Content Marketing Tip #1: Say Something
By: Bogdan Tiganov
Tags: Content Writing, Content, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Marketing

So, another year goes by and I’ve been doing this content marketing thing for what feels like a lifetime. If I ever want to depress myself I just Google myself and see how far back I go — God, is that what I published in the year 2000? I invented SEO (I didn’t really).

I do feel like I’ve sharpened my content marketing tools this year. I wrote a pretty decent paper on AI, for one. I’ve worked across two different industries. I’ve written a few articles that will go in my portfolio. Also, I got back into creative writing and that’s helped my content marketing. Here, old brain, have a sip of this imagination juice.

I’m also in the strange position of mentoring budding, young content creators. I ran a workshop earlier this year on content creation and copywriting. It’s a huge subject, worthy of a number of workshops. Great content creation, it turns out, is as much about unlearning as it is about learning.

But, my number one tip is this: say something.

I’ll break that down into several pillars, or principles.

Intention

Think fire. Think rockets. Think raging passion. Intention, always start with intention. And here’s the difficult thing to grasp: you may not always say that something, or find something worth saying, but it’s the spunky attitude, your intention, that will drive you to create content.

They talk about intention a lot in martial arts. It’s more than direction. It’s placing your sight beyond, taking aim like a bowsman. It’s where your mind goes, and the rest of you follows. When you get it right you feel superhuman.

Intention is the driver. If you start with a sort of flakey, soft attitude, sad about having to fill a blank screen with stuff that resembles writing, you’ll struggle.

The dream is, of course, to create unique content, but, when was the last time you came across truly unique content? Don’t get ahead of yourself and start talking about engagement, or great content. Everybody wants to go from learning to type to being Hemingway, overnight. Easy does it — I’m still learning after a decade-plus of doing this.

You’re the strongest angle

Find an angle, what’s the angle, God what is it… Yes, finding an angle worth writing about can be a real headache for content creators. But what if you were the angle?

I don’t mean that everything needs to sound like your hot take, but offering a glimmer of personality in even the most opaque copy never hurts. Bridge the gap between you and the reader.

You want to sound like a human being has written your copy, not a copywriting algorithm. Take risks. Flip things around.

Start noticing when you create gaps between you and the reader. You might be overusing terminology or jargon with nothing else behind it. You, the writer, the content creator, has gone missing. You’ve created elevator music. Muzak. You’re asking people to skip to the summary.

Recommendation:

Read more Felicia C. Sullivan, analyse it — what is it about Felicia’s work that stands out? There’s an energy about her work that’s hard to pin down. It’s not templated, and purposefully so.

Look at the images she uses. She’s generally not going to Unsplash or Pexels like the rest of us. The images are vibrant, punchy; they ask us to feel something, to respond.

Felicia’s copywriting is worthy of analysis in itself, but let’s just say this — you can tell she didn’t start writing yesterday. Her writing is memorable, full of metaphors, symbolism, and she constantly offers personal examples.

Her work is divisive — bristling.

So whether it’s her marketing, personal pieces, or fiction, the work of Felicia C. Sullivan always sounds like the work of Felicia C. Sullivan. Not anonymous marketer #21921921911.

Is it working? 30k followers seem to think so.

No fear

Instead of obsessively looking for an angle, challenge your own preconceptions. For example, I know that wireless earbuds are all the rage, but what if I don’t want the headache of recharging tech? What if I find the idea of a cable quite comforting? What if I have…cable fetish. Ok, cable fetish might be taking it a bit far, but you get the idea.

Be honest with yourself and with your audience. Hell, I’m such an addict to honesty I started a company called Honest Publishing (in 2010, I left in 2013, this is not a plug, I have nothing to do with them now). Don’t be afraid to admit that you know very little, or nothing.

Find something worth talking about that’s not immediately obvious, and don’t be afraid to argue your point. Or to start an argument. Or to be controversial. Are you a bit of a prick? Bring out your inner prick, then. Are you quiet and withdrawn? I’m quiet and withdrawn, but do I sound like it in my work?

Whispering can be sexy.

The amount of content that I read that is stating the obvious is unbelievable. Characterless. You see, it takes guts to write with no fear. It takes guts to put yourself and your opinions out there. You might get shot down. Someone might disagree or be better than you. You might lose everything, right?

Especially these days when social media will crucify anyone who doesn’t tow the social media party line. And towing the party lines makes for boring content. Fuck the party line.

If you’re not sweating about the content you’re about to put out there, then you’re doing it wrong.

Principles are just principles

Let me be clear, no two jobs are the same. You may be working a job that allows for minimal creativity — you’re literally pasting a bunch of buzzwords in and changing the order slightly so that Google doesn’t penalise you. I get it. I’ve been there. Your soul is taking a pounding. I know.

But that’s enough about me — what about you? How do you feel about your content marketing this year? What do you need to work on in the next year?