Filling Your Content Marketing Out of Three Buckets

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“All presentations are composed of just three elements,” Dan Roam writes in his book Show & Tell: 

  1. my idea – impressions, anecdotes, data, concerns.
  2. my self – goals, hopes, beliefs, insights
  3. my audience – demographics, aspirations, abilities, skills, uncertainties

Effective content marketing, we’ve learned at Say It For You, makes use of the same three buckets. We share ideas, adding information to things our audience members already know, fill their aspirations by showing best ways to  accomplish their goals, and, having understood their needs, inspire and empower them to take action.

To pick the right storyline for an article or presentation,  we need to answer the following question, Roam explains: “After we’ve finished presenting, how do we want our audience to be different from when we started?” Reports that tell the audience what they already know, then add a few things they don’t are not very memorable or actionable, he cautions.  If we’re doing it right, we make the audience care.

In content marketing, this is where the “my self” bucket comes in. Personal stories and opinion pieces showcase the unique slant of the business owner or practitioner. Dipping into that second bucket, you reveal how you arrived at the name of your business, even revealing the biggest mistake you made in starting that business or practice and what you’ve learned from that mistake.  Precisely because it is so very human to act inconsistently, revealing seemingly out-of-character aspects of yourself and of the people involved in your business or practice is a way to create buzz.

At the same time, Dan Roam reminds presenters to never, ever apologize for any anxiety.  Telling them you’re nervous will make them worry, too,” he advises. “When we are confident, we will help the audience change,” he tells newbie speakers. At Say It For You, we know how important it is to remember that third bucket – it’s our audience’s uncertainties we’re out to change!

When it comes to content marketing, readers visit  our web pages and blog for answers and for information they can trust.  In fact, the success of our marketing efforts will be very closely aligned with our being perceived as  SMEs (subject matter experts).

Show and Tell is the perfect guide for content marketers. To the extent we understand the demographics of our audience, realizing that our readers are those looking for information, products, or services that relate to what we know, what we have, and what we do. Those visitors are literally inviting us to share our ideas, our “selves” and our skills

We need to fill our content marketing out of all three buckets!

 

 

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Convey the Concept through a Warm Human Storyteller

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Lately, brands increasingly prioritize people as the voice of their value, Robert Rose writes in “Trust the Story, or the Storyteller?‘

“Storytelling is a powerful marketing tool that can be used to connect with customers on an emotional level, build trust and credibility, and ultimately drive sales,” Oxford Academic agrees, naming three reasons stories are so important a part of content marketing:

  1. Stories evoke emotions – empathy, joy, sadness, anger.
  2. Stories offer a glimpse into your values and beliefs.
  3. Storytelling gives your brand a unique personality. There are many different types of stories that can be used to connect with customers, the authors point out, including brand stories, customer experience stories, employee experience stories, customer testimonial stories, and case studies.  No matter the type of story, the point is to use vivid language to help readers visualize the event or happening.While it’s true that stories help us remember, that’s not good enough, Joe Lazuskas explains – they have to make us care.  Your stories need to talk about why you come to work every day, and about what you believe the future of your industry ought to look like. Two particularly important elements of a story are:
    a)Relatability – you’re telling the story of a person similar to the target reader.  b) Fluency – Realistically, Lazuskas reminds us, most U.S. adults can’t read at even a high school level; we need to keep a low barrier to entry between the audience and the story level.

    As a content marketer at Say It For You, I can never forget an article I read years ago about an experiment performed at Stanford University.  Students were each asked to give one-minute speeches containing three statistics and one story.  Later, students were asked to recall the highlights in each other’s talk.  Only five percent of the listeners remembered a single statistic, while 63% were able to remember the story line.

To convey marketing concepts, use a warm, human storyteller!

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How Do You Want Your Content to Make Them Feel?

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Hobbies present an escape, helping you get out of your head and calm down, associate professor of health psychology Matthew Zawadzki explains, but it’s important, in choosing an activity, so ask yourself how you want it to make you feel. Should the hobby result in your feeling:

  • mentally engaged?
  • distracted?
  • socially connected?

“Marketers aim to understand the needs, wants, and behaviors of their target audience in order to effectively promote and sell their products or services, Official Insights remarks on Reddit.com.  “This often involves researching and analyzing data on consumer demographics, psychographics, and buying habits.”

One study conducted by professors at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that content inspiring awe, surprise, or humor is much more likely to be shared. But audiences differ, and, as content marketers, we need to know our target audience’s pain points, desires, and frustrations, in order to understand what emotional context we should include in our content, contentwriters.com cautions. Going even further, emotional context actually includes phrase and word choices, even terms, and acronyms with which your readers are familiar.” BrainyGirl Kim Garnett points out.

The best way to “make it personal,” Maxwell advises in  his book, The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication, is “to pair what they do know with what they don’t know.”  Learn the organizational culture of the group, their personal experiences, even their national origin, then communicate the insights about you have about that already acquired knowledge.

Our Say It For You content writers have come to understanding that our purpose is not to  admonish, warn, frighten, or even inspire online readers, who have arrived at our site on a fact-finding mission, looking specifically for information The tone of the content should assume that with information presented in a way that mentally engages them and forges a connection, they will move forward with action.

As we plan our content, while we aren’t aiming at presenting an readers with an escape, we do want to make them feel both mentally engaged and socially connected – with our business owner and professional practitioner clients, that is!

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