the content mint archive

As we saw ​yesterday​, the value of our content generally comes in two forms: knowledge (utility) and emotion (desirability).

This is what the audience gains by spending time on our content.

At some point, however, you or the audience may decide that the value of your content is worth more than ​the in-built time-cost​.

So what happens then?

Well, either you can ask them to spend actual money for your content, or they may decide to spend more time on it. What that looks like in practice will depend on the primary form of the value.

If the primary value is practical information, you may be able to productize your content into an e-learning course of some sort.

On the other hand, if you find you are primarily providing emotional value (i.e. entertainment), then a surplus of that value may look like virality—lots of people spending lots of time on your content—in which case there are many modern methods for monetizing such attention.¹

But in the end, value is always subjective and the basic rules of economics still apply: the price of any offering is ultimately determined by what the buyer is willing to spend, be it money or time.

1. see: what business are you in? ↩︎

What makes something valuable?

If extrinsic value is the treasure map and intrinsic value is the treasure chest, then what exactly is the treasure we’re talking about?

As far as I can tell, there are broadly two conditions which make anything valuable: utility and desirability.

In keeping with our treasure analogy, we can think of the gold (useful) and jewels (desirable) of the classic pirate booty.

When it comes to content, this value roughly translates into knowledge (useful) and emotion (desirable).

While every good treasure hoard should have a mix of each, as a small business, remember that gold, which is an agent of exchange, makes its way back into the economy much faster than jewels, which are kept and possessed for their own sake.

At the same time, the desirability of jewels is exactly what makes them so costly in the first place.

I have previously discussed the difference between the intrinsic and extrinsic value of content. One is like a treasure chest, the other is like a treasure map.

So, here’s a question for you:

When it comes to providing value through your business’ content, where does entertainment value fit in?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

One way to differentiate yourself to prospects, aside from your actual offering, is in your communication style.

If everyone in your space creates messaging that is very technical and dry, try being the personable, down-to-earth voice.

If everyone in your space has a TikTok account, try starting a blog.

Of course, you want to stay consistent to your personal voice and desired perception, but saying the same thing in a different way just might click with a whole new set of potential customers.

As I’ve written about before, the context of our media is just as important as the actual content contained within it.

But what exactly makes up the context of our content?

Here are a few aspects of context to think about before deciding how to form your content:

Proximal

• What other content will be surrounding this piece of content?
• Where will the audience be physically when they are experiencing this content?

Temporal

• When will the audience be most likely to find this content in relation to the time it was created?
• Is this content intended to only be experienced once, or multiple times?
• Is it easy to find again at a later date?
• How long do you expect the audience to spend with the content?

Epistemological

• What does the audience already know about the subject prior to finding this content?
• What does the audience already know about you or your organization prior to finding this content?

Tonal

• What is the tone or mood evoked by the environment surrounding the content?
• What is the possible or likely emotional state of the audience prior to experiencing this content?

Actional / Reactional

• What actions are possible or readily available to the audience during or after experiencing this content?

Once you have an idea of the context of your content, you can start to shape the form of the content in a way that will have the best chance of producing your desired effect.

One way to think about digital communications is that in some ways it petrifies, or sets in stone, a portion of what would otherwise be a real-world conversation.

This petrification can be a useful tool to scale or supplement the in-person communication we engage in every day.

For instance, we can use media to “bottle up” a conversation which we have many times with different clients or customers with very little variation in order to scale that communication of information to a degree that wouldn’t be possible if we had to personally conduct it each time.

Or we can use our media as a sort of personal glossary where we can lay out an explanation of terms or ideas we often use in a specialized way, and then direct customers to those definitions as supplementary information to our media or even to in-person conversations.

While media is great at capturing, freezing, and replicating communication, this petrification process removes the dynamic and organic elements of real-life communication.

So, next time you go to create a piece of media, ask yourself, “how would I get this message across in a real conversation, and what am I losing by petrifying it?”

And, next time you get frustrated with having the same conversation for the fiftieth time with a new customer, think about how you might be able to use your media to have that conversation for you.

A common refrain among marketing agencies is a promise to help you “cut through the noise” or “stand out in the crowd.”

But if you are able to develop an attractive media environment apart from the crowd altogether, in which there is no noise to begin with, then there is no breakthrough or standing out necessary.

When you are the only voice in the room, it is only necessary to say something worth listening to.

Wendell Berry is an American author, columnist, and farmer who has written extensively about agriculture, community, and culture for over fifty years.

In his 1977 essay, The Unsettling of America, he writes about the difference between those who “nurture” the natural environment and those who “exploit” it.

Here is a summary of how he breaks down these categories:

the exploiter (e.g. strip miner)

ultimate goal = money
is primarily concerned with:

• profit
• efficiency
• what is best for the organization
• what is the maximum yield that can be extracted

the nurturer (e.g. farmer)

ultimate goal = health
is primarily concerned with:

• care
• doing things well
• what is best for the people involved
• what is the natural capacity that can be borne

I think these categories translate to almost any area of work, but they seem especially poignant in the realm of the modern “attention economy.”

We have all seen how our attention can be mined for maximal profit while offering little in return, be it via content farms or excessive click-baiting.

At the same time, there are plenty of examples of home-grown content channels through which you can feel the care that was put in to each piece to maximize the value to the audience rather than simply to the creator.

Especially as small-businesses who generally have direct connections to our customers, when we operate our content along the lines of the nurturer rather than the exploiter, we are both developing content which is valuable in itself as well as a healthy and sustainable customer relationship.

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P.S. It’s worth noting that Wendell Berry would not appreciate me appropriating his principles to advise on digital content of any kind. He opposes the methods of modern energy companies (which he would categorize as exploiters) to the degree that he has famously refused to buy a computer or even to write his essays (via typewriter) by electric light.

You can read Berry’s full quote on nurturers and exploiters ​here​.

I want to be able to provide some simple and specific DIY tips for when you start creating your own content. But since I don’t know what kind of content you specifically are going to be creating, I’m just going to spitball some stuff.

Feel free to bookmark this email somewhere, it may come in handy someday.

Ready?

Here we go . . .

Photography

• It is not a good idea to have a major light source (like a window) directly behind your subject, this causes silhouettes (unless, of course, that’s the effect you’re going for).
  • You might be able to get away with this if you have an equally strong light source in front of the subject or lots of ambient light, i.e. outdoors.

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Video

• Keep whatever is capturing your audio as close to the source of the audio as you possibly can.
  • This means if you’re filming on your phone from 20ft away to get a nice head-to-toe shot, you probably need a separate microphone that’s in your hand or on your body for capturing audio.

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Audio podcasting

• Soft things absorb reverberation, have as many of them in the room you’re recording in as possible.
  • The reverse of this also applies: hard, flat surfaces create a ton of reverb, avoid them, especially directly in front of you.

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Blogging

• Adding tags and/or categories, and making those visible and easily searchable, is a great way to aid navigating an extensive back-catalog of content and extending the longevity of older posts.

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