There’s a classic board game called Balderdash wherein one player holds a card with an extremely obscure, but real, word and its definition.

The goal of the other players is to write down definitions for this word which sound like they could be associated with the word to try to fool the other players into voting for theirs as the correct answer.

In case you were unaware, this is (simplistically) how AI LLM systems like ChatGPT work. They scour their language database and mountains of internet metadata to provide responses to questions which sound like they could be the right answer, but in reality they have no way of knowing how accurate it is, although they do a pretty good job of getting pretty close, most of the time.

So, while everyone else is getting could be answers to their questions via AI and trying to figure out how accurate it might be, your job, expert, is to show the card with the real definition on it.

Yesterday we looked at the value, and even excess value, that can be generated by highly technical educational content.

What makes that content so valuable though?

The details.

In a digital world designed to make the creation of extemporaneous and surface-level content as quick and easy as possible, those who take the time to see and show the details are a breath of fresh air, and that makes people pay attention.

As Sherlock Holmes puts it:

There is something inherently interesting about watching someone who knows what they’re doing explain something in precise detail.

This can be so interesting, in fact, that it can attract attention even if the educational information being presented is not immediately (or even potentially) relevant.

To illustrate, I’ve collected a handful of examples of highly technical long-form content which people have attested to watching, despite the irrelevance of the subject:

From The Beginner’s Guide To Latte Art* – 40 minutes

From Your dishwasher is better than you think (tips, tricks, and how they work)** – 27 minutes

From World’s Most Advanced Video Editing Tutorial (Premiere Pro) – 4 hours 19 minutes

~ ~ ~

So, expert, what is it that you know so well you could explain it in a way that makes people pay attention, even if they don’t really care?

* – To be fair, this channel is very personality-driven, meaning those inclined to learn about the overall topic (coffee) are more likely to watch videos like this one which may not be specifically relevant.
** – This is one of four videos on dishwashers from this channel. All (except the one mentioned above) are over a half hour long and all have similar comments. In fact, comments like this for these videos are so prevalent they have spilled over into Reddit and I started wondering if it was some kind of running gag I wasn’t aware of. I still don’t know, you tell me.

If you are a local small business, chances are your content is only one part of your lead generation process, and maybe not a very big part.

Maybe most of your leads come from referrals or warm network outreach.

If that’s the case, your content might even end up being an afterthought that you have to force yourself to remember.

Maybe you force yourself to post on social media to stay top-of-mind for past customers and those who already know you, even if those people aren’t looking to buy right now.

Maybe you force yourself to post on social media frequently so those who have been referred to you will have something to look at and know your business is still running.

But maybe, if your content is an afterthought, maybe it’s not being as effective for those critical mid-funnel prospects as it could be if you took the mental energy from that forced posting routine and put it towards strategically developing one or two quality pieces of communication that clearly express what a prospect wants to know when they are in the act of shopping for your offering (i.e. when they are on your website.)

And maybe—just maybe—your social followers who aren’t actively shopping for your offering wouldn’t even notice you took a few months off.

One way (but not the only way) to develop interest in your content is to formulate it as a story.

Now, a lot has been said about story in the world of marketing in recent years. Usually these focus on the posturing of the customer to the company (as hero/guide respectively) and the framing of customer need/desire (“you want x, y stands in the way, z product or service can help you overcome y and obtain x.”)

But there is a more basic element of story that is important to remember when formulating content. A story has a beginning, middle, and—maybe most importantly—an end.

As Aristotle puts it:

Consider the difference between these two content headlines:

Join me as I trade this penny up to the most expensive thing I can get – Part 1

Or:

Trading a penny up to a house – Part 1

One of those headlines is a story because it has a clear ending. Once the penny becomes a house, the story will be over. The first headline might be interesting, but it’s not a story because has no definite end. It may be a story at some point, but it’s a lot harder to follow along with something in progress if you have no reasonable expectation of an ending.

Story is not the only way to develop content, it has a ​linear structure​ whereas perhaps a ​circular structure​ may be more appropriate for your offering, but if story is what you’re after, find a way to set expectations by defining and constraining the scope from the outset.

Back in the 1920s, a group of efficiency engineers wanted to figure out if they could increase factory worker efficiency by improving their working conditions. So they went to a Western Electric factory called Hawthorne Works and did some improvements to the lighting and various other aspects. As expected, the workers’ efficiency increased.

However, when they returned the factory to its original conditions and observed performance again, the efficiency increased again.

This study has become pretty well known in the social sciences for describing the “observer’s paradox,” the phenomenon wherein the act of observing an event changes the unfolding of the event itself. In this case, the fact of engineers observing the workers increased their efficiency regardless of what changes were made to the environment.

Now, could you use the Hawthorne Effect to your advantage?

Creating content for your business is like having an ever-present efficiency engineer watching over you. If you felt that the work you were doing would be seen by anyone online, it might change the very way you do your work in the first place.

This is another result of the meta-value of content.

We all know that the best way to really learn something is to teach it to someone else.

Well, teaching also happens to be the best way to prove what you know.

Afterall, prove means both

to give evidence for

and also

to test or learn by experience

So . . .

If you market your business on a claim of expertise . . .

Prove it.

If you want people to buy your product or service, people who might find that offering valuable first need to be aware that you can provide it to them. This is where your first impression content comes in.

Next, they need to understand both the offering as well as who you are. The more they understand the person offering a solution and find similarities with them, the more likely they are to feel that a solution which worked for someone like them will also be useful or desirable for themselves. In your content, this relates to the way you are perceived and the comprehensiveness of your offering through the guided discovery phase.

And finally, the customer has to believe that what they have understood about you is true, and that what you have to offer can actually help them. This is conveyed through the authenticity of our content, i.e. the belief that the way things seem is aligned with the way things are in reality.

All this is to say, in slightly altered words, what the old sales maxim asserts:

People buy from those they know, like, and trust.