Solve for the Monkey in Your Content

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“We waste our time chasing the wrong projects,” writes Jason Feifer in Entrepreneur Magazine. “There’s no point in building pedestals if you can’t solve for the monkey,” he explains, referring to a problem-solving framework created by Alphabet (Google’s parent company) – Can you teach a monkey to recite Shakespeare while standing on a pedestal? Unless the essential, pivotal problem is solvable — Can monkeys actually learn to recite Shakespeare? — there’s no use focusing on other aspects of the challenge.

To find your “monkey”, Feifer advises, ask yourself – “If I solved this problem and it was a great success, what major change would have gotten me there?” Stop spending time on fruitless steps, he says. Go get that monkey!

“When we talk with companies about the biggest challenges they face in growing revenues, we hear a consistent complaint,” Thomas Sittenburgh and Michael Ahearne write in Harvard Business Review.  “Companies that have invested millions to dream up new-to-the-world innovations need to become more adept at selling them to customers.”

Should you focus on the problem or the solution?  Focusing on the client means you sell the problem, not the solution, Emma Rose explains in Idea Rocket. Others insist that customers know their own pain points, and what they need is to understand is why your product is special in terms of solving that problem. In a “mature” market, it’s important to focus on the specifics of your solution (what you do better than anyone else and why you are unique).

Applying those viewpoints to our clients’ content marketing challenges, at Say It For You we’ve found that defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience providing solutions to that very problem can help drive the marketing process forward. Searchers are unlikely to follow you into a “deep subject dive” unless they perceive that you’ve “solved for their monkey” and know how to ‘tame-and-teach” the creature!

 

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How Do We Know What We Know and Let Them Know It?

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How do we learn to string words together into statements? How do we know to say “I don’t have much money”, but that the opposite is not “I have much money”? How do we know that “a picture of Paul” and “a picture of Paul’s” mean totally different things? In his piece in the March issue of the Mensa Bulletin, Richard Lederer ponders these language mysteries. Think about it, he urges. Why do we say “the bicycle is next to the building”, but never “the building is next to the bicycle”?

“In marketing, language is a key tool for influencing, persuading, and manipulating an audience,” writes Sambuno. Through language, marketers create messages that are tailored to the specific target audience in order to elicit a desired response.

  • a car company might use language that appeals to the emotion of safety and security when targeting parents who are car shopping for their families.
  • a fashion company might use language that appeals to the desire for self-expression when targeting young adults.

Marketers can craft a powerful emotional bond with the audience through carefully selected language. We may not know precisely why “I have much money” sounds funny, but grammar matters in content marketing. “When you publish content with grammar mistakes, you risk affecting your reputation, search engine rankings, and even conversion rates,” SEO.com explains. “While some grammar errors won’t affect communication, others will force people to re-read your content or guess what you’re trying to say.”

On the other hand…. (I enjoyed reading this dissenting commentary on the subject of perfect grammar): “Nobody cares how well-written it is, unless it solves a real problem, or who wrote the article, as long as it makes sense.”

While, at Say It For You, I reassure content writers that, if their marketing blog posts are filled with valuable, relevant, and engaging material, the fact they wrote  “a lot” when they should have said “many” or substituted “your” for “you’re” isn’t going to be a content marketing deal breaker.

We’re out to focus readers’ attention on the bicycle or the building, not on which is next to which!

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Using Failure as a Foundation

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“This is one tip I’ll offer to any struggling writer out there,” says Heather Fawcett in Writer’s Digest: “If you have an old idea in a notebook or saved to a flash drive, try recycling it into a new form”.

“It’s time you reinvented the word failure and saw it as feedback,” Suzie Flynn, BSc agrees… When you fail you have the opportunity to look at things from a new perspective, to experiment and even playfully have fun with new ways of doing things.

It was back in the early days of Say It For You that my then networking colleague Robby Slaughter had published the book Failure: the Secret to Success.  Based on the thesis of that delightful book, I explained to my readers two ways in which failure could be an important ingredient in blogging for business:

  • Your posts can demonstrate that you understand the problems the searcher is facing, and are devoted to the process of finding – and sharing – unique solutions.
  • Failure can become a standard by which to understand how a successful outcome will look and feel.

Some ten years later, I gained another perspective on failure when then Nuvo editor Laura McPhee devoted an entire section of the paper to highlighting “alumni”, people who worked there but who had departed for “better things”. As a content writer, I understood that the best way to make a company or professional practice relatable is to introduce readers to the people behind the brand, even if those people are no longer involved in making the products or delivering the services. And, of course, some of those stories and memories are going to revolve around failures – things that, at the time, had gone very wrong.

For me, Heather Fawcett’s piece in Writer’s Digest added a whole other dimension to the concept of using “failure” as a foundational element in content marketing: “recycling” ideas and presenting them in a new way more relevant to what’s happening “in the now”… One great content marketing sustainability tip is to keep an idea file, online or in a little notebook or folder with articles you cut out of newspapers or magazines, notes on ideas gleaned from a seminar, from listening to the radio, reading a blog or a book.. Your folder of “ingredients” , I tell newbie content marketers, will make your job a whole lot easier!

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Either Way, a Good Bottle is a Good Bottle

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For the average wine drinker, it’s a no-big-deal thing, but for serious aficionados of Champagne and for those in the wine industry, Alison Napjus points out in Wine Spectator, there’s an important distinction:

While small grower producers, or “RMs”, source their grapes only from vineyards they own ,” negociants”, or ” NMs”, purchase their grapes from different villages and subzones. Connoisseurs (“wine snobs”?) might value RM products, but transferring ownership of land among family members is “prohibitively expensive” under French law, Napius points out, and RMs have trouble meeting demand. NMs, meanwhile, have begun paying closer attention to viticulture in their own vineyards.

The result of all this supply/demand push-pull is that the ” perfect” Champagne product today is neither an RM nor an NM, the author explains. Consumers are really just looking for a steady supply of quality Champagne. “At the end of the day, it’s what’s in the glass that matters, not the code on the label,” the author concludes.

The same observation might be made in my field of content marketing, I couldn’t help thinking. “Content marketing works by capturing the attention of your desired audience members and helping them address their informational and task-oriented needs,” Jodi Harris of the Content Marketing Institute explains.

  • Prefer to use straightforward or “Huh? Oh!” titles for blog posts? Doesn’t matter, so long as, in the body of the post, you deliver on headline’s promise.
  • Whether you post content once a week or once a month, consistency helps build trust with your audience.
  • Statistics can be used to demonstrate the extent of a problem or to provide data about products and services a company offers. Either way, when presented effectively, numbers can move readers to make decisions.
  • “Jargon”, industry or profession-unique terminology can be used judiciously by content writers for explaining and defining a point, or simply as a way to establish common ground with a select audience.

Either way, a good piece of content is a good piece of content!

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Content Marketing Using How-Tos and How-To-Avoids

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How do people avoid killing themselves when swallowing swords? According to The Big Book of Big Secrets, one of the secrets is not swallowing. When you stand and face upward, the upper gastrointestinal tract is straight and flexible enough for a sword to pass through it – if you can resist the urge to swallow, keeping the two sphincters (one between your pharynx and esophagus, the second between the esophagus and stomach) from closing. In other words, sword “swallowers’ have to suppress their gag reflex. (“Practice” includes cramming progressively larger objects into the back of the throat while trying not to gag.) in addition to avoiding damage through mind control, some swallowers, the authors reveal, coat their swords with a lubricant such as olive oil.

“Content marketing works by capturing the attention of your desired audience members and helping them address their informational and task-oriented needs,” Jodi Harris of the Content Marketing Institute explains. The aim is for the audience to rely on your guidance, so providing advice about a tool or technique that can make their lives easier is key. “Tips and tricks” – meaning information on how to do things – add value.

Using your content to teach readers how to avoid negative outcomes is another way to provide value. To the extent in which you provide research, data, and logic to back up your advice, it will be perceived as even more valuable, Dana Herra explains.

Some business and practice owners new to the concept of content marketing worry about providing how-to or even how-to-avoid tips, fearful that they will be “giving away” their expertise. But there’s every reason to do just that, and to do it without fear, we explain to new Say It For You clients.

  • Caterers can showcase their skills by “giving away” how-tos in the form of recipes and table decorating tips.
  • A hospital operating room supply company might “gives away” how-to-avoid tips on pressure ulcer prevention.
  • An insurance professional might “give away” how-to-avoid household accidents tips.
  • Jewelers might “give away” tips on safety cleaning and storing necklaces.
  • A search firm might “give away” valuable how-to-prepare-for-an-interview advice.

Think of those “how-tos” and “how-to-avoids” as the “olive oil” helping the online visitor reading your content “swallow” your advice and ask you for more!

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