Fucking Good Content

by Dan Kelsall

  The awareness of your brand will grow as a by-product.

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  11. FUCK LEADS

  Wait, what?

  Fuck leads?

  "But, Dan, you've been harping on throughout this entire book about how marketing people are shit if they don't bring in anything tangible."

  Which is true.

  But that doesn't necessarily mean leads. Well, not at first anyway.

  Put it this way. How many times have you made a purchase after reading a social media post? Rarely, right? How about a blog post on a website? Same?

  Now, when it comes to B2C, I'm pretty sure tons of people make purchases when they watch videos from their favourite influencers, because the we all know the general public are a bit dim and can't make decisions for themselves, but it's a little different when it comes to B2B.

  Because when it's a business purchase, it's never an impulse buy, is it? It's generally pretty measured. They need to know miles more about you before deciding to pick up that phone, or fill in an enquiry form on your website, never mind part with some of that tiny budget that they only got after pulling the ops director with the hairy mole and yellow pits at the Christmas party.

  And because of that fact, it can take a while to convince them to buy. That's why, when you first start releasing content into the wild, you can't suddenly expect the leads to come rolling in.

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  It's important to measure your success in other ways. At least at first. Otherwise, you're going to get pissed off very quickly.

  Like what?

  Well, engagement at first. Although engagement doesn't mean success exactly, it's still critical when you're building an audience. If you're getting a decent amount of engagement, the numbers are consistent, and a good amount of those engaging with your content are your target market, that's something to celebrate. You're well on your way to building an audience. Pat yourself on the head and have a fruit pastille.

  Next, is that resulting in an increase in activity elsewhere? More profile or page visits on social, rising follower numbers, more website visits, an increase in subscriptions to your newsletter?

  Remember, if more people are checking out what you do, that's a good sign.

  Another thing to keep note of is whether people are actively reaching out. Are you getting private messages from people in your target market telling you how they love your content? Are they tagging you in posts? Sharing your articles? Sending little packages to your house with drugs and used underwear in? All of these things are positive.

  Past that, it's important to remember that sometimes converting leads isn't as simple in some industries as it is in others.

  I'm in content marketing, so when I write a piece of content that does well, I am literally displaying my services directly. I don't have to talk about what it is I do. I just do it and, as a by-product of creating a good piece of content, I get regular leads.

  It's not that simple if you sell software, or office sanitary bins.

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  You see, what some of you might need to do is be a bit more proactive, and continue conversations with those that reach out to you, or that engage with your content regularly.

  If you strike a chord with someone and you get to the point of discussing your product, it's either time to meet, or time to pass them over to your sales guys if you're a bigger business.

  But again, you shouldn't need to sell here. If you're having real conversations with your target market, and taking a genuine interest in what they have to say, that should naturally lead onto talking about your product or service eventually.

  The point of this bit is to get you to realise that content marketing is a process. You can't expect a ton of leads from a few months of posting stuff on LinkedIn, or writing a couple of articles on Medium.

  Be happy with the small wins first.

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  12. FUCK COLLABORATION

  OK, so I might step on a few toes with this one, but collaborations with other content creators are only good sometimes.

  Trust me, I've made this mistake enough to know.

  The thing is, it's all well and good being asked to do a podcast, be featured in some interview, or contribute to an article. It's flattering almost.

  But there are several things you need to consider before doing this.

  Firstly, does the person producing the content have their own audience? Do they get a lot of engagement or listeners or whatever? If they're releasing podcast episodes every week, but their listener numbers aren't increasing, and each time they push it out on social nobody really engages with it, you need to ask yourself whether it's worth doing. I understand the value from their perspective. Chances are, you'll share it because you're featured in it, and that in turn with attract your audience to their content. But that does far more for them than it does for you.

  I'll give you an example. I push out content 1-2 times a week. I get around 5-10 leads per week. Minimal effort, and a pretty decent return. I don't really need to do anything else to keep the business growing at a steady rate. However, if somebody else with a decent audience approaches me with the chance to do a video or podcast, it probably makes sense. I can tap into their audience and further grow my personal brand, whilst they can tap into my audience and further grow their own. But there's little point in me spending valuable time collaborating with people who don't already have an audience, because it won't really help 39

  me grow any faster.

  Sounds big headed, doesn't it?

  But what you have to realise is, we're all here to make money.

  We all have limited time and, when it comes to marketing, the bigger and more engaged your audience is, the more valuable that time is. Giving it away willy nilly is daft.

  Now I'm not saying don't help other people out. Occasionally, that's cool. But if you're spending half your time recording podcasts for completely unknown channels and sharing the content of people that don't have an audience, not only will it not add anything to your own marketing efforts, but it can actually be detrimental to them.

  Why? Because, like I said earlier, being creative is hard.

  Anything that takes away from your own creative efforts has to be worth it. Rather than spending a day contributing to someone's shit article that nobody's going to read, you could be putting those efforts into creating a quality bit of content for your own channel.

  And I guarantee that if you start sharing shit content with your audience just because you were featured in it and you feel like you owe the person that created it, they'll begin to get sick of it.

  They'll move on to someone or some brand that they find more interesting. Audiences are fickle. If you start pushing out garbage, they'll drop you quicker than if someone handed them a pair of anal beads and said, "They've just been up John Prescott's arse, mate."

  So, content creators, get a bit selfish. The bigger your audience gets, the more collaboration requests you'll get.

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  #johnprescottsanalfetish

  13. FUCK SELLING

  Put your hand up if you like being cold-called?

  Anyone? No?

  How about spammed over email?

  What about getting stopped in the street by some gimpy student trying to get you to donate a quid a month to a charity that gives wigs to children born without shins?

  I thought not.

  Well, it’s exactly the same when all you put out on social media is stuff about how your company’s anal bleaching kit is better than your competitor’s.

  Nobody gives a shit. People hate being sold to. But, guess what?

  People like to buy.

  “So, people want to buy but I can’t sell to them? Fuck’s sake, Dan, you better start making sense or I’m going to roundhouse you in the testicles.”

  I know. It’s hard to get your head around. The thing is, people don’t like pressure. They want to buy when they’re ready.

  So, instead of selling, the smart move is to produce cont
ent that resonates with your target audience. Content that provides value, fosters debate and, by saying something your customers wish they could say, helps you to build trust, respect and admiration within your market.

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  And when those customers are ready to buy, where do they go?

  To a brand, or individual, that they trust, A.K.A you.

  Make sense?

  Because they’d rather buy off you. It’s the old cliché, ‘people buy people’.

  You see, no one trusts brands anymore. Particularly not new ones. That’s another reason branded content never does particularly well. It feels contrived. It feels like no matter what a brand pushes out, they’re always trying to sell.

  Everyone’s big on ‘personal brands’ at the minute.

  And I agree. The way to rocket your B2B marketing efforts is to forget about your brand for the time being, and use your people.

  Use their personalities to build different, smaller audiences within your target market. If their content hits the right people, your customers will find your brand, and products, as a consequence of the mint stuff they produce.

  The problem is, however, people get it so fucking wrong. Most attempts at personal branding involve posting motivational quotes and plagiarising other people’s content.

  But you’re not the motivational love child of Tony Robbins and Gary Vee. You’re you.

  And there is stuff you can say that will massively appeal to people within your target audience. It doesn’t have to appeal to everyone in your target audience, though.

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  That’s the beauty of having multiple personalities putting out content.

  Different parts of your market will be drawn to the different people in your organisation.

  And they’ll buy off them. They don’t have to like you all.

  It only takes a prospect to like one of you, to buy into one of you, to resonate with the content that one of you pushes out, to decide to start a conversation, or even to make a purchase.

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  14. FUCK BRAND CONSISTENCY

  Marketers used to believe that all B2B content had to be branded. “Brand consistency”, they used to call it. But it’s bullshit. Having the same colour and rubbish spiel on every piece of content you produce won’t bring in business.

  Marketing has changed. The people within your company will have opinions. Knowledge. Stories to tell. Stuff that will resonate with your target audience. Well, some of them will anyway.

  There will also be people in your business that are about as about as interesting as a Friday night in watching repeats of University Challenge with a falafel wrap and a glass of water.

  They’re probably not the best choice as content producers.

  And of course you can have a bit of the branded stuff. But without an audience, who the fuck’ll read it?

  Like I said earlier. The brand sits behind those people. It’s on their social profiles. It’s subtly placed at the end of ebooks. And it’ll be found if they’re pushing out top quality content to your target customers. Their job is to capture little pockets of your market. To create small audiences that love the stuff they have to say.

  Why? Because they’ll like the cut of an employee’s jib, see amazing content from them all the time, and go and check out what it is they do. Even if that customer isn’t ready to buy yet, they’ll be aware of your product or service and, when the time’s right, they’ll buy.

  Let’s go back to the point I made earlier about how you’ll never get ‘everyone’ to buy from you.

  It’s impossible.

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  What you want is to attract the customers that are like you. Their values are the same, their opinions similar, and their business objectives mimic your own.

  Why? Because, in short, it’s miles easier to work with customers you gel with than those you don’t.

  So, what’s the best way to attract a likeminded audience to your content?

  Yep, you guessed it. Be yourself.

  “But what if I put myself out there, and people don’t like me?

  What if I piss some potential customers off?”

  So what? How do you know they’d buy from you in the first place? And, if they did, I’d guess that if they’re not the type of person you’d get on with, chances are they’re likely to become a difficult customer.

  They won’t get your jokes. They won’t resonate with the stuff you say. They’ll be harder to talk around when things go tits up.

  And this is business. Things always go tits up.

  By producing content that attracts potential customers that are like you, you’ll begin to build an audience. The more that audience grows, the more likely others are to notice. And eventually, your company’s brand will surpass your personal brand, and whether or not people like you won’t matter anymore.

  Plenty of people don’t like Branson, but it doesn’t stop them using that shite train service, does it?

  In fact, this is probably the wankiest thing that I’ve ever written, 45

  but people need to stop trying to be Virgin, and be Branson instead.

  Actually, fuck that. FUCK. THAT.

  Now please excuse me whilst I go and have a cold shower.

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  15. FUCK SCHEDULING TOOLS

  Hootsuite. Buffer. TweetDeck. We could go on for ages.

  For years, when it came to social media content, scheduling your posts was the thing to do. It’d save time, ensure consistency, make sure that your account was regularly active, and allow you to concentrate on more ‘important’ things.

  But most of the time, the best content is reactive. At least to a certain extent. It plays on the ‘now’, not the ‘2 months ago’. You can’t create current content, weeks in advance. In fact, I’d argue that this ‘schedule-and-forget-it’ mentality is one of the most detrimental things you can do when it comes to content creation.

  Why is content seen as something that you need to get out of the way? Of all marketing, it is categorically the most import bit; the one thing everyone needs to get right before doing anything else.

  Still not buying it?

  I tell you what, let’s address each of the ‘advantages’ of scheduling tools one by one, shall we?

  1. They save time.

  Yes and no. It saves time in the short term. But in the long run, you’ll have produced so much shit content that you won’t get anywhere near the results you could have had, if only you’d spent a bit more time each week pushing out less content, but of a higher quality. There ain’t a tool out there that can automate that for you, unfortunately.

  2. They help you post consistently.

  Yeah. They can. But my argument here is that posting old, badly 47

  produced content regularly is, more often than not, about as good as not posting at all.

  3. They allow you to concentrate on more important things.

  What’s more important than content? Pulling your plonker? If your content’s shit, it’ll negatively affect everything else. Do you think your paid ads will be as effective with shit messaging? Do you reckon your social account will be growing as quick as it could if every post is exactly the same as the crap your competition put out?

  I get it. It’s hard work thinking of good content all the time. You’d rather create and automate posts for the next 3 months in bulk, leaving you more time to read stuff like this crappy book. But the thing is, your entire strategy rests upon your content.

  Shit content, shit marketing.

  Simple as that, love.

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  16. FUCK OPINIONS

  Like with parenting, or football, or how to become ‘successful’, everyone has an opinion.

  And that’s fine to a certain extent.

  But, whether you’re a client, or a creative, or a founder of a startup, or a marketing director or anyone else for that matter, 90% of the ideas that you come up with will be shit. And they’ll fail. In fact, probably more than 90%.

  T
hat’s why, for the most part, opinions mean nothing when it comes to marketing.

  Let’s say you’ve built a new website, and you and your copywriter are arguing about the landing page text. You can spend all day bickering about what will and won’t work, but you only ever really know what will work when it actually does.