How to Create Content People Actually Want

All right. ConCon! What an amazing day this has been. I've been hanging out for pretty much the entire day. I didn't catch all of the speakers, but I caught most of them, and I've learned a lot. And I'm sure you're all learning a lot too. And so this has been just a fantastic day. Thank you so much to the Hustle for putting this together. Thanks to the Brava Theater. I love this space. This has been just a great day. So since I am the last speaker today, I wanted to take a step back, or perhaps a step up, change perspective a little bit, think a bit about some of the fundamentals of what we do as content creators. I am a content creator. I come from a writing background. And so the quality of content is extremely important to me personally. And I want to make sure that we're talking about some of these fundamental issues that maybe you already know, but it's easy to forget about when we get caught up in the rush of trying to meet those deadlines and meet those targets. And as important as it is, as vital as it is that we are data-driven and that we, you know, really do have those processes in place, and that we, you know, really use numbers as much as we can, we optimize and we measure. In the end, we are human beings talking to human beings. And if we don't connect on that core level, then everything we do is meaningless. And there's a big problem that content creators face, and it's huge and it's scary, and it's simply this: there's two— Too much content. Too much. Content is ubiquitous and ephemeral, and those are words you should probably not use in your content, but I'm going to use them here. Ubiquitous, it is everywhere. Ephemeral, it is temporary. There's so much coming at us all the time from so many channels in this constant stream. Most of it doesn't get to our retinas. It doesn't get to our brains. We can't process it. There are almost 8,000 tweets going live every second of every day. I don't remember who it was earlier today who was badmouthing Twitter, but yeah, that many tweets and lifespan of a tweet is something like 15 minutes. If you blink, you miss it. If you miss it, it's gone. Forget it. Is it any wonder then that in a survey of some— of marketing leaders that was conducted recently, I think it was by BrightEdge, more than two-thirds admitted, probably very reluctantly, that more than half of their content isn't being consumed. Okay? We're creating content, and I'm using the general we, all of us who create content. We're creating content that people aren't reading, that people aren't watching, that people aren't taking any action on. What the hell are we doing? Right? Where are we going wrong? Well, we're probably going wrong in a bunch of different places. We might be creating the wrong content. We might be serving it up to the wrong audience. We might be putting it in the wrong place. We might be serving it up at the wrong time. Or maybe we're just creating content that people don't actually want. And that's what I'm gonna talk about for the rest of this time today. Now, we create content, and— when we're doing it, because we're so close to it, it looks big and glorious to us. And we're so proud of it. And maybe it is big. And maybe it is glorious. And maybe it's really high quality. And it's really great. But— that should be animating. It's not animating. When you put it out in the world, it's just this one little drop in this steady stream of stuff that's constantly passing by, passing by, passing by. So how do we make sure that— the content we create, even if it is really good, how do we make sure that people are actually going to stop and see it and notice it and take some sort of action with it? And here's another way to look at this problem. And I think it's really important to remember this, because this is something else that's really easy to forget. Just because you're creating a piece of content doesn't mean anybody's seeing it. Just because somebody's seeing it doesn't mean they're noticing it. OK, I can see all of you in this room. How many of your individual faces are actually imprinting on my consciousness? Very few. And don't take that personally, it's not you, it's me. It's the way my brain works, it's the way all our brains work. We can only notice so much. And when there's a steady stream of content coming at us, we can't notice a whole lot. Just because you notice something doesn't mean you want to engage with it. I saw a lot of stuff, I noticed a lot of stuff on the sidewalk this morning. I did not want to engage with any of it. Just because you do engage with a piece of content doesn't mean you're necessarily getting the message that the creator of the content was trying to impart to you. And none of that matters if the content doesn't actually drive the person to change their attitudes, change their way of thinking, or take some sort of an action. So it's not enough just to be present, it's not enough just to be seen. And you'll notice I put a little green line in that slide. What's above that line, you know, if you're smart and you have a good strategy and you do, you know, you cross all the SEO, check off all the SEO boxes and you put in a little money, you can make sure that your content is getting in front of eyeballs. Everything below that line, the content has to carry on its own. Right? Just because something lands in my inbox doesn't mean I'm going to take any action on it. I must get hundreds of emails a day. There are only a few that I actually am going to be motivated to open, and those are, you know, the ones that I think are going to have some real value to me. So how do we get across the green line? How do we go from being seen to being noticed? I can think of a couple of good ways to do that. One is to be really obnoxious and make everyone hate you. You can take a picture of some toe fungus, and you can put some sort of a clickbait headline on it, and you can saturate every ad network there is. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen these. You can do that. That sort of content will get noticed. It will get clicked. But those clicks have very low value, right? It's not necessarily that people want to interact with your content. It's just like it's there. It's everywhere. They can't avoid clicking it. This is not what you're actually going after. There's another way. To get noticed, and I think it's a much better approach. You can make content that matters. You can make content that people actually want. They want to see, that they want to interact with, that they want to read, that they want to save, that they want to share with their friends, that they want to take some sort of an action on. And people want this. There was a huge study done by, I think it's the Havas Group, I think they talked to something like 300,000 people around the world, and they surveyed 1,500 brands. And what they found was that 84% of the people they talked to want brands to provide some sort of meaningful content. Content that tells a story, or that entertains, or that informs, or that creates an experience. Content that solves a problem. That's worth saying again. Meaningful content entertains and informs. It's worth your time. It makes your day a little bit better. It makes your life a little bit better. It tells a story. It gives me some sort of a situation that I can project myself into and make myself the hero of that story and see how it affects me and see how whatever it is you're trying to tell me, whatever it is you're trying to sell, can make my life better. It provides a solution, and that solution is not necessarily "buy brand X." You know, if I'm with Evernote and we're talking about being more productive, being more organized, the solution that I'm going to put in the piece of content is not necessarily "download Evernote." It's going to be more like, "OK, think about the things that you really want. Think about—" What matters to you? Think about what's a priority for you. Write it all down. Write down why. Come back to that note in a month. See if that's still what matters to you and why. And by the way, I know a great product where you can do that. And that's Evernote. Meaningful content also creates experiences. Now, that can be something like really immersive, a video, a quiz, some sort of a game. Or it can just be a really well-written blog post that draws you in and makes you want to know more and keeps drawing you in like little breadcrumbs, right? Like Hansel and Gretel. You just keep going and going and going. Now because we know that people want this, if you are creating that kind of content, you have a huge advantage because this is the stuff that people are already actively looking for. Right? They're gonna see it because they're looking for it right now. Now that doesn't mean you don't have to do any work, right? You still have to do all of the hard work of, you know, making sure that your SEO is right, making sure that you're putting the content into the right places, and making sure that you're putting it there at the right time. But people are more likely to see it. Like I mentioned, I've got all these emails that come into my inbox every day. You know, there are only 2 or 3 that I'm gonna bother opening. Obviously, The Hustle, 'cause it's great. And, you know, the Audible Daily Deal, because I know that the chances of that content being something I care about are much higher than all that other stuff that's in my inbox, which I'm probably just going to ignore. Okay, yeah, I know, little acronyms, little mnemonics are kind of corny, but I happen to like them, and I like, you know, I like cream a lot. Who doesn't like cream? It's rich and it's flavorful. And I think it's a good metaphor for content because cream rises to the top, and that's what we want our content to do, right? So creamy content is content which is consistent. It is recognizably yours. It is on brand. It is on message all the time. It is relevant. It is Content that speaks to your core audience's needs and aspirations and dreams and fears. It is engaging. Like I said, those breadcrumbs, it's going to draw you in deeper and deeper and deeper as you go. It's actionable. It doesn't live in a vacuum. It's not this little island, this one piece of content. It connects to this larger world and it takes people on a journey. And it's masterful. And this is the writer in me. Again, quality content adheres to high standards of editorial and design. But that also refers to how you go about creating the content. Let's dig in a little deeper. C is for consistent. On brand, on message, recognizably yours. So there's an example up here which is a snippet of the Evernote homepage. And a great rule of thumb is if you cover up your logo and cover up your brand name, is your content still recognizably yours? Or could it be anybody's? Or even worse, could it be your competitor's? So of course we have our logo and our name on the homepage, but not in this particular snippet. There's no elephant logo there. There's no Evernote. What we do have is this phrase, "Remember everything." And this is a phrase which is very Closely associated with Evernote. We've used it for years. It is our biggest tagline. We've tried other taglines over the years, but you know what? We keep coming back to this one because this one encapsulates the Evernote brand in two words. And they are words that resonate with people. When people talk about Evernote, this is what they say: "It's my second brain. It helps me remember everything." And it's very aspirational and inspirational, and people connect— connect with it super easily. And right below that, there's another phrase which I happen to like very much: "Organize your work and declutter your life." Again, this is very succinct, it's very concise, it's very aspirational, it's easy to connect to. And it's also, in just those few words— that's what, 8 words altogether? Remember everything, organize your work, declutter your life— it's setting a tone and establishing a voice that we can use throughout all of the content we create. It's saying that we are friendly, and we are helpful, and that we care about you. So if you want to create consistent content yourself, I do highly recommend you have some sort of a style guide. You don't have to go nuts with this, but it is key to creating consistent content that you can use for all the stuff you do, that other people in your organization who are creating content can use, that new people when they come into your organization can use so that you never wander off script, that you're always on message, on brand. And we call it a style guide, but really it covers 4 separate things that people tend to conflate. People tend to mix up, but really they are different. There's your voice. What's your brand's personality? What are the key aspects, the key features of the way your brand expresses itself? And that's something that applies universally across all the content you create. There's your message, which is what is it exactly you're trying to say, what is your value proposition. Then there's your tone, which people always confuse with voice. Tone is situational. If your voice is universal, your tone applies— how do you take that voice and apply it to an upsell email? How do you apply it to an error message? How do you apply it to a how-to article or a video? Your voice should be the same in all of these things, but each has a different tone. You might be very— upbeat and aggressive. You might be very sober and even apologetic in some cases. There are— it all depends on what the situation is that your content consumer finds themself in at that time. And then there's the style itself, which is the house rules. You know, do you use the Oxford comma? Do you use AP style? How do you capitalize things? If you don't have a style guide, or if your style guide could use some work. There are a bunch of really good ones that happen to be publicly available. You can go there, you can steal them, you can make use of them yourself. I've mentioned 3 here. Mailchimp is well known, it's kind of a gold standard. They actually have 2 websites. One is voiceandtone.com, which covers that situational stuff I mentioned earlier. How do you and don't you talk in specific situations? And that's hugely important. It's not just about here are the rules, but Hey, here are some good examples and good counterexamples. This is going to work. This isn't going to work for our brand. 18F— you'll notice that's a.gov, and I know that's kind of scary. But what they do is really interesting. They partner with government agencies that have huge and very complex content repositories. And they help them simplify them and make them understandable by regular human beings. Or at least that's the idea. So if you have very technical content, in your organization, you might want to look at what 18F does, because they've really thought this through very well. And then I also mentioned BuzzFeed. You know, AP style is kind of a default for a lot of organizations. Some of you are actually in the content creation business, and you know, you're very journalistic, great. If you're not, if you're more of a startup, then maybe AP style, which is created by journalists for journalists, isn't exactly what you need. BuzzFeed might be a little bit more relevant to you. So I recommend you check those out. Quality content is relevant. It's about the customer, not about you. This is an example. That headline says, "You're not being lazy. Routines and breaks are good for you." And it's part of a series that we're doing about wellness and how it interacts with productivity. Because, you know, productivity isn't just about getting more done and drinking 20 Red Bulls and staying up 20 hours a night. Very much like content creation itself, do you want to do more work or do you want to do more meaningful work? If you want to do more meaningful work, you should take care of yourself. And that's the message we're, you know, we're purveying here. And this is something that, again, can connect to people on a very personal level, especially the kind of people who are likely to have an interest in Evernote because they're very driven and maybe they're feeling a little bit guilty about the fact that they want to take a break once in a while. And we're gonna tell them, yes, that's okay. And so this isn't actually about Evernote at all. We'll find ways to put Evernote in there, but it's more about reaching out to a broader audience with something that's relevant to them, something that is evergreen, we can always use, that we can repurpose, that we can put into a bunch of different kinds of media, and gradually making the association between this self-improvement making you feel better, making you be better, and our brand. If you want to create relevant content, of course you have to get inside the consumer's head. You have to do your homework. You have to do your research. You have to ask them what they care about, what is on their minds. You have to do your tracking. You have to really find out what people want and care about. From that, you can build some personas. Now, I see a lot of companies kind of going nuts with personas, and they've got, you know, names and photos and, you know, not just that and their occupation, but, you know, we know what they like, bocce ball, and we know what they had for breakfast this morning, and we know how they like their coffee. And some organizations can do that and make great results with it, and if you're one of them, awesome. But I see usually that kind of persona winds up not being used. I would rather see a simple, practical persona that's just about sort of the type of person and the type of things they care about and that I can easily keep in my mind and not get distracted by all of that minutiae which makes me think, oh, makes me start to second-guess myself when I'm creating a piece of content. Oh, I don't know if Mary would actually like this because this is about soccer and she likes bocce ball. Missing the point. Once you've got those personas, what do you have to offer them? What is the unique thing that they can get out of your product that they won't get out of any other product? And there's this great quote I don't know who originally said it. I've seen it attributed to a bunch of different people, which means it was probably none of them. But it's sell a good night's sleep, not the mattress. It's not about you. It's not about your features. It's about what your core audience needs. Quality content is engaging. It speaks to audience interests in ways that resonate. Now, one of my favorite parts of my job is I get to do the company podcast. It's a place where we can get into really in-depth content with really interesting people. We just did one with Chris Hardwick, who I love. I had to put away all of my fanboy impulses there. And that's all.