John Bonini’s Post

You know what kills content programs? The wrong expectations and the wrong motivations. I talked to 🇺🇦 Eddie Shleyner a few weeks ago for Louder Than Words. He has almost 70k email subscribers. More than 100k LinkedIn followers. Not to mention, a profitable business. But it wasn't a business at first. Years ago, when Eddie committed to learning copywriting to advance his professional career, he started writing articles to prove to himself he could apply what he was learning. He didn't publish any of them. They were just a tool for him. It wasn't until a few years later that he was talked into sharing them with the world. His expectations were essentially zero. His motivations were to create great work...for himself. That, in part, has made all the difference.

What people say is so different than what they react to and how they react to it. The latter is so much more telling. This is why product teams ship code and measure/track user behavior. Marketing teams should treat content the same way. Leverage social media and email as testing grounds for specific topics, concepts, and angles. (Rather than leveraging these channels as link dumps for more undifferentiated content.) Pay attention to the signal you receive. Use that to further refine your approach to longer form content (blog posts, podcast discussions, future newsletters, etc.) Treat content like a product. (Because it is.) This is one way to differentiate.

The most valuable asset any marketing team can have is a person who genuinely cares about the quality of the output. They’ll think audience first. They’ll challenge others to refine and adjust their work. They’ll question the purpose and approach behind certain initiatives. They’ll translate ideas from execs in a way that’s unique and authentic. They’ll “protect” the audience from crappy, undifferentiated content. If you have someone like this on your team, you have an unfair advantage.

Too many marketing teams view their podcast as an organic play. They’re approaching audio similar to the way everyone approached blogging (many still do) in 2012––publish it, optimize it, hope the right people find it. It’s the wrong move. Treat your podcast like a premium asset––i.e. a research report. Use the stories, insights, data, quotes, etc., gathered in each episode as context and color in all of the content you create across your blog, social, and email. This way, all of your content leads with actual stories from humans in the trenches doing the work. It’s honest content in a time where most other content is manufactured and low on nutrition. That’s where the ROI of podcasting is. Not in the number of downloads but in how it influences all of the other content you create.

In the simplest terms, here’s why the content strategy at Databox worked (and continues to work) so well. (I still get asked about this via DM, email, and podcasts all the time.) We focused on sharing perspectives over advice. Both our own as well as the experiences and perspectives of our audience. “Our experience was…” “Here’s the problem we were having…” “Here’s what worked for us…” Instead of telling people what to do. That’s it. Yes, there were the mechanics of running surveys, podcasts interviews, etc., but those were just vehicles for gathering perspectives for us to write about on the blog, social, etc. It was a more honest approach. It was also more scalable (there are only so many keywords with enough volume and relevance to keep you busy, but, there are endless perspectives out in the market that are valuable to your audience.) No one could copy it. We were inherently unique. In some ways, our content had no business being as successful as it was…the blog didn’t really start until 2017 (late by most standards.) We were a small team, essentially $0 budget, with no real SEO expert on staff — and yet we were outplaying much bigger teams for mindshare. Perspectives, not advice. We let the audience draw its own conclusions from there. I’ll be asked about this next week, next month, and probably next year. So, this post is as much a resource for me as anything else 😄 /cc to Peter Caputa for his added perspective. (See what I did there?)

Here's something I've flip/flopped on over the last few years –– content has to be more personal. It needs to start with your/your team's collective experiences, observations, and points of view. But it also needs to be personal to your audience by including their experiences, observations, and points of view, too. The old accepted approach was "The content shouldn't be about you. It should be about your audience." No, it should start with you and also include your audience for context and validation. What we *have* to avoid at all costs is this mundane middle –– content that speaks *at* your audience and shares nothing defensible that others can’t copy or ask AI to write for them. What can you create that the machines cannot? You won't find those answers in a tool. It has to start with you and your team.

One thing I’ve continually observed over dozens of discovery calls over the last few months: The aspirations don’t match the output for most marketing teams. *The aspirations* 💡 Establish more thought leadership, trust, and authority in our space 💡 Publish content that our audience shares and engages with 💡 “Be the favorite” content resource in our space 💡 Stand out from competitors (“everyone copies everyone right now in our space”) *The output* 😴 “Our current strategy is just publish more stuff” 😴 Use a spreadsheet of keywords to prioritize content efforts 😴 Never publishes first-person perspectives, either internal or of the audience 😴 Send a newsletter once a quarter (mostly links to company/product news)  😴 Dump links on social media to blog posts (mostly transactional keyword-driven posts) and product updates We need more marketing leaders, execs, and content marketers to spot the contradictions in their approach. Publishing more undifferentiated content will help no one –– not your audience and certainly not your goals/aspirations. Start marketing like a content brand. Not a content bland. (Sorry, I had to 😄)

Marketers from 9-5… 🚫 Use data from keyword tools everyone else is using… 🚫 Essentially re-write other top ranking posts for said keywords… 🚫 Use AI to help write more content faster… 🚫 Link dump on social media when the articles are live… Marketers after 5pm… 💡 Search Reddit forums for more authentic conversations around questions they have… 💡 Ask friends/coworkers/network for advice and recommendations… 💡 Seek out the perspectives of people they trust via content, interviews, etc. 💡 Join Slack communities to see how others like them are solving problems… In other words, we create undifferentiated content in our day jobs yet seek unique, differentiated perspectives when it’s our turn to seek out help, inspiration, or solutions. It's never been easier to stand out. That latter set of activities centers around first-person perspectives based on experience, observations, and just general points of view. You and your audience have these in spades. Why is that not the central input to your content and marketing strategies?

Content that is transparent, authentic, and written from a first-person perspective has always worked––well before AI. So why does it seem like everyone is talking about it now? For good reason––because going forward, it might be the *only* thing that works. Make the shift from undifferentiated, "here's how you..." content to "here's how I/we/us..." content. Your team's, and audience's, collective perspective is the way forward. Start there. It's never been easier to stand out than right now.

This just happened. Chopped it up for almost an hour with my friend Jimmy Daly for Louder Than Words. We talked a lot about what's working for both of us in terms of content. (My favorite/most important part of the discussion was how both of our philosophies have changed re: first person POV content in the last couple of years. Feeling stuck? Write/record something from your own perspective.) This one was a lot of fun –– the best episodes always feel like catching up with old friends. Look for it in a couple of weeks.