the content mint archive

Have you ever played the party game Codenames? Here’s how it goes:

You provide a 1-word clue which, by its various meanings and connotations, you hope your teammates will be able to connect to 2 or more other words from a given word bank.

The more words your team guesses, the more points you all get, but if they incorrectly connect your clue to a word you didn’t intend, then your turn is over.

I think the game is a fascinating microcosm of the interplay between value and risk in any kind of communication.

The more words you try to connect to your single-word clue, the more potential points (value) your team stands to gain, but at the same time you are raising the risk of miscommunicating and losing out on the points you might have gained from a safer clue.

The correlation between value and risk is a pretty common theme in economic studies, but I think it’s worth bearing in mind for our communication strategies as well.

You can see this principle play out in art as the condensing of meaning through words—into a form like poetry, for instance—can at the same time increase the emotional impact on someone who can connect to the depth of the form, but it also runs the risk of falling flat if the audience can’t discover the underlying connections.

The key to a game like Codenames, however, is that the more in-tune you are with the way of thinking of the specific people on your team (i.e. your audience or customers), the greater your chances are for gaining points (i.e. creating value).

The Innoficiency Principle states that innovation and efficiency are mutually opposable goals. In any reasonably functioning organization, one cannot be increased without decreasing the other.
— Blair Enns

When considering your long-term content creation strategy it is important to keep in mind the tradeoffs between optimizing for innovation (or creativity) and efficiency respectively.

The more systems and guidelines you put in place for the sake of speed and consistency in your content, the less wiggle room there will be over time for breaking out of those boundaries while maintaining the pace of production.

On the other hand, the more creativity and innovation you employ, the more difficult it will be to maintain a unified voice or face for your organization.

Obviously there are pros and cons of each, and the balance can shift at times.

For example, if you are just starting a new content channel of some sort, it may be good to begin with a lot of creativity and innovation until you find an approach which is repeatable and resonant, at which point you can start to settle into a more efficient and sustainable routine.

But it’s worth revisiting the principle periodically and considering: where in your current content process could you employ a little more spontaneity, or a little more systemization, as the case may be?

If you had to develop a mission statement, or creed, for your content, what would it be?

This would be separate from a “brand playbook” which dictates the aesthetic and, to an extent, messaging guidelines for consistency across all media. That’s tactics.

A content creed should be concerned with strategy.

It is also separate from, but subsidiary to, your organization’s mission statement. It lays out how the content your organization creates will support the overall mission statement.

The content creed should be a guiding principle that, when in doubt, would ultimately provide the answer and reason to the question “should this content be created in the first place?”

Consider you are standing on a stage in an auditorium presenting information about your business.

Now consider there are 10 people in the front row.

How are you going to speak to them? With a megaphone? With a microphone connected to the auditorium’s sound system?

Maybe.

But you could probably just speak with your voice, maybe projecting a little bit.

However, if there are 200 people scattered across the seating, you might want to shell out $50 for a megaphone of some sort to make sure your voice reaches them.

And further, if the auditorium is packed with standing room only, you will certainly want to make sure you’re connected to the sound system, which cost many thousands of dollars and will have strategically placed speakers ensuring complete sound coverage of the audience.

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This is clearly a simplistic analogy, but if we consider the arrangement of the audience as comparable to the size and proximity (i.e. familiarity with your content) of your customer base, it can help us consider how important amplification is in your content strategy.

In other words, if your business is local or direct with customers, you can create content locally or directly without stressing too much about global virality.

Moreover, if there are only 10 members of the audience, and they are all in the back row, you should probably ask them to move to the front before you go purchase a megaphone.

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You can read more about my theory of content acoustics here.

P.S. It’s also worth noting that the addition of amplification will not de facto fill more seats. The amplification level is a result of the existing audience size. How many seats you want to fill, and how you fill them, is another matter.

Mise-en-scène is a French phrase which means “the things in the scene.”¹

This phrase is a classic part of film theory which emphasizes the importance of all the things that go into any shot in a movie. That includes the location and scenery, the actors, the lighting, the motion, etc.

The idea is that every element that you put in front of the camera should have a bearing on the development of the story. In theory, the more “things in the scene” are relevant to or representative of the themes of the film, the more impactful the film will be.

You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to take advantage of mise-en-scène.

Before posting or recording any piece of content, simply take a moment to ask yourself two questions:

• How many of the things in this post could point to the value I am trying to communicate?
• Is there any minor or background element that was overlooked which might accidentally be detracting from the overall effect?

1. If you are interested in cooking or baking, you may be familiar with a similar phrase, mise en place, or “everything in place,” which is used to describe the first step of collecting all your ingredients and tools in front of you before you begin. ↩︎

There is only one place on the internet where you have complete control of your content acoustics.

A place free from external noise.

A place where all communication comes directly from you.

A place that you can dress up or dress down to suit the tone and mood of your brand.

That place, is your website.

You control your website, not the tech giants.

Your website is your kingdom.

That’s why it’s called your domain.

“This is a very long letter, simply because I did not have the time to write a shorter one.”
— Blaise Pascal

If you spend the time up-front to clarify your messaging, then you reduce the potential wasted time spent on it by the audience.

I recently listened to the fascinating This is Propaganda podcast mini-series by the marketing agency (and self-proclaimed propagandists), BRINK.

The thesis of the podcast is that most, if not all, of our modern marketing tactics have direct origins in propaganda techniques developed during the first World War.

In the words of the show:

“People don’t buy your product, they buy the “why” behind your product. But it doesn’t matter how much thought leadership you bury it under, the goal is still to shift the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. It’s still propaganda.“

By the end of the show, I started wondering what isn’t propaganda (the last episode is titled “Everything is Propaganda, Even You”, so you can guess what conclusion they come to).

Here’s my two cents:

1. Propaganda is the propagation of a particular point of view. It always has a “right” answer implied, no matter how well hidden it may be.

2. Propaganda ceases to be propaganda when there is a real and acceptable possibility of disagreement or opportunity for mutual influence through dialogue.

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So . . . what do you think?

Is your marketing propaganda?

Is this propaganda?

AI content marketing is here. And it all sounds the same.

But the real problem is, it also sounds the same as all the humans who have been filling the internet with high-volume, low-value SEO fodder for years.

How many times have you read a variation on:

12 questions to ask before hiring a *insert-your-industry-here* company

(and why we meet all the requirements)

You (or anyone else) could write that article for your business right now in the blink of AI.

So, can we do better?

I think so.

In my opinion, the best way to not sound like AI is to:

1. start from a place that AI can’t (i.e. your personal lived experiences and applied knowledge)

and from there . . .

2. make unexpected, complex, or abstract connections between concepts which provide genuine insights to other humans (but which probably won’t make much sense to robots)

But whatever your strategy ends up being, go make something that is not in danger of people asking themselves: “did AI write this?”

Consider that one day you discover a painting you’ve never seen before but which you decide is a masterpiece.

The content of the artwork may have been what initially caught your attention, but the context in which you found it will play a big role in how you respond to it.

If you first discovered the painting online, your first instinct might be to look up the artist, his background, his other paintings, artists he was inspired by, etc.

This will give you more knowledge about the painting.

But if you discovered the painting in a museum on a quiet day, your first reaction might be to stop and examine the painting itself in further detail for what could be quite a long time of concentrated attention.

This will give you a better appreciation of the painting.

Then again, if you discovered the painting in an art class, you may have associated it so much with the community of people who discovered and discussed it with you that you feel like it has become nostalgic and part of your identity in some way.

This will give you a stronger connection to the painting.

The painting is the same in each scenario, but the subsequent reaction, impact, and perceived value gained is quite different.

So, what reaction is encouraged by the environment in which you present your content?