Content Marketing: The 4 Steps to Re-imagining a New Perspective

OR: What do Ben Folds and Kesha Have in Common?

In my last content marketing post I offered up what I would probably say was a passion fueled take on the importance of beginning your content marketing efforts by evaluating just how well you know your buyer. Let’s assume that you bought into that and now want to sort out some methods for developing content for that well identified buying community. Here are the 4 steps that I frequently take when developing story oriented content and the methods that I believe will help identify the more interesting elements of the story and how to continuously inject a creative ‘reimagining’ of the narrative.

Begin with words: Regardless of the format the first stop should be words and words alone. Words that start to articulate the story of value to your buying community. A suggestion on how to capture these words in a minute, but more important is how these words should be focused. Not formal market message copy for the website or brochure, but an anecdotally laced description of what the value means to the buyer and real world examples of how that value was realized. The key here is the anecdotal. The words can’t throw around a bunch of statistics and metrics and the ‘they were at X widgets per operating income per days sales of net revenue outstanding and are now at Y‘ sort of dissertation that probably only 5% of the most propeller headed segment of your targeted buyer would take time consuming. Rather an easily accessible and relatable example ought to be the centerpiece.

Envisioning the story: The exercise of moving away from the sterile quotation of before and after numbers or statistics helps to bring into focus the narrative of value that will be most meaningful to your buyers. In the interest of practicing what I preach here consider the way my wife handles our 3 and 4 year old when they are being a little demanding as in “I want a lollypop now!” She’ll basically say to them, “Now, which sounds better to you? ‘I WANT A LOLLYPOP NOW!’ or ‘Mommy can I please have a lollypop” She accentuates both questions with the corresponding emotion. The former with a nasty demanding tone and the latter with a sugary sweet almost coo like cadence. The choice the children have becomes an an obvious one to make. The story for these young children becomes simple, ‘the way in which you say things matters and using the right way will be to your benefit.’

Capturing words: At this point you should be getting that the order in which all of this occurs is really not as consequential as ensuring that the habit is formed. As that is the case the best way to start is to capture words in any way shape or form that you can. Begin by talking to the customers that you know and simply asking them over a ten minute conversation where the value of what you offer them has impacted them most. Interview your sales staff to get to the bottom of the key elements that helped close their most recent deal. Don’t stop with just the product or services value, but insist that your customer service and sales colleagues detail the elements that let them build a personal and trusted relationship with their customers and prospects. Record team meetings and play them back later to pull out recurring themes. Search social media chatter for topics that continuously pop up around anything that is even close to your buying market. Write down the ideas that come to mind when enjoying some leisure time with a book or television. Capture words everywhere and anywhere and use them to revisit the first step above by transforming them into a complete sentence of thought that you’ll add to that monument of thought you are building for your buyer.

Vary the theme : As the story begins to mature and the words flow a little more easily something interesting happens. The more compelling aspects of the story begin to make themselves evident in the way your favorite scene from your favorite movie always draws you in. For example for me it is the scene in the first Godfather in which Michael suggests that drug kingpin Sollozzo and his police chief bodyguard McCluskey be assassinated, but that is clearly a digression. The point is that the interesting compelling bits rise to the top, and it is on the creamier bits of the narrative where we expand our efforts. How? By creating a broad variety of story delivery. Turn the words into audio, into video, into a presentation, just about any sort of content that you can imagine. But don’t stop there. Start to place your ‘treatment’ on seemingly unrelated content to underscore your perspective.

Another analogy to bring home the last point.

Consider this step sort of like a band covering a song that is completely outside the realm of their portfolio of work. Done correctly such a musical effort reinforces the very identify of the band or artist, ironically differentiating their sound by repurposing someone else’s composition. An example would be helpful you say? Well just so happens I have one.

Ben Folds and Kesha could probably not be further apart on the musical spectrum. This cover of the latter’s ‘Sleazy’ by the former should make the power of theme variety evident.

I’m into the 1000 word range at this point and need to wrap it up. To be sure there are many nuances to be found in the details as these steps are exercised. And while my passion demands that I continue banging on the keyboard, we’ll save those thoughts for another time. If you made it to the bottom of the post, however, I do hope that this added some value to how you’ll begin to approach your content development. A little affirmation never hurt, nor does asking for it. If you did gain something would love to hear what it might be. If you have criticism or other input, I’d love to hear that also.