the content mint newsletter

It’s all well and good to decide that you should be posting content consistently, but when you’re in the day-to-day of a busy season in your actual work, keeping up the content can be challenging.

So how do you maintain momentum?

Here are a handful of considerations:

make it a habit

The more frequent you make the habit, the less likely you are to drop the ball. This is a daily newsletter because it’s pretty easy to remember that every day I need to post something (although that doesn’t necessarily make the actual content generation any easier, tbh).

self-queue triggers

This would involve thinking of events that happen on a regular basis that you can use to “trigger” you to make new content.

For example, you might decide that every time you get back from a job site you need to post an insight of what you learned or something interesting that happened. That way you don’t have to think about posting content until you’re out in the field and are in a proper context for developing insights.

seasonality

Don’t feel like consistency necessarily means non-stop. You can fluctuate between periods of high- and low-intensity publishing, the key is keeping these period rhythmic and, if not predictable, then at least clearly communicated to the audience when you’re taking a break or start publishing again.

create a content plan

This is the most strategic approach. It means not posting any content for a period of time during which you can decide on a high-level communication goal (say, you want to change your customer mix, so you need your communication to resonate with a new demographic).

Once that goal has been defined, you can plan out the kind of communication you want to develop (form, context, etc) and start gathering the materials (photos, video, graphics, etc) which can be turned into content and more easily posted on a regular schedule, or even scheduled to be posted automatically if it’s all pre-made.

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The great thing about creating content based on value rather than algorithmic optimization, is that you can take the time to get creative and decide a publishing schedule that makes the most sense for your personal voice and for your offering, without stressing about hitting a quota based on attention-maxing.

The traditional wisdom regarding content creation is that you should be posting content with some degree of consistency. I agree with this advice, but maybe not for the usual reasons given by digital marketing gurus, which typically revolve around SEO and algorithm hacking (i.e. spamming).

While ultimately your content should match your offering, here are three reasons, rooted in value creation rather than capture, that posting regularly can be a useful approach:

meta-value

Creating content consistently keeps you thinking about your business at a deep level on a regular basis, which should mean that you are steadily growing and improving your ability to deliver value to your customers through your offering. Doing this publicly by publishing content demonstrates this steady growth to your customers.

expectation management

If part of your content strategy is to provide a vicarious experience of your offering, posting consistently means that customers can be fairly certain the vicarious experience of your offering will be consistent with the actual experience. Less frequent updates can create dissonance when it comes to the purchasing phase.

ritual

Depending on the kind of value that your content offers, providing it in a frequent and predictable manner can potentially increase its effectiveness by transforming it into a habit or ritual for the audience. Educational or personal development offerings are good examples of content that may benefit from this approach.

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Each of these benefits of consistency is predicated on a fairly high-touch method of content creation. When high-frequency is combined with outsourced or automated generation, there’s a good chance the underlying motivation is exploitative.

If your goal is to post all your content on social media in hopes of going viral and converting those followers into customers somehow, then—congratulations!

You’ve just entered a competition to become the most interesting business in the world

In a game like that, no matter how successful you get, you’ll pretty much always feel like you’re losing.

So, why not change the game to one with better odds?

If you know what you’re doing, and you want to prove it to your customers or prospects through your media, then you need to provide an idea of the range of your knowledge in your area of specialization.

This can be done along two dimensions: depth or breadth.

Depth is like a microscope, it involves zooming in to the details and inner workings of your particular industry or discipline.

Breadth, on the other hand, is more of a satellite view, a zoomed out look at how your particular area of focus interrelates to other disciplines or industries.

The more you are able to demonstrate a grasp of your industry in each of these dimensions, the stronger your credibility will be when new customers discover you.

Imagine a seemingly unattainable dream client or customer.

One with the deepest pockets.

The most impressive status and network.

The highest appreciation for the value of your offering.

Got it?

Now, imagine this client is binging all of your business content.

Every channel.

Every feed.

Every post.

Would they be impressed?

I recently read the book The Four Conversations by selling and pricing expert Blair Enns, whom I have quoted before.

In the book, Enns discusses what he calls “The Flip.”

But here’s the key, The Flip should happen without you present. It happens as a result of the value you provide through your content.

So . . .

If you make a claim of expertise or specialization, how is your content substantiating that claim such that your customers don’t require any further convincing by the time they first reach out to you?

There is a law of economic value which we might summarize this way:

as transformation increases, so does the value potential

Thus a cake is more valuable than the combined price of the eggs, flour, and sugar that make it up.

In a similar way, your content can become more valuable if you are able to combine various bits of diverse information or media into a new form.

Combining ideas in novel or unexpected ways can lead to new insights, while even just transforming text into an audio or visual format—or vice versa—can provide accessibility to a new audience.

Here are a few examples of what this could look like, in order from less transformative to more transformative:

• Translating one raw form into another (e.g. reading a text article directly into an audio format)
• Gathering various items together and condensing them into one (e.g. a listicle)
• Taking one or more items and adding to them ideas or content of your own generation (e.g. an opinion article or video essay)

So, in what way can you take the various raw media materials related to your offering or industry and transform them through your content into something of even greater value for your customers?

Yesterday I found myself on the Merriam-Webster website, and in the sidebar I saw that a very interesting word was trending.

The word was:
Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

So, curiosity piqued, I clicked to see the definition, which is:

Okay, great . . . That tells me what it is, but I clicked on the word because it’s unique; I wanted to know why it’s called that. How did it get that name, and what does it mean?

But for that info I realized I needed an encyclopedia, so on the Encyclopedia Britannica page for Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg I learned that:

Voila, all my questions answered.

Here’s the thing . . .

If you have a unique offering, people don’t just want to know what you do, they want to know why you do it in your unique way, how it got to be that way, and what it means to you (which they can then translate into what it means for them).

And the best way to answer those questions is to develop your content to function like an encyclopedia, and not simply as a dictionary.

Over the past decade or so, the marketing vogue has been what is sometimes called a social-first marketing strategy. This involves directing the majority of marketing efforts toward creating content specifically designed to perform well on social media platforms.

But as more people start to reconsider their relationship with social media—and social media’s relationship to culture at large—let’s remember that social media is only one tool in the marketing toolbox, not the whole arsenal.

Depending on how you want to be perceived as a business and content creator, you could even decide to adopt what we might call the social-last marketing strategy.

The social-last strategy involves first and foremost publishing content in the medium and context in which it can provide the most value to your audience (as opposed to forcing content to fit the mold of current trends), and then using social media primarily as a top-of-funnel awareness generator which points people to where your really valuable content can be found.

What this does is twofold:

First, it respects people’s time. If you are among the growing number of those who are personally trying to spend less time on social media, why would you ask your customers to spend more time there on your content?

Second, it allows you to build a focused content environment which is free from the noise that comes from social media feeds. If you can direct customers to a channel or webpage that is filled exclusively with you, then they’re no longer comparing you to another similar business that they’re likely going to see the next time they swipe the screen.

I’m not saying this strategy is necessarily superior to the social-first method, I just want to make sure we’re allowing ourselves to think outside the box and make strategic decisions because they make sense for our business and not just because it’s what everyone else is doing.

One of the most effective qualities of content, especially the visual mediums, is that it is able to convey the feeling of experiencing your product or service before the customer actually experiences it. This is what I call “vicarious experience.”

This is super useful in a lot of situations. For example, if you had to get a root canal and were very nervous about it, it would probably be helpful for you to see a video of the endodontist’s office to get a feeling of who the doctor is and what it will be like to go in for the procedure before you get there.¹

In this case, the vicarious experience is able to alleviate fear associated with a necessary but undesirable service.

On the other hand, if you are planning a day at an amusement park, the vicarious experience of seeing people having fun on the rides might heighten your excitement and anticipation for being on the ride yourself.

In this case, the vicarious experience increases desire for the real experience.

While the subject of your vicarious experience content will obviously be you and your product or service, remember that ultimately this content is about making the customer feel like you understand their hopes and fears before they get to actually experience your offering.

1. To see this specific example in action, take a look at my case study from Root Canal Specialists of Baton Rouge. They did a great job of expressing an understanding of the patient’s perspective and fears while alleviating those fears with their warm personalities and patient testimonials. ↩︎