For as much as content creation can be integral to the success of your marketing operation, if misapplied, it can also be the death knell of your entire business. The latter portion of my statement is the part that all companies with a desire to content market should pay attention to—even more so if it is a company that deals in professional services.
As one may suspect, this observation is important for a couple of reasons, but primarily, because most businesses tend to approach content marketing as another line item to do instead of the unique, nuanced, and precise tool that it actually is. As a result, brands produce campaigns with content that does not actually serve the purpose of the campaign itself. Additionally, it does not feel like a part of the brand: If it doesn’t feel like a piece of media that is cheaply tacked onto the greater promotional apparatus, then it is irrelevant, or about something that nobody anywhere has ever given a shit about.
But then there is another part of it: that not every business will be affected by content in the same ways, which means that content not only needs different applications and approaches but for obvious reasons, differences in medium and method of delivery. For these different applications, however, comes the question of what is your content’s purpose?
I have preached—and continue to preach—the value of creating content that is informative, entertaining, or educational. But for as much as these three categories of content are straightforward, each respectively has its own hang-ups. If your content is focused on relaying information, a big hang-up in this day and age will always concern objectivity (and factuality) in your reporting of the news. If your content is entertainment—I mean, fuck dude, how do you even know if you are entertaining? But if your content is educational, how do you know if you are educating your audience? Or teaching your competition? Furthermore, how do you know the difference? Let’s talk about that.
Before elaborating, my philosophy towards this can be summed up in a sentence: there is a difference between talking about sausage, versus showing people how the sausage is made. The former involves insights, judgments, philosophies, and methodologies. The latter, however, involves actual processes, tools, techniques, and trade secrets.
The reality is that while teaching people things in the latter group may be satisfying to those seeking knowledge, it fails to teach one thing that is integral to people understanding—and developing—their own processes: it doesn’t teach people how to think. While this doesn’t matter as much with manufacturing-intensive operations where tools, employees, and opportunity cost are barriers of entry unto themselves, it almost certainly applies with people that run businesses dealing in professional services.
It can be tempting to share actual production techniques and trade secrets with your audience—and because this is valuable information. And hell, if you think your trade secrets are valuable, then they are probably value-generating for someone else as well—and a desire to share this information is not necessarily misplaced. But sharing this information should never be the backbone of your content strategy when there are other ways of creating meaningful value for people.
And look: I’m not saying that there aren’t designers, videographers, and photographers out there who are actively servicing clients and simultaneously producing regimented tutorial content—there most certainly are, and some of them are the best content creators on the internet. At the same time, however, some of these very same creators will readily admit that their tutorial content does little for their actual business—aside from creating more competition for it. This is to say that for many of these professionals, and businesses, their desire to create content is not originating from any kind of tried and true marketing purpose—but is primarily driven by a desire to teach. For such reasons, whatever proceeds they generate as a result of this content is not the success of any particular marketing operation that they are running for their professional services business—it is just revenue generated from being a teacher.
To be absolutely clear: there is nothing wrong with being a teacher, so don’t cancel me for that. It’s just that if you want for your content to be applied to a marketing purpose, then you will more times than not, want to use content to educate—and without completely tutorializing everything you do. Ultimately, at the end of an article, your prospects shouldn’t feel like they don’t need you—or worse, that they have what it takes to beat you. If either is an end result of what you are creating, then your content strategy is already fucking up.
Managing the difference between content that teaches an audience, versus educates competitors, is an avowedly complex task. I believe that a large part of what makes it difficult is gauging whether or not a piece of content’s topical focus crosses into territory that can be deleterious to business objectives. So how do we identify when we are entering damaging territory? Well, first and foremost, I am assuming that you are using content to fulfill a distinct marketing end—and are not using it to primarily fulfill a desire to teach. That is not to say that teaching, or even educating your audience, is bad—but it is to assume that teaching is not the crux of your business model.
The truth of the matter is that while there is no hard and fast way of identifying when a company is entering damaging territory with their content, this is only because the boundaries of what is considered ok will be different for each business. Establish a content policy for not just how pieces are published and run, but also for what topics are ok to discuss versus what topics are not ok. For example, a webstore selling perfumes may have a content policy regarding video content that prohibits employees from giving personal reviews on items that the company is pushing in stock. While yes, personal reviews may offer a personal touch to that web brand, one bad review can produce a glut of stock on an item that is now difficult to sell as a result of one employee. This is to say that while presenting products that the webstore sells is beneficial to its business objectives, conducting objective employee reviews can just as easily damage them. I don’t give a shit if Kayleigh thinks Dior Poison sucks—if it’s in stock, then she’s gotta find a way to sell it.
To use another example, a sustainable agriculture business may like to release written content about the merits of sustainable agriculture but may want to avoid topics that paint the industry in a bad light—such as illegal immigration, employee abuse, land theft, poor wages, and questionable living conditions. Ultimately, while your content can be objective in certain places—particularly areas that are fairly low-stakes in relation to your business model— remember that you are a company and not a newspaper. Complete objectivity—which would include your business’ sensitive goings-on—is not a prerequisite of value-generating content.
The next bit concerns how your customers feel about your brand, which can be relayed in a few different ways. Ultimately, however, you should have a clear notion of how you want to engage with your audience from an emotional level. To be clear: my words should not be taken as carte blanche to be depressing as shit in your promotions. Please don’t do that. Sarah McLaughlin and ASPCA montages of beat-up kittens and puppies keep that market locked. What I mean is using content to shape the customer’s psychology about you. Keep in mind, this is not nearly as nefarious as it seems. But think of it like this: When you have a conversation with someone, and you are just trying to get to know them, that conversation is free-flowing. But if you are having a conversation with a prospective employer, you have a regimented approach to how you talk about yourself—and your abilities—so that the person gets the right takeaways about who you are, and what you can provide to a prospective working relationship. Content works very much in the same way.
Using myself as an example, because I want to create content that is value-generating in a way that makes people want to work with me, I focus on broader topics that give a glimpse into how I think about the services that I render. Additionally, being someone who is a content marketer, I believe that I have a unique degree of flexibility to what I can provide as content. For instance, just as much as I can provide regimented business content, I can also create content for content’s sake. Why? Because it gives me the freedom to create media that showcases the full breadth and depth of my creative repertoire in communications production design. Because not every client provides the best opportunity to showcase every skill in my production stack, it also gives people some insight into the types of clients that I may be interested in working with. Thus, because of the nature of my work, content for Lair can literally be anything from a documentary series to music videos, fashion photoshoots, or reviews on tools that help people create better content. Ultimately, the goal of my content creation operation is to be enticing enough to engage prospective leads, while having “enough there” there to earn a dedicated base of readers that consume my work for information—or even entertainment.
Outro
All in all, creating content that captivates, entertains, and engages a new audience is something that can be reduced to a process. But creating content that manages the line between educating your audience, versus teaching your competition, is a task that is difficult to commit to. Ultimately, you have to decide what information is worth sharing, and what information could detract from your business objectives if it was. Additionally, it should be noted that even in circumstances where your content is educating your audience, your competition will sometimes account for your audience as well. This is natural: Sometimes it is because they want to study you, sometimes it is because they admire you, and sometimes it is because they simply want to know what you are doing. And finally, look at it like this: if you have the attention of your competitors—you’re probably doing something right.
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