The Steven Wright Guide to

Content Marketing

by Brian Clark

I went to a restaurant that serves “breakfast at any time”. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. ~Steven Wright

Comedian Steven Wright is often credited with launching an entirely new genre of stand-up comedy. His dead pan, monotone delivery of clever and kooky one-liners is always with a straight face, and no one had seen anything like that before he burst on the comedy scene in the 80s.

You might assume that Wright’s style is a concocted stage persona, but the truth is a bit more interesting. Wright delivered his jokes that way when he first started simply because (a) that’s the way he speaks, and (b) he was trying to get the words out right.

According to Wright:

In my early sets I would have a straight face because I was scared of being onstage and I was trying to remember my act so I was just concentrating seriously on saying the material the right way. And when you do something serious, that’s just how you look.

In other words, content matters.

Here are five of Steven Wright’s wisecracks that contain wisdom for content marketers:

“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.”

You’ve heard all the blogging nonsense… post every day, post five times a week, post twice a week, but always on the same two days. Bah.

Post when you’ve got something interesting to say. Post when you have content that furthers the aims of your business. Post when you’ve got something that will go viral and bring you tons of links and new subscribers. Most of all, post something of value to your intended audience.

Or don’t post.

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”

If you’re staring out the window waiting for a great new idea, I’m afraid you might be in for a content dry spell. Great ideas come from discovering new perspectives in your field of expertise, and making new connections with concepts and ideas outside your subject area.

Dig deeper than everyone else for a fresh angle. Broaden your perspective by immersing yourself in the ideas of people you don’t agree with. Read more fiction, subscribe to unrelated RSS feeds, go watch a comedy show.

How else are you going to notice the cowbell?

“Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don’t have film.”

My guess is you’re noticing interesting connections and potential hooks several times a day, but you’re just not getting them down on paper for later use. “Sitting down to write” is the last part of the process… the ideas have to come first.

Here’s what Wright says about it:

Whenever anyone wakes up in the morning till when you go to sleep, like a thousand pieces of information go past you. Like, you’re going to get coffee, you read something on a bulletin board, you have a conversation with someone who says a word, or you hear some concept and just some of those things just jump out to me as jokes. I can’t sit down at a desk and write jokes. They come from me reacting to my surroundings.

Unless your memory is exceptional, don’t let your best content ideas slip away during the course of the day. Preserve them in a way that works for you.

“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.”

To be an effective content marketer, you’ve got to try new things. Not everything will work as well as you might hope, but if you don’t try unique new things, you’re doomed to wannabe land. The key is to try things out, and pay careful attention to what works and what doesn’t. Your audience will tell you.

Don’t get attached to a certain tactic or approach if the audience doesn’t respond. Wright, like all comedians, tries out new material on stage. His rule is that if a new joke fails to get a laugh three times, it’s gone—no matter how funny he thinks it is.

I don’t think it’s wrong; it’s just that they don’t agree. They being the audience. They’re like a bunch of editors and they don’t know it.

“The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.”

Content marketing within the realm of social media is extremely powerful, but it does have a downside. Any time people are involved, there’s room for ugliness and stupidity.

Whether it’s the hateful little boys from Digg, or comment spammers, or clueless types who don’t bother to read your content carefully before commenting, such is the life of the content marketer. Don’t let it get to you… its all part of the game.

At the end of the day, you’re building an asset with your content. With that perspective, it’s easy to ignore the flotsam in the gene pool.

Finally…

Remember that you produce content for a reason, not for its own sake. You’re doing a lot of hard work as a content marketer, and it’s easy to get distracted by the ancillary aspects of blogging (like trying to impress your peers instead of speaking to your prospects). Your content is designed to promote you or your business… all the other stuff is just excess baggage.

Or as Wright says:

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

About the Author: Brian Clark is the founding editor of Copyblogger, and co-founder of DIY Themes and Lateral Action. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

The Steven Wright Guide to Content Marketing — Copyblogger

The Matrix Guide to Content Marketing

by Sonia Simone

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

No, this is not going to be a post about what kind of bloggers Morpheus, Trinity and The Architect would be. That would be cute, but not terribly useful.

But I will use Neo, Agent Smith, Spoon Boy and Persephone as symbols of a different type of matrix. A matrix that allows you to see things for what they really are and become more effective.

I’m talking about the kind of communication matrix you build when you work with a pricy consulting firm. It’s abstract, but when you sit down to fill in the abstractions, you’ll find that this “30,000 foot view” helps keep you on track. It shows you exactly where to focus your attention to get the best payoff from the time and work you put into content marketing.

Before you can build your own matrix, you need to know two things: what you’re good at and what’s important to your customers. The best way to find both sets of answers is to ask your best current customers. Use an online survey, or just watch blog and forum comments coming from the people who are your biggest fans today. (Triple bonus points if those individuals currently buy something from you.)

Your matrix has four quadrants. Everything you do with your blog and your business goes into one of these sectors. To make them easy to remember, and to shamelessly exploit a pop culture reference, I’ve given each quadrant a name from the Matrix movies.

Good and Important / Neo

Neo items are things you do well and that are important to your customers. (Not things that are important to you.)

The Neo sector is where you’ll find most of the material for your content marketing. Spend most of your time talking about what you do well and what matters to your readers.

Do not, however, thump your chest and brag about how wonderful you are.

Instead, tell stories that show how you’ve helped your readers with what matters most to them. Take deep dives to explore benefits that are especially relevant to your content community. Create case studies for each type of customer you serve, and show specifically how your product or service benefits those customers.

In case you’re wondering, yes, you’re going to repeat yourself. That’s fine; strategic repetition will help your message sink in. About 80% of your content marketing should touch on the Neo quadrant.

Bad and Important / Agent Smith

Agent Smith items are things you don’t do very well, and that matter to your customers.

What you do communicates much more than what you say. When you’re confronting Agent Smith, you have to communicate by taking action.

In other words, fix the problem.

If you have a great product but your fulfillment house can’t manage to get it shipped to your customers, that has to be fixed before you can move forward. If your t-shirts look great but the color bleeds in the wash, make it right before you try to sell any more.

Know when communication is not your problem. Never, ever try to “spin” your way out of an Agent Smith problem.

Don’t pretend you don’t have Agent Smith issues. Everyone has Agent Smith issues. Be transparent, address them frankly, but most important, get them corrected.

Good and Unimportant / Spoon Boy

Spoon Boy items are things you do well, but that don’t actually matter very much to customers.

There are some things you’re really good at. They might even be essential to running your business well. Maybe your Web site loads amazingly quickly and your shopping cart is state of the art. Maybe your business model offers terrific profit margins. Maybe your manufacturing process is the coolest thing since the invention of the assembly line.

Customers don’t care. They might notice if it’s awful, but mostly it’s not on their radar.

If you talk about Spoon Boy items at all, don’t make your communication too visible. It’s fine to put information out for customers who want to know more, but don’t waste prime real estate. The people who care will dig to find it, and no one else needs to be distracted by it.

Bad and Unimportant / Persephone

The Persephone quadrant covers things you don’t do well, and that are not that important.

Surprisingly, Persephone can actually make herself very useful to you. You have three options with items in the Persephone sector: you can use them as confessional material, you can fix them, or you can quit doing them.

Persephone items make excellent “confessions” to build trust. Nothing creates better rapport than confessing to a fault that your customers don’t care about. For example, if your ebook formatting looks like a third-grader did it, address that right up front. Make fun of yourself a little, and “warn” customers that you’re not going to win any design awards. You get points for not being a self-congratulatory blowhard and you cut criticism off at the pass.

If you feel like it and it isn’t too hard, you can also correct Persephone items to show you’re working on yourself. Again, this shows modesty and a willingness to admit you’re far from perfect. These are very likeable qualities, and likeability is always a plus in content marketing.

Just make sure Agent Smith has been dealt with first. Nothing is more aggravating than a company that fixes trivialities and leaves the major rage-inducers untouched. (Hello, telecom industry.)

Finally, look over your Persephone quadrant every once in awhile to see if there are tasks you should just quit doing altogether, either because you outsource them or because they don’t need to be done at all.

Take the red pill

This matrix is almost completely useless in the abstract. But it’s insanely useful when you actually fill in the blanks.

This is a lousy time to try and make money in a blue pill fantasy land. You need to learn to see your business as it really is. Get real about your marketing, your business, your content and your customers.

Identify what you’re good at and what you aren’t, and what’s important and what isn’t. Until you know those four things, you won’t be able to shape your content marketing to get the greatest possible benefit–for yourself and your readers.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is an Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

The Matrix Guide to Content Marketing — Copyblogger