Every marketer knows how important content is to their strategy.
That's why every company has a blog, a newsletter, and an account on every social media platform that's ever existed.
But this mentality has created a culture of churning out content for the sake of content. Can something be content? If the answer has even the slightest whiff of a 'yes', then it'll be forced into the pipeline kicking and screaming.
Which results in a lot of very dry content.
If you want to know what I mean, go to LinkedIn right now, and read ten posts. Roughly nine out of those ten posts will have the vibe of "I know I'm supposed to post stuff here, but I didn't really know what to write".
(Or they will very clearly have been generated by ChatGPT)
Don't worry, though. I write this shit for a living, and have had to come up with many ways to sprinkle some personality onto even the driest of topics.
Let's go through them together...
1 - Tell a story
You've heard this advice before, but people normally say that the story should be an analogy or something that highlights a certain problem you're solving.
But I'll level with you — the story just has to be interesting.
If you can find a way to segue into the rest of the content, awesome. But honestly, people just like a good story.
This could be a personal anecdote, a relevant case study, or just something you made up in your head.
Stories are a great way to hook a reader before you get into the main content. Or they can be used to add extra context and flavour.
A good story will always improve content, while adding personality.
2 - Show some emotion
What's the best way to fight back against the tidal wave of AI-generated content?
Show some genuine human emotion!
You don't need to turn the content into a soap opera, or forcefully manufacture outrage like every Daily Mail commenter on a post about pronouns.
You just need to tap into how you genuinely feel about the thing you're talking about.
- Does it excite you?
- Are you frustrated?
- Does it make you sad?
- Is it upsetting?
Great — express that emotion in the content!
People resonate with emotion, especially if they feel the same way about the thing you're covering.
Content that shows a bit of emotion is FAR more compelling than any robotic crap being churned out by an app.
3 - Take a polarising position
The easiest type of content to create says something that's already been said a thousand times. That's why we see the same crap shared OVER AND OVER.
"Writing every day makes you a better writer"
No shit, Derek. It's called practise, and this advice is no more useful than the 300 other Tweets that said the same thing.
Content is way more compelling when it takes a polarising position.
To be clear, I don't mean saying something needlessly cruel or critical just for attention. You're not an ageing male comedian with a Netflix special.
I'm talking about finding your own unique angle not everyone will agree with.
Look at your approach, the tools you use, your processes, etc, and identify what you do differently. Or look at the common advice being thrown around, and find things you disagree with.
Challenge convention, suggest alternatives viewpoints, and take some rists.
It doesn't matter if this position puts off some people, as long as it engages the right people.
And by 'right people', I mean your target audience.
4 - Start small
A big reason content is so dull and repetitive is because marketers are simply trying to do too much.
It's impossible to create consistently engaging content when you're trying to post to every social media platform every day, your YouTube channel every week, and your newsletter every fortnight.
So start small.
Pick one platform, and focus on creating high-quality content, on a regular basis.
This gives you the time to create, reflect, iterate, etc. That's the secret to improving your content over time. Which you can't do if you don't give yourself the time to do it.
Once you've found some consistency, and you're happy with the content you're putting out there, you can then repurpose the content.
Whatever it is you focused on can often also be turned into something else. Blog posts easily become YouTube, YouTube videos can be cut down into TikToks, and TikToks can be turned into LinkedIn posts, etc.
You get the time to find your feet, and you have a backlog of content to draw from.
Win-win!
5 - Don't take it too seriously
Unless you're writing about things like serious illness or financial ruin, you probably don't need to take your content too seriously.
(Marketing itself is a very unserious profession, but that's a blog for another day)
I'm not saying you have to become Douglas Adams or Tina Fey, but just try to let your hair down a bit when creating your content.
If a joke pops into your head, include it. If something is a bit silly, point that out. Basically, you should allow yourself to get creative.
It's marketing content, not the State of the Union.
In fact, when content takes itself too seriously, it normally comes across as needlessly academic, or even preachy.
Instead, embrace the fact that none of this really matters, so you might as well have a bit of fun!
6 - Abandon those templates, rules, and playbooks
I'm going to make enemies of millions of marketing bros whose entire income is shilling this crap — but honestly — throw that shit in the bin.
Painting-by-numbers is the easiest way to create generic, soulless content.
Van Gogh didn't paint The Starry Night by tracing over the Mona Lisa!
(Fuck. Even by my standards, this analogy is WILDLY simplistic)
My point is that personality is a type of creativity. And the more you try to force your content into little boxes, the less creative you can be.
People make a lot of big promises about how effective templates and playbooks are, but just because something works for someone else, it doesn't mean it'll work for you.
In fact, these things follow the law of diminishing returns. The more people that use the same template, the less effective it'll be.
So just throw it in the bin, and create content that's truly unique.
7 - Take some risks!
It's a fact of marketing than not everything is going to work, so why not throw caution to the wind?
Have you had an idea at the back of your mind, or deep in your notes app, that you keep pushing to one side because it's too different to anything else out there?
Stop pushing it aside and give it some room to breathe!
Starting a TikTok series entirely about potatoes seems like an oddly niche concept. But that's exactly what chef Poppy O'Toole did when she got furloughed, and now she's got 4.4 million subscribers on TikTok, and is a regular on prime-time TV.
No-one was interviewing celebrities while eating increasingly spicy wings until First We Feast did it with Hot Ones. Now they have 13.2 million subscribers, and their most popular video has 124 million views.
(I just realised that I predominantly consume content about food)
The lesson here is that success rarely comes without taking risks, and that's the same for your content.
Not only does it give you the chance to stand out, but it's also far more fun doing something new and original than churning out the same old content using the same old templates!
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