You Ask, I Answer: How to Make Epic Content Marketing?

In today's episode, Brian asks the very interesting question. What do you try to do with your content marketing to make it epic? I don't in the sense of if we look at the three E's of content marketing, uh engaging, uh, educational, and entertaining. I'm not necessarily all that great at entertaining. In fact, I know I'm not very good at it at entertaining, right?

You're not here for the music or the lively commentary or the dancing or whatever. Right? The the entertaining angle is largely missing from my content marketing. I am aware of that, and I am aware of my limitations as a person, as a creator. That's not my thing.

That's not my jam. And for the very best content, the content that does really well on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or whatever, you need at least two of the three, right? You need to be have something that's emotionally engaging, entertaining, and educational. Two out of the three are mandatory. You can do one out of three, and you'll have okay content, right?

And of course, if you have none of the three, you have terrible content. But one out of three isn't good enough anymore. You need at least two out of three. And if you want to succeed in a uh disproportionate manner, you need all three E's. I feel like I do okay on educational, on being able to share information that is useful and helpful to people, right?

I feel like that's in reasonably good condition. I've been working for the last four or five years on the engaging part, on sharing more things that are less purely data and more points of view and perspectives, things that come from my life, things that come from my experience, and therefore I can speak credibly on them. But on the entertainment angle, not a whole lot to show for right now. I do do some art and things here and there. Um, and of course, you know, my my background in the martial arts uh is one angle of that sort of expression, but I'm not going to start punching people on live video.

I mean, I could, but it wouldn't be brand aligned with this the kind of content I'm trying to create. So my focus is on creating content that is more and more useful, and that is more and more engaging, and leaving entertainment out for the time being until I figure out a way to make it consistent with what I want to be known for, uh, what I want my company to be known for, and most of all, um, what an audience wants. Right? What you want. When you're watching this video, why are you watching this video?

You're hoping probably to learn something, uh, like the three E's of content marketing. And the reverse side, the flip side, is what I call the 3L test, which for me as a creator and you as a creator is a test you have to apply to your content. And it stands for uh laugh, learn, love, right. As you create a piece of content, did you learn something? Right?

If you didn't learn anything when you were putting together a piece of content, and you're already the subject matter expert or would like to be, then your audience probably isn't learning anything either, right? If you just learned something and you're sharing it, like, hey, check out this cool thing I just learned about. Chances are at least somebody else in your audience also didn't know that and would benefit from learning from it. If you don't love your content that you're creating as you're creating it enough that you're willing to share it with people that have no interest in it just because you're so excited about it, that's a good sign, right? If you take a video like this and you share it with a friend who is not ever, ever, ever going to be a customer or consume your marketing.

There's that shows that you've you yourself have at least been emotionally engaged in your content, right? If you don't love your own content, no one else is gonna love it either, right? If you don't talk about it to your significant other or your dog or whatever, um, why would anybody else talk about your content with someone else? What is it that you really love about your content? Do you love making it?

And if you don't, maybe it's time to put a pause on what you're doing for content marketing and figure out an angle of something that you do love doing that can be coerced into a marketing function, right? There I there's no shortage of different ways to apply art to marketing and to business. My my graduate thesis when I graduated from business school was on telling the story of migrating a company to a modern IT infrastructure, right? And the usual format for presentations was a big big old pile of PowerPoints and some charts, some graphs and things, and uh total snooze fest, right? I ended up writing and drawing mine as a medieval tale, right?

Uh we have you know the dragons of information ignorance and uh castles of uh of IT servers. And it was at least a different creative spin on other what is otherwise a commodity topic. And I loved it so much, I was engaged with and emotionally when I made it that it resonated well. And it even had you know an aspect of that entertainment built into it. But laugh is the third one.

You know, did you your content illicit laughter uh or some kind of entertaining from you as you're making it? Right, even now as I'm recording this, thinking back to you know, my my graduate thesis does make me laugh because it was it was a ridiculous project. But at that point I was so fed up with the program, it's like you know, I'm just gonna do this. Uh and whatever grade I get is is is fine because you know as the as the joke goes, what do you call the person who graduated last their medical class school class? You call them doctor.

Um as long as I passed, that was fine. The diploma's the diploma. And thinking back through these things, the ability to tell stories and stuff, that's entertainment too. So I don't try to make my content epic, I try to pass my own test, the three L's. Did I laugh while I was making it?

Did I learn something while I was making it? Or at least, you know, uh learn a different angle. And do I love it? Do I love it so much that I will tell my dog about it? Even though my dog is never going to consume my content.

If you pass those tests, honestly, then your content's going to be great. But you've got to be honest with yourself. And if you ask most marketers to take a step back, how much did you honestly love the last email newsletter you made? The answer a substantial amount of time is going to be I got my job done. I got it.

It's off my to-do list, it's done. Well, it's done, doesn't mean you loved it. Did you love that newsletter? No. Your audience isn't going to love it either.

I was writing the Trust Insights newsletter for tomorrow, and it's not, you know, it's it's not my entire production. It's uh it's a collaborative effort, but the part that I wrote, I love that part. I truly love that part. It's uh I'm digging into how we did our version of NPS scores, and it was fun, right? To and and digging into the implications.

And I really love that part of the newsletter that I wrote. When I write my own personal newsletter, I love writing my email newsletter. It's one of the highlights of my week because I get to communicate to you what I'm working on, what I'm thinking about, um, things that might be helpful to you. And getting that feedback is is so important to use these capabilities to do some good in the world. So that's what I do.

Instead of trying to make great content marketing and make something epic, make something that passes the 3L test. Apply the 3L tests to your content. Be honest with yourself. And then once you realize your content probably doesn't pass those tests, start thinking okay, of those three dimensions, laugh, learn, love, entertain, engage, educate. Which one can you start improving today?

Really good question. Hope this was a useful answer.