You Ask, I Answer: What Makes Epic Content Marketing?

In today's episode, Brian asks, what do you think makes some content marketing epic? I'm assuming by epic we mean something that's cool or great and not the geological age. You know, with content marketing, there's the three E's of content marketing. The things, and really of all marketing, things that everything that works has to have in some combination. Entertaining, educating, and engaging.

So if your content can do at least one of those well, it's going to fulfill its perfect purpose. If it does two of those well, it's probably going to stand out. And if you can manage to do all three, uh, you'll sort of hit the jackpot. So we're talking about content that entertains, not just educates, because education is fine. The uh part imparting of information, that's a useful thing.

But we know that just because something educational doesn't mean it's fun to watch, right? College was educational, and how many of your uh college classes did you sleep through, even though education was being imparted. So that entertaining aspect really is important. To be able to engage people uh emotionally is important, right? Uh a piece of content doesn't necessarily have to uh amuse us, but it should absolutely incite some form of emotional reaction uh when it engages us.

All of our decision making as people are based on emotions, right? We make decisions emotionally, and then we look for all the the data to back that up to rationalize our decisions. So the best content does all three. You look at some of the most popular YouTube channels that don't have a single state purpose. Like, you know, obviously a musician predominantly is going to be entertaining and engaging, right?

Probably not a ton of education on those channels, but the you know the best musicians do those things very well. But look at something like, you know, for example, uh Google Foods uh on YouTube or Bow of the Fifth Column. These are channels that they educate, they do entertain and they uh engage and maybe score yourself, score your content, score other people's content on those three dimensions. You will find that the very best stuff tops the charts in all three. You know, uh in those examples, uh the channel like Google Foods, highly entertaining, right?

Just uh a bunch of uh guys cooking a lot of of beef. Uh very educational, uh, lots of experiments, lots of fun, uh, you know, trying to tenderize beef with sparkling water and a variety of other things, uh, and engaging, uh, getting people to react, uh, figuring out character arcs for their various on-air hosts. I think all those things make for really great content marketing. And then look at content marketing that doesn't top those charts, right? Uh look at your average white paper or webinar or ebook or you know, what have you.

It becomes pretty clear that it's like uh okay, this is this is educational. I you know, I have to do this, watch this thing for my job or read this thing for my job, but it's not thrilling, right? Look at the content that you have that you procrastinate on consuming, right? You know that you should read that ebook, you know you should read that documentation, but you don't. Why?

Because it may be educational, but it's not uh entertaining and it's not engaging. And that's the part that is really tricky with a lot of guidance that's been given about content marketing. There are excellent, excellent uh sources. You know, Marcus Sheridan's They Ask You Answer is a really good example. J Bear's utility uh is a really good concept, but both of those resources and all this content that's been created around being helpful as as a content marketing strategy doesn't have that nuance of being entertaining and engaging, right?

It does it you can be a hundred percent useful, but it's really hard to capture attention. And the reason for that is because these devices present the world's best entertainment and most engaging content and things, and your content has got to at least have some of those ingredients, or you're one tap away from a better choice, right? We are not competing against our competitors, right? My company, Trust Insights is not just competing against McKinsey or KPMG or whatever, another consulting firm. We're competing against Netflix, right?

We're competing against YouTube, we're competing against uh you know Brian Adams or Celine Dion or Aerosmith or Metallica. Anything that the consumer, you are spending your time on is time you're not spending with me. Right? So I have to figure out how do I earn more of that time. And it means that I need to look at all three of those dimensions.

I've got to figure out what those dimensions mean for me and my content and my brand. How do I entertain? How do I engage? How do I educate? Um, and how do I improve on all three dimensions?

There are certainly you know no shortage of gimmicks and things that you can do, but at the very least, you've got to figure out what things work for you and your brand. And that's really, really difficult because a lot of the things that work for other people, especially on the entertainment angle, uh, and even on the emotional engagement angle, they don't work for me, right? I'm not that person. I don't have that person's life experience. I don't have that person's um unique point of view on the world.

I have my own. So a big part of making your content marketing epic is making yourself individually and as a brand, as an organization, as a marketing organization, self-aware, knowing what is within reach and what is not within reach, inventorying the talents of your people, right? What skills do you have outside of marketing that you can bring into your market? And can you paint? Right?

This is you know, that's not a really good example because I did that with a water gun. Um, can you draw? Can you sing? Can you uh compose? What are the forms of expression that you're really good at, and how do you bring that into your work so that A, it's more difficult to replicate, and B, it's unique, right?

There's only one you. Even as a company, even as an organization, there's only one of your company, and the way that your marketing works is tied to that. So that's what makes content marketing epic. When you are fully aligned with your brand, yourself, your history, uh, who you are, and you are hitting all three E's, and you're doing it well. That's how you get to epic content marketing.