough pressure to them.
- Non-creative leaders have been conditioned to believe this is enough.
I've tried to explaining that differentiation wasn't about having a gift from the heavens, but that "uniqueness" can be reverse engineered if you know where to look and how to connect the dots.
See, the graph doesn't give you the whole story.
When we look at the content marketers who report being extremely confident that their content stands out on voice and tone alone, we also see them doing audience research far more frequently than their counterparts.
I think this is for one reason and one reason alone...
You can't create a signal if you don't understand the noise.
Let's go back to the podcast pitch by Friday scenario.
Instead of responding "sounds good" I want you to say this:
"I can give you some ideas on Friday, but honestly they're probably going to look like this:
[give the three examples I provided earlier]
If we do a podcast, I want to make sure it'll resonate with the right people and get us the return we'd like it to.
To do that, I'll need at least two weeks to do some initial research.
The goal of that research is so we can:
- Create something that will stand out on its premise alone
- Have an idea of where we can distribute the thing
- Give you a clear idea of how we'll get ROI
My research will look like this:
1. I'm going to talk to ___ departments to see if there's anything that's front of mind for anyone else.
2. I'd like to talk to customers to see if they even listen to podcasts or if there's anything they'd like to know more about.
This'll help us see if anyone else has good ideas we could roll with (and possibly keep our costs down) and see if it's something that will actually resonate with our core audience - built in distribution!
If I could get your help with this, it'll help speed up the process.
I'll be able to get you some concepts in that time, but if I can get more time, Here's what else I'd like to do:
3. I'm going to look at what our competitors are doing to pick apart what looks like is working and if there are any gaps we can exploit.
4. I'm going to look at what other people who're also targeting our customers are doing in terms of podcasts or videos.
5. I'm going to see what the influencers in our field are sharing that seems to resonate with our market.
Once we land on a concept, I'd like to reach out to 4 and 5 and see if it's something they'd be interested in distributing, or if they have any thoughts or suggestions on how they might adapt it to best resonate with our audience."
Obviously you know your boss or client better than I do, so adjust as necessary, but in my experience, most people appreciate your push back so long as you provide clarity behind the creative process and the rationale for taking the extra time so you can come up with something differentiated.
More importantly, this sets the stage for you being viewed more as a strategic partner than an order taker, especially if you communicate that going through a process like this helps you apply pressure to your ideas and hedge your bets against failure.
And I hope this goes without saying, but this conversation applies to any format we content marketers are responsible for - blogs, newsletters, podcasts, videos, etc.
This conversation can also be adapted at any time if you'd like to rethink your program and start creating more effective content for your audience.
Hopefully this helps.
In my next email, I'm going to go deeper into The 8 Layer Market Research Process, so you can start making sense of the noise, and after that, we'll talk about "Finding The Gap" so we know how to create a signal.
Until next time...
P.S... This is just one of the many strategies and tactics I teach in my course, Content Theory.
In it we go in depth on…
- The 8 Layers of Market Research to help you come up with data-backed creative ideas, produce differentiated content at scale, and confidently communicate your strategies and findings to stakeholders.
- The Content Code to help you scale a research-backed standard of quality for your team and upper management.
- 10+ tactics to dissect content that your audience already enjoys consuming and use that as a springboard to build content programs that stand the test of time and technology.
If you’re ready to go from zero creative ideas to becoming known as a creative content partner in your organization, click on this link to get on the waitlist for the course.
