by Dan Kelsall
"Please buy our product" posts.
Just take a minute to think about how much content you see on a daily basis. Take a minute to imagine how difficult it is for new brands, products and services to stand out in that constant blitz of shite. Take a minute to think how absolutely fucking pointless your boring corporate blog is.
And if you don't start doing something about it now, I'm afraid to say that things will only get worse.
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20. A FUCKING GOOD VOICE
When it comes to tone of voice, you know what I’ve found works consistently?
Authenticity. Urgh. That word again.
Now, I know you’re probably rolling your eyes right now. Every marketing knobhead and their dog harps on about creating authentic content. What they don’t tend to be good at is explaining what ‘authentic’ means.
You’ve probably tried to create authentic content. And it’s probably bombed. That’s why you bought this book, I’m guessing. You tried to put some personality into your copy, or images, or videos and nobody gave a fuck, so you stopped trying and went back to the corporate garbage you were producing before. And, honestly, I get it. It’s disheartening. It takes a lot of effort to produce material and when it achieves very little, it feels like a massive waste of time. Which, I won’t lie to you, it is.
Getting your tone of voice right isn’t easy. If it were, we'd all be amazing writers, designers and videographers, and we’d be swimming in so much incredible content that incredible content wouldn’t be incredible anymore. It takes time.
Now, when I talk about content, and tone of voice, I’m talking about it with marketing your brand in mind. I’m not talking about content for white papers, or academic courses, or law text books. That’s not my gig, and never will be. This is about producing content, and a tone of voice, that helps you to sell more products, or services or whatever.
And do you know how you do that?
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Firstly, be human. Talk like a fucking person. Bin off the initialisms, acronyms and jargon.
Secondly, keep it simple. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, using big words and unnecessary language will just alienate people and will do nothing for you other than ensure you come across as a bit of a wanker.
Thirdly, never underestimate the power of humour. In any market. And I mean any market.
Your tone of voice is what you'll become known for. People might not necessarily remember everything that you write, but they will remember they way you write and how it makes them feel. And what I've found is, in some industries, particularly the corporate ones where nobody really produces any stand out content, making an impact can be as simple as changing your tone of voice.
Like I said, you need to take risks, but for many of you, small changes will make a big impact.
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21. A FUCKING GOOD HOOK
Every single piece of online content needs a hook. Period.
Let me repeat that for those at the back, with an F-bomb added in for impact.
EVERY. PIECE. OF. CONTENT. NEEDS. A. FUCKING. HOOK.
What's a hook? It's the first line, or title of content that is written in such a way that it draws readers, or viewers, in.
Call it clickbait, call it a hook, call it sensationalist bullshit, call it whatever you want. It's the only way you'll build an audience quickly. Especially at first.
You see, I think clickbait and hooks are different. Not in the way they're written, but in the content that they lead to. If you write something controversial, or sensationalist, and it doesn't lead to something of value to your audience, that's clickbait. If it does lead to something valuable, in my eyes, that's a hook.
And don't assume value is just new information, or insights or whatever, as most people do. Value comes in many forms.
Making them laugh, making them cry, giving them stories that they can relate to and not feel alone in their thoughts - they're all things that are valuable to your audience.
Like I always say, content marketing is supposed to drive sales.
And when do people buy?
When they feel good. Or they buy to avoid pain, which, in turn, makes them feel good. They buy when they feel connected, or part of something. And they buy when other people do, because when a product, service or brand is trusted by loads of their peers, they're more likely to trust it too. We all suffer from herd 65
mentality. That's why I harp on so much about not fucking selling. You shouldn't have to sell. If you make a connection with your audience, they'll buy when they're ready. You've already done the hard part by getting them to buy into you.
A hook is a massive part of that. If you don't draw your readers in, it doesn't matter how much value your content contains, it'll be a waste of time, because no-one will bother reading it. And if nobody reads it, nobody buys, do they?
On social media especially, you have a very small window to capture someone's attention. We're talking milliseconds. And if your title, or the first couple of lines aren't engaging enough, they've already scrolled past.
And, as your audience grows bigger and bigger, hooks become less important. I'm not saying you should revert back to shit titles and boring first lines, but once people know you for good content, your name above a post will be enough to draw them in.
"Right, so I just write some controversial shit to try and get my audience to click then?"
Not necessarily. Don't underestimate how difficult it can be to write a good hook. If you've ever tried to think up a good title for an article, you'll know already how hard it is.
Here are a few things you can try to help you come up with that killer first line or title:
- Write the piece first, then take the most polarising element of the post or article, and fashion that into a short, impactful hook.
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- If the topic of your content is controversial, funny, topical, or downright weird, just keep it simple and say it how it is.
- Use a twist. So, in the first line or title, say the complete opposite. Is the article about how important maternity pay is?
Say that you don't agree with it, then flip it around in the piece itself.
If you do what I say, and test content and keep track of what works, you'll come up with your own ways of writing hooks. And the more you write them, and the more you analyse what drove the most traffic, the more you'll become familiar with what works.
We've already talked about the amount of content we're all subjected to on a daily basis.
And that's because SEO isn't what it once was, PPC costs a fucking wedge, social advertising is sketchy and tough to get right, and email's pretty much in the fucking bin for most companies that bought shit data or whatever. So now, everyone is trying content marketing. They're trying to drive business organically. They're desperate to go viral. They want to stand out.
The hook, my content-creating, little pals, is more important than ever. If you can't hook your audience in, your content that you worked so hard to create will just get lost in that sea of complete and utter, dry, rubbish, boring, corporate crap.
And we don't want that now, do we?
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22. FUCKING GOOD CONTENT RULES
1. Stop trying to produce content on every social media platform.
If you sell false teeth, your target demographic probably aren’t on Insta, are they? Nobody wants to look at pictures of gummy old people dribbling soup onto their cardigans. Find out where your customers are and get really fucking good at one or two channels. For most B2B stuff, LinkedIn’s your man.
2. As wanky as this is going to sound, think outside the box.
And, what I mean by that is, ask yourself, “what are my competitors doing to market themselves?” and then DON’T DO
THAT. I don’t care how well it works for them. If you do the same thing, as a lot of companies seem to think they have to do, one of two things will happen. Either, you’ll produce marketing that looks like a poor man’s version
of the stuff your competitor is doing, or you’ll bring more of the same stuff to market which will bore your customers and ruin the party for everyone.
3. Start with simple changes. You don’t have to ride a zebra through a hospital, shouting, “The NHS can wank my dad!”
whilst naked and carrying a giant flag with your logo on, just to make people aware of your new healthcare software. In a lot of industries, content - and marketing efforts in general - are so ridiculously shit that even something simple like a different, casual tone of voice can make your content stand out.
4. Get your message and tone of voice right before you try anything else. You don’t need to jump straight into videos, memes, ebooks and keynote speeches. Start with really simple content. Refine it until you get a decent amount of engagement, then analyse the shit out of it until you’ve figured out what works.
Only once you know the sort of stuff your target audience react to should you start diversfying your content.
5. Stop wasting time writing million-page marketing strategies 68
before you’ve even tested your content on your market. Think up a load of ideas for content that won’t take up a shed load of time and resources, push it out, analyse what worked, and then begin to build your strategy and campaigns around the topics that resonated with the people you’re trying to reach.
6. Don’t put money behind any content before knowing that your target audience want to see it. If you have an infographic that took you 5 hours to design but only got 3 likes because, in reality, it’s shit, putting money behind it will only push it out to a wider audience, who will also think it’s shit.
7. You probably don’t have to produce as much content as
‘experts’ will have you believe. If you‘re a small business, or a business without a marketing team, you probably don’t have time to produce daily content. Being creative is taxing. If marketing isn’t your main job, you’ve only got limited time to come up with stuff. It’s much smarter to produce one piece of decent content per week that gets a good amount of engagement from your target audience, than 2 posts a day that get less interest than a dick pic on Tinder.
8. Build an audience. Content marketing isn’t a quick fix. In fact, no types of marketing are a quick fix. It takes time to build your audience, and it can take a while to start producing material that they actually want to see. But, if you take the time to capture an audience, you’ll be able to sell anything to them. That’s why, even though Kylie Jenner is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with society, she could probably come out with a brand of fake eyelashes made from the pubic hair of homeless greek men, and her fans would snap them up.
9. You don’t have to talk about subjects that relate to your product all the time. Your target market will have other interests.
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#pubelashes
Maybe your ideal customers are accountants with their own practices. They’re business owners too, so produce content that relates to them in that respect. You can even talk about hobbies, your company culture, hiring, or managing people. To build an audience, people want authentic content. Not just industry
‘expertise’.
10. Don’t buy the bullshit. In the cloudy world of marketing, full of shady agencies, tinpot qualifications, and ‘influencers’ with fake audiences, it can be easy to get drawn in by the bollocks. But don’t listen to anyone that says something like, “[insert channel here] is dead.” You see it all the time. Twitter’s dead. And yet, there are millions of people still using it every day. Postal advertising is dead. And yet, people still have letter boxes. I used to be guilty of it. But, those who say things are dead, just haven’t been creative enough. Imagine wrapping your leaflet around butt plugs and posting them through the letter boxes of potential customers. Are you honestly telling me that wouldn’t get people talking? You can have that idea for free.
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23. FUCK SUNSHINE & RAINBOWS
There are, as with anything, things that can go wrong with content. Especially when you make it personal and include the opinions and stories of those within your business.
Firstly, there are things that you might say that could damage both your company, and personal brand. You know the sort of things I mean. My rule has always been, your content should never really attack an individual. Take the piss out of stereotypes? Sure. Attack social norms? Go for it. Use celebs in weird analogies? Of course. But never get personal with people.
Never be malicious. And never, ever fucking dream of discriminating.
But that’s an obvious risk, right? We all know opinions can be dangerous. People may not take what you say as intended.
There are a few other less obvious risks though.
I always say three things. Be yourself, polarise opinion, and be honest.
But here’s the issue. If you polarise opinion outside, there is a danger you’ll polarise opinion inside your organisation too. The guys working for you will also see your content. There’s a chance they won’t agree with the things you say. Or, for that matter, the things your company says. That can cause problems.
It’s also important that, if you’re going to talk about your company on social media, especially when it comes to things like culture and management, you better be sure that you practice what you preach. Think about it for a second. Imagine writing an article on why it’s a dickhead move to micromanage employees. On how getting the best out of your people means 71
leaving them to do their job. But, in reality, you have the self-awareness of a brain damaged goldfish, and didn’t realise that most of your team feel as though you stifle their work by breathing down their necks every 5 minutes. What do you think that will do to your working relationships when those who work for you think the content you’re pushing out to the rest of the world is complete bollocks?
Do you see what I’m getting at? Transparency has to exist on both sides of the business. What you push out has to paint an honest picture of what actually goes on inside your organisation.
Otherwise, whilst your sales go from strength to strength, your internal culture will nosedive.
“So, Dan. Why end on a negative, you massive fun gobbler?”
Because that’s reality.
You don’t have to always end on a high note. You don’t have to be positive, for the sake of being positive.
There are risks to this, like anything else. But if you don’t take those risks, your content will remain vanilla.
Dry.
Boring as fuck.
And if you sit on the fence all the time, no one will give a shit about you. They'll become indifferent to your brand.
So be bold. Be daring. Try stuff that no one else has. Be weirder than a bat’s vagina.
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After all, it’s our differences that make us stand out.
And so I leave you with something that was said at the ‘Take Fucking Risks’ event in London.
This isn’t word for word, as I’d had a few beers, but here goes.
“If you always act based on knowledge, you’ll never do anything different.”
How fucking true is that?
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24. FUCK THIS, I'M OUTTA HERE
Well, there you have it. My thoughts on content.
Sure I probably need to wash my mouth out with soap, and yes, there is a possibility I'm edging closer and closer to career suicide with every weird piece of content I create, but hopefully you got something from this. Hopefully, in amongst the profanity, sexual references and bizarre analogies you managed to find something valuable.
Because although I may not be everyone's cup of tea, a lot of what I say works. And, people, I cannot stress this enough; creating good content isn't rocket science. We all have it in us to build an audience. Admittedly, some of us a smaller audience that consists of our mum, our Grandma, the kid with the strange eye from school and an anonymous stalker, but still an audience.
Lastly, let me give you my final rule, which applies t
o both content creation and life.
Whether you're white, black, tall, short, fat, thin, skinny, hench, female, male, gender fluid, a model, uglier than Theresa May whilst eating a lemon, a sexually-diseased sheep fondler, straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, disabled, not disabled, mentally ill, not mentally ill (even though we're all mentally ill if you think about it), religious, atheist, an actual god, a foot fetishist, dyslexic, the best writer on the planet, a tory, a TV chef, a traffic warden, a creepy lifeguard, a vegan, a children's entertainer, a millionaire, on the dole, a house owner or homeless...don't be a dickhead.
If you think that a piece of content could paint you as a dickhead in any way, I'd advise you not to do it. And that's coming from me. Don't discriminate. Don't attack an underdog. And try not to attack an individual.