Jay Baer’s serving up some gospel truth in today’s Read. He and his team compiled a list of how they advise clients to create better content. The list, of course, is very on-brand for Baer—a cheekier way of documenting those superfluous marketing do’s and don’ts of 2018.
- Thou Shalt Not Engage in Random Acts of Content: Have a strategy and an editorial calendar, and stick to it.
- Thou Shalt Not Be a Content Coward: Have the courage to be specific about your topic and point of view. Content that’s about everything is about nothing.
- Thou Shalt Not Embrace False Metrics: The goal is not to be good at content. The goal is to be good at business because of content. (More on the four types of content metrics here.)
- Honor Thy Audience as a Messenger: Find ways to encourage your audience to create content. It is often more successful and persuasive than company-created content.
- Thou Shall Be Mobile-First (For Real): Duh, mobile is important. But mobile-first means actually using the mobile view as the primary visual canvas.
- Thou Shall Create Talk Triggers: Talk Triggers are purposefully created differentiators that make word of mouth involuntary. Here’s a great one from LinkedIn.
- Thou Shall Atomize Content: Take your big content executions and deconstruct them into a series of smaller, nimbler content executions.
- Thou Shalt Not Cross-Post. While atomizing your content, however, you should not be posting the exact same thing in multiple places.
- Thou Shalt Not Pray at the Altar of Volume. Creating more content is not a measure of success.
- Thou Shall Covet Moving Pictures. If it doesn’t move, it may be a snooze. (Make it a video.)
You’ll want to read this in full for all of Jay’s witticisms and more details on these content marketing “commandments.”
