the content mint newsletter

Sometimes, when our content provides a very pointed form of value, it can be helpful to build a distinct motif system which will unify that content separately from the rest of the business. In other words, brand the content.

Here are a handful of benefits of branded content:

maintain focus

Well-branded content can help keep your focus on the primary value you are providing each time you go to create something new.

set expectations

Branding helps others quickly get an idea of what they can expect to gain from your content. If you have complicated or nested content system, it can also help the audience navigate the to the particular value they are looking for.

develop tone

Motifs almost always carry an emotional component to them, so developing a brand system that conveys the tone you want the content to carry can help ensure the message of the content carries the same tone. (Which makes sense because we already know that the entire environment of the content is the message.)

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All that being said, what branding ultimately does is set up guardrails for value. It creates a motif system which delineates what is in and what is out according to the proposed value associated with that system.

For those of us who are trying to maximize the value and minimize the waste in our content, these guardrails can be very useful tools.

All art (and, in a sense, all life) is established on motifs.

A motif is simply a single element which is used repeatedly to establish connections between things and form a sense of unity between them.

The form of repeated arches or pillars in a cathedral, big bad wolves and evil step-mothers in fairy tales, and the association of the musical “baaa dum!” with the shark in Jaws are all examples of motifs.

Meanwhile, in the world of business, the systematic application of motifs goes by another name: branding.

Typically these branding motifs are visual: logos, colors, fonts, etc.

But motifs can just as easily be based in ideas and concepts as in sight and sound cues.

So, beyond your brand’s design playbook, what are the recurring ideological and conceptual motifs that could be found throughout your content?

I would venture to say it’s worth hashing those out just as carefully as you choose acceptable heading and paragraph fonts.

As we saw a few days ago, the final stage of the publishing process is marketing.

Marketing is what you do to point people towards something they might find valuable.

Content is one way to achieve this “pointing.” This is commonly referred to as content marketing.

When the primary value of a piece of content is raising awareness of value to be found elsewhere, around here we say that it has “extrinsic value.” On the other hand, when content has value in-and-of itself, we call that “intrinsic value.”

But, if your content does possess intrinsic value, you might eventually find that you need more content dedicated to “point” to that value extrinsically.

This is essentially the difference between “content marketing” and “publishing,” the former markets something else, while the latter needs its own marketing.

pre (prefix)
before

pare (v.)
to remove excess
to decrease something by small degrees until it is of a desired size

pre · ​pare (v.)
the act of removing excesses or irrelevancies before something is considered ready to use or present to others
q.v.: edit, prune, sculpt

When it comes to spending our time and attention, “waste” comes in (at least) three forms:

opportunity cost

This is the underlying factor of all forms of time waste. This is what we feel when, after spending time in one manner, we retrospectively feel like we would have derived greater gain from doing something else.

net negative experience

This has to do with the residual emotional effect of an experience. Even if we achieve the greatest ROI from our time, if we are left with a negative feeling about it, we will probably still consider our time better spend elsewise.

unmet expectations

And further, even if our time yielded a positive gain and a net positive emotional experience, still, if we feel the experience fell short of the expected or promised experience, we may nonetheless consider it to have been a waste based solely on the prospect of an imagined opportunity cost which has been left unrealized.

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Admittedly, “waste” is just as subjective of a judgement as “value” is, but understanding and keeping in mind these three aspects of attentional waste can help us to mitigate as much of it as possible when developing our content.

If you were to consider your content as something of a formal publication, in addition to standards, you might also consider implementing processes for distribution.

According to Wikipedia, here are the various stages that are involved in modern publishing:

1. Commissioning
2. Writing
3. Copy editing
4. Design
5. Copywriting
6. Typesetting
7. Proofreading
8. Correction cycles
9. Indexing
10. Final corrections
11. Web publishing
12. Prepress
13. Printing
14. Post press
15. Distribution
16. Marketing

Not all of these apply to every type of publishing, but if you get creative I bet you can find a principle underlying each phase that could be useful to adopt to your content.

So . . .

What stages are involved in your current content publication process?

Before the internet, if you wanted to establish your credentials as an expert or distribute your thinking and insights to those who might find it valuable, you had more or less two options:

1. become a public speaker at events, or
2. get involved with a publisher

While not eliminating either, the internet has democratized both of those options.

But why hasn’t the internet eliminated these methods altogether? And why, for the most part, do both public speaking and traditional publishing still carry more credential weight than simply posting content online?

There are doubtless a myriad of reasons, but I think most of them probably boil down to this:

They impose a rigid set of standards that must be adhered to before the content can be distributed to and consumed by others.

Here’s the thing about standards though: all standards are artificial.

In other words, you can create your own standards for your content. The key is showing a visible, tangible threshold of quality and restraint in scope regarding what kinds of content is allowed to be released.

The more visible the standard, whatever that standard is, the higher the credibility of the source.

Try it out for yourself. Evaluate your level of trust in the people and brands that you follow, and then compare that trust to the amount of visible standards in the content that they post. Let me know if it checks out.

WARNING: Cheesy opportunistic Halloween post ahead > > >

Digital marketing is like Halloween. (*Eye roll*, but let’s see where it goes. . .)

Every person and business has their lights on trying to one up each other by giving away the best free “candy” in the form of amusing or entertaining content.

And it’s great! The more houses you go to, the more full your basket becomes, and the more satiated your entertainment sweet tooth gets.

It’s a great way to have some casual short-term interactions with neighbors that you don’t really know, hardly ever talk to, and don’t really intend to see again.

But, if you actually want to develop an ongoing relationship with a neighbor, you don’t invite them over any day of the year for free candy.

You invite them over for dinner.
(And maybe have some free candy for them as a bonus.)

So, what are you serving for your potential customers?

When you are having conversations about your business in-person, start taking notes.

Pay attention to when people start to lean in, or when they seem to become disinterested.

Pay attention to the specific words that cause those reactions, or the specific topics that people get excited about.

Conversations are one of the best ways to get live feedback on your messaging.

Once you’ve started to compile those notes on messaging and phrases that you know make people pay attention, then you can start thinking about ways to set those messages in stone through your content.

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P.S. A second exercise would be to compare those notes to your existing messaging and see where you find inconsistencies or areas which could be better aligned with your most effective conversations.

Yesterday as I was writing about the medium and the message of McDonald’s, I started to think about the message that McDonald’s tries to convey through its content, i.e. its marketing. We all know what it is:

I found this interesting because what it means is that the gist of McDonald’s marketing is based on an assertion of desirability, or “goodness.”

“I’m lovin’ it” roughly translates to: “see, it is good to eat.”

This seems ironic when put in context of our discussion yesterday, in which we discovered that the underlying message of McDonald’s business and offering is “fast and cheap.”

Now, when you see the words “fast” and “cheap” together, “good” usually follows, but only in reference to the classic trilemma:

Fast, cheap, or good. Pick two.

It’s as if McDonald’s knows that their “meta-message” is “fast and cheap,” so they use their marketing to fill in the “good” which is naturally assumed to be incompatible with the first two.

Notice though that McDonald’s rarely advertises directly for “fast and cheap” in their marketing. They don’t have to. It is the message which already permeates everything they do.

In other words, it’s what McDonald’s doesn’t say which turns out to be their real message.