the content mint newsletter

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.

Yesterday I said that your business is the medium through which the message of all your content is ultimately filtered. So, to provide a more concrete example of this idea, let’s take a look at McDonald’s.

McDonald’s offers fast, cheap food at scale.

To do this, they have mastered the art of translating the technology of the assembly line to food preparation. But not only is the food offered in assembly line fashion, the entire franchise business model upon which McDonald’s is based is in essence an assembly line model.

Fast, cheap, repeatable.

This is the message of McDonald’s which is consistent throughout both their offering and their business.

If they started creating ads which were about slowing down and taking the time to smell the roses, so to speak, it would be incongruous with the entire medium (the business) through which the message was being conveyed.

So . . .

Is the message of your content consistent with the medium of your business?

If not, your message might be something other than what you think it is.

Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message” back in 1964 with the publication of his book Understanding Media.

This idea has pretty well permeated society by now and the idea that the technology which carries a message affects the content of that message is mostly taken for granted nowadays.

But there is a nuance to the phrase as well which gets somewhat less attention.

The “medium” in the phrase is not just the technology of communication like television, social media, etc.

The “medium” includes the whole “environment of services,” as McLuhan puts it, which develop around the individual technology.

Thus the “medium” of automobiles is not just about increasing the speed of horse travel, it’s also about the roads, gas stations, mechanic shops, and even fast food establishments that exist as support and supplement to those automobiles.

If we take this broader view to our own content, we see that the “medium” of our content is not just about deciding whether to post on TikTok or LinkedIn.

Your whole business is the medium of your content.

So what message are you ultimately conveying?

I don’t know how universal this trait is, but I have a tendency to buy books after I’ve already read them.

For a bit of background, I am a pretty avid user of digital rental services like Hoopla and Libby, and my tastes tend towards the classics which are typically public domain and therefore pretty readily available as eBooks via Project Gutenberg or Internet Archive.

That means I have lots of opportunities to read books for free.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t spend money on books.

Instead, what often happens is: I will read or listen to a book for free via one of the sources above and either enjoy it so much, or find myself thinking about it long after I’ve finished, so that I will have a desire to have the physical copy. At that point I’ll either order it right away or keep an eye out for it the next time I’m out perusing bookstores.

Okay . . . so what?

Giving away expertise for free doesn’t necessarily mean you’re robbing yourself of sales. It just means you have a chance to prove the value you have to offer before asking for a financial commitment.

And, sometimes all it takes to turn that free value into a sale is a change of format.

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P.S. Here’s an interesting commentary by Neil Gaiman (pre-scandal) regarding how digital piracy and free editions actually increased book sales.