This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti, founder of Sparring Mind.
It likely comes as no surprise to you that content marketing
is on the rise.
From
getting more exposure to your business to creating a ‘cult of
personality’ that later serves to drive an entire business, creating
remarkable content is the surest road to generating brand exposure and creating goodwill among prospective customers.
The question is then, just
how does one go about creating content that is “
worthy of remark“?
Most
of us know great content when we see it, and can even create some
ourselves from time to time, but it can be tough to envision what our
“process” really looks like if we haven’t though about it.
Today I’m happy to introduce you to what I call the “Content Marketing Zen” process of creating remarkable content.
I’d like to think this 5-step process cuts out the fluff and time-wasting stages of creating great content, and gets down the
essentials of researching, positioning, forming, creating, and promoting of the kind of content that builds businesses.
So let’s get into it!
Visualizing the Content Marketing Zen Process
I love it when information (of any variety) gives me a breakdown of what I’m about to learn.
This introduction prepares me for key points and keeps me interested,
when I’m faced with a wall of text, I quickly lose focus and interest
(as I’m sure that you do).
That’s why I wanted to start off this post with a pretty little
infographic that gives a great outline of the 5-step process of creating
great content and prepares you for what you’re about to learn.
Feel free to share it on your own site by using the
embed code below the graphic.
1.) Researching Your Content
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
— Albert Einstein
If you want to provide comprehensive, fresh, and unique content, you’re going to need to start with step 1:
research.
Research typically entails gathering data for your post that you can
present in a way that either generates new insight or compliments
tactics that you are about to go over.
For instance, on my post covering
how bloggers can use YouTube, I gave information on the growth of the YouTube userbase over the years.
In addition to this more “standard” form of research, I also sought
out a variety of YouTube tactics from across the full spectrum of
YouTube users, from large YouTube partners to companies using YouTube to
even other blogger’s uses of the platform.
I did this research because although I had a fair amount of
information to share about YouTube, I wanted to make sure I was covering
things in a fresh perspective
and that I was offering a complete picture for how to effectively use the platform.
Francisco himself offers us a great example of doing good “research” in his latest post on
Facebook for WordPress.
I say “research” because I don’t want folks thinking that they have to dive into academic papers (
like I sometimes do) or slog through a huge slew of boring statistical charts just to come up with new content.
Research simply means that you are taking the time out to be informed
before posting.
In Francisco’s example, he gives a step by step analysis of all of
the new features of the Facebook plugin for WordPress, goes over
installation and even gives his final thoughts on its usefulness.
If you are going to create content that has massive amounts of
utility
(read: provides value), you must do your own due diligence to make sure
the information you are about to publish is up to snuff.
2.) Positioning Your Content
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
— Dale Carnegie
While these may seem like some harsh words coming from Carnegie, it’s still a point that you very much need to keep in mind.
Despite the fact that we are discussing emotions, there is a lot of good
science behind creating content that triggers interest and “goes viral”.
What your content really needs is what any good brand needs: a strong
unique selling proposition.
The “purchase” you are trying to get people to make is their time.
What is it about your post that promises to leave a lasting impact on those who read it?
Fortunately, there are two resources you can use to help decide which emotional arousal you are after in potential readers.
The first set comes from Mark Hughes
Buzz Marketing book.
Mark is known as the marketing guy for Half.com back in the day, and it notorious for pulling stunts like getting a town to
rename themselves Half.com!
In his book, he defines the 6 buttons that you can push to generate interest in
anything.
They are as follows:
- Taboo
- Unusual
- Outrageous
- Hilarious
- Remarkable
- Secrets
What’s interesting is that while Mark’s “buzzmarketing buttons” come
from personal experience, new research has been found that coincides
perfectly with these emotional triggers.
The paper is called
“What Makes Online Content Go Viral?”, written by Jonah Berger and Katherin Milkman of the
Wharton School of Business.
In their research, Berger and Milkman found that the kind of content that goes viral typically creates a form of
high emotional arousal, with 6 key emotions being apart of that process.
The 6 emotions of high arousal are as follows (notice their overlap with the buzzmarketing buttons mentioned above):
- Emotion of Awe
- Emotion of Anger
- Emotion of Surprise
- Emotions of Anxiety & Fear
- Emotion of Joy
- Emotion of Lust
It’s like the 7 deadly sins, except it would be a sin if you
didn’t use them to generate remarkable content!
So, when it comes time to position your content, keep these emotions
of arousal and “buttons to push” in mind: just how are you going to make
this information stay with people and encourage discussion?
3.) Defining Your Content’s Medium
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
— Walt Disney
So, you’ve got your research in hand, you know how you are going to
invoke strong emotional arousal from your content, now you need to
decide just
how you are going to present this information.
Articles are great, we all know and love the classic blog post, made for easy reading and information consumption.
The thing is, articles aren’t the only medium (by far!) in your content marketing toolbelt.
Additionally, just because you are creating an article doesn’t mean that you can’t
also include another medium of content (like this post did!)
Fact is, different types of content mediums will help you stand out when everybody else is “just” writing.
Where you might have normally created a quick 3-point blog post, why not
create a YouTube video instead?
Using different mediums offers a number of specific advantages:
- New mediums of content keep your content marketing efforts “fresh” for long time readers
- Most media content encourages “stealing” (being shared) on other sites; nobody will tell you to copy and paste someone else’s article, but they would tell you that it’s okay to embed or share an infographic or a video
- Creating a variety of content allows you to “be everywhere”; you
won’t be able to reach a potentially massive audience on iTunes if you
don’t dabble in any podcasting
You don’t have a lot to lose in structuring great content (even old content) into a shiny new coat, so what’s stopping
you from trying new forms of media for your content marketing efforts?
4.) Creating Your Content
“The best writing is rewriting.”
— E.B.White
Finally we get to start actually creating some content!
Content creation is obviously a topic in itself, and addressing the
entire range of subtleties within crafting content is outside of the
scope of this post.
However, if you follow the previous 3 steps outlined in this post,
actually writing your content will seem like much less of a burden.
Gone are the days of having 8 tabs open, trying to read
and write content at the same time, and procrastinating in between.
I like to add a
little extra focus to my regiment by using the following 3 tools:
- Readability
- FocusBooster app + The Pomodoro Technique
- ZenWriter
Here’s the deal with these…
Readability is perfect for when you are going over in-depth content
from one of your sources in order to incorporate the information into
your own post.
I use this often when I’m reading research and opinion articles from the
Harvard Business Review, because I find their body font to be an eyesore, and, more importantly, I can get distracted
easily when I’m on a normal web page.
The
Readability app
eliminates this problem by creating a temporary page where the content
is laid out in a plain format with large, adjustable typography.
This eliminates my “clicky clicky” desire to click off of the article
I’m reading, and helps me consume information faster in order to create
my own posts.
When it comes down to writing in a distraction free environment (and
staying focused during the process), I like the tag team of FocusBooster
and ZenWriter.
The
FocusBooster live version is an online timer that follows the pattern set in the
Pomodoro Technique,
which emphasizes a 30-minute schedule consisting of 25 minutes of work
and a 5 minute break, which may help you to stay focused on longer
projects (it does for me).
While writing, I tend to use the program
ZenWriter,
mostly because I have the same problem I mentioned above when in my
WordPress dashboard: I want to go everywhere else on the web
but my writing screen as a method of procrastination.
ZenWriter helps eliminate this problem (for me at least) by being a
full screen writing program that has beautiful typography and even
offers some “zen-like” customization including ambient sound and
type-writer effects.
You can also use the free variants
WriteRoom (for Mac) and
DarkRoom (for PC) if you’d like.
5.) Promoting Your Content
Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.
— Milan Kundera
Okay, your post is published, time to share it on your social networks, add it to Buffer a few times, and call it a day, right?
Wrong.
Fact is, you could be doing a
lot more in promoting your supposedly excellent content than hitting the tweet button and hoping for the best.
I mean, if you REALLY believe the content that you just created is
worthy to be seen and shared (and if you don’t, go ahead and hit that
‘Move to Trash’ button…), you shouldn’t be sitting around waiting for
good luck to happen, you should go out and
get an audience for your content.
How?
One of the great things about creating content in different types of media (
especially visual content)
is that this “being everywhere” approach often promotes your content
for you: videos get discovered on YouTube, podcasts get downloaded on
iTunes, etc.
Outside of that, you need to look for folks who might enjoy the content that you just created.
The key here is to not saturate the same two blogger’s inboxes over and over with your new content.
A quick fix for that problem is to head to
AllTop and to find related blogs in your niche.
You can also use the more obvious source in Google to find related blogs in your niche, and then write the authors a very
personal email about content that you created that they may enjoy.
You often don’t even have to link to the content in the first email, just ask them if they are interested.
I did this for my electronic music blog
Sophistefunk when I released my first artist interview.
I hit up the
electronic music section on AllTop, notified fellow bloggers about my interview, and the result was the post was
very popular.
You’ve likely seen people tag & CC people on Twitter, I won’t say that these methods won’t work (they sometimes will), but
real relationship building happens through email, so don’t leave that out of your promotional methods.
Over To You
Whew, made it all the way down here, did ya? Thanks!
Since you made it to the bottom, here’s what’s next…
- Let me know in the comments what you think of my content creation process.
- Do you have any tools that help you create content (in any medium)
that you just need to share to the world? Let us in on that info in the
comments!
- As a reward for reading this lengthy post of mind, feel free to download my free e-Book on ‘Conversion Psychology’ right this instant, if you are so inclined.
I hope this post has helped you in some way in your content creation.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the comments! See more
Photo credit: Kevin_Morris
