What makes great content marketing great.

We’ve been thinking a lot about what makes great marketing in general and great content marketing, specifically.

Lousy marketing tends to fall into just a few big Bad Buckets:

Ignorance of the audience.An empathy bypass.Cliché.Total lack of craft.(All of the above.)

But great marketing is a hugely diverse church.

Is there any single thing that connects something like Dumb Ways to Die to ‘Eat Beef, You Bastards’ to the lovely Paths of Flight video to the outrageously brilliant ‘Follow the Frog’ video?

They’re not all funny.One great piece of content may shout, another may whisper.Some is beautifully crafted, others are rough-edged and immediate.

So is there a common dimension that all great marketing content shares?Some that we can all learn to apply to make our own content better?

There’s one quality that you’ll find in great piece of content.And one that’s lacking in almost all bad content.

It’s the same quality that we love in our favorite novels or essays or poems.

It’s what makes us give ourselves over to great movies instead of resisting their pull for the whole ninety minutes.

It’s a quality we love in all art.And maybe even in the we like and admire most.

The quality that makes all marketing great is a very simple thing.

The magic ingredient of great marketing is

Confidence says,

“ I know what I’m talking about and I passionately believe it’s important and true.”

No matter what the actual content of a message may be, communicating it with confidence trebles, quadruples or even its chance of being well received.

Confidence tells us we’re in really good hands with this author or director or poet or brand.

Confidence tells us that we’ll be going on the journey that this person wants us to go on.It may not be a pleasant journey. But it’s the intended journey, led by an expert guide.

When you think about it, that’s what we’re looking for when we seek out art and novels and movies and even branded content.We want to be taken places by expert storytellers.

Conversely, messages and stories and content that lack confidence repel us.They lose us in the first page or scene. They makes us think, “If you don’t believe in this why should I?”Or, “You’re not very good at this so I won’t invest my time.”

Great content marketing is always confident content marketing.Always.No exceptions.

If confidence is the only thing you communicate to your audience, you’ve got a shot at a return visit.And if you combine confidence with a smart, compelling story... you’re on the inside lane of the fast track to the short list.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of content marketing totally lacks confidence.

Most of it is careful. And professional. And intelligent enough for the task at hand.But very, very little of it is truly confident.So it’s bland. And muddy. And eye-wateringly boring.It’s a brown Zune.

There’s a serious disconnect here.When you meet many of the people in the companies doing this bland marketing, they’re actually full of passion and belief and commitment.

They love what they do. They give themselves to it 100% and achieve amazing things.

But, somewhere along the content marketing assembly line, that passion and belief is drained away before it reaches a prospect.Or pecked away by a thousand well-meaning detail-geese.Or buried under a hundred-weight of techno-dung.

that if we show the world that we really care about this stuff, we’ll be laughed at.

Or if we talk like a real person instead of a marketer, someone higher-paid than us will frown and say, “ That doesn’t look and sound like all the marketing I’ve grown used to.”

Or that if we actually say what we mean and have fun doing it, the sky will fall.

Let’s face it, fear sucks.And in content marketing, it sucks so much it borders on tragedy.So here are ways not to suck:

What does confident content look like? Here are seven principles:

Insecure people fill every pause with nervous babble.And insecure content marketers fill every bit of white space with ‘benefits’.You end up shilling like a ginsu knife salesman.It smells of desperation and desperation doesn’t smell good.

1. Say less.

The best stories are simple.They don’t need dozens of corollaries or proof-points.Have the confidence to say what you need to say, then shut up.

People who don’t really believe in their offers feel compelled to dress them up in fancy jargon.

2. Speak like a human.

People who believe in their offers just say what they mean.

Confident marketing uses plain language.

Fun is the most magnetic force in human relations.If confidence is the nucleus of the atom, fun is the zippy little electron.

3. Have fun.

But most content marketing reads as if it were written during a high-school detention.

Confident content is fun to create.That doesn’t mean it’s a laugh-riot. Just that someone enjoyed making it.

Too much content reads like barbecue assembly instructions.There’s no passion. No belief that this stuff matters.

4. Give a damn.

If it doesn’t matter, don’t write it.If it does matter, give it the passion it deserves.

This doesn’t mean using breathless prose or insane hyperbole.It means sharing your sincere conviction.

Crappy content sends out signals in a general direction towards a fuzzy, indistinct audience.

5. Look ‘em in the eye.

Great content always has a laser-focus on the target.When you read it, you know every word has been written for you.

Start with actual empathy, then communicate that empathy early and often.

The only ‘birds & bees’ talk I ever got from my wonderful father was a two-sentence instruction:

6. Expose your agenda.

“ Sex is something you do with a girl not to her. Be nice.”

Well, selling is something you do with a prospect, not to her.

Weak content comes across as slightly dishonest because it’s not really comfortable with its selling role.

If you believe in your offer, you want people to have it.That means selling to them is not a dirty thing, it’s a friendly one.

Be open about your selling agenda.

Even very good content often fizzles out once it’s made its point.

7. Ask for the order.

Great content knows it’s there to get you to do something and doesn’t shy away from asking you to do it.Great content earns the right to ask for the order.

So here’s what I’m urging you to do:

Aim high.Say less.

Say it plainly.

Be true to an individual vision not a team consensus.

Have a ball.

Give a shit.

Say what you really, really want to say instead of what you feel you say.

Say it with all the passion, belief and confidence you really have inside.And if you can’t find any belief or passion or confidence inside about the topic or issue at hand...

Go find another job where you will find these things.

Life is short.Don’t waste people’s time.

Don’t crank it out like pasta.

Go forth and create with full, brilliant, blinding, magnetic, joyful confidence.

Thank you.

Velocity is a B2B content marketing agency that specialises in confidence.velocitypartners.com