content marketing / thinkit creative

The indifference of content

By Patrick Gant

I want you to imagine for a moment that you and I are time travelling.

We arrive in the 2nd century BC at the Great Library of Alexandria. We’ve essentially stepped into the internet of the classical age: a place that houses vast amounts of human knowledge and serves as possibly the most important gathering spot for scholars of that time.

We notice something else right away: it’s not just noted thinkers visiting the library who talk among themselves about its great works. Many of the residents of this ancient city take great pride in being able to cite from its collections too.

Good ideas, as Alexandrians saw them, were worth protecting and sharing. They were choosy.

We move ahead in our time travel to about 50BC and find the Great Library is shattered. Jump ahead a few centuries and there is barely a trace that there ever was a library at all. Today, all we are left with are fragments of stories of its existence. We don’t even have a clear idea of what it looked like in its prime.

What is a greater tragedy than the loss of this library and the world of wisdom it contained is how we lost it.

Modern historians tell us it didn’t happen overnight, but slowly.

It was, as Matthew Battles suggests in his book Library “moldering slowly through the centuries as people grew indifferent and even hostile to their contents.”

Let’s think about that for a second.

Neither fires nor conquest nor enemies of free thought were needed to obliterate one of the pinnacles of classical civilization.

All that was needed was human indifference.

I consider that lesson often when I look at our modern-day Great Library on the web.

It doesn’t have walls and doors but there are plenty of similarities in terms of its purpose and ambition.

We fill it with stories and ideas, commentary and diatribes. And the occasional cat video. Much of this serves as a fine way to capture the zeitgeist of the times.

And yet I’ve grown weary of the word that gets used to label all of this: content.

I used to think that there was purpose behind that word choice–that maybe content was an economical way to describe text, audio and image based ideas.

I’m not so sure anymore.

Let’s be honest. Most of what passes as content online today just isn’t all that good.

Too often, it’s just thinking out loud. And there’s plenty of it: I count 598 million Google hits for the word.

Just as troubling, far too much of it is self referential. In other words: it’s content about the marketing of content for content providers to reach content consumers.

Do you really want to be part of that gig? I sure don’t. I’m pretty sure that’s why you remain a loyal subscriber to CreativeBoost: you’re picky with what you spend your time reading.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some moralizer who seeks to purge words I don’t like from our lexicon. I’m quite sure content still has its place somewhere.

I’m more troubled by what motivates its everyday use: that old foe, indifference.

Most online content is to ideas as fast food is to nutrition. It’s cheap and plentiful. But it’s not good for you. In the long run, there is a price to be paid for it.

Beyond just settling for flabby thinking, a diet of content–whether you’re a consumer or creator–leads to something even worse: unrealized potential.

You and I only have a finite amount of time to make our respective dent in the universe.

And what we have in this tick of time is a chance to share with the future what we’ve learned. It’s the idea tree that we plant for others to later enjoy its shade.

That’s the true power and wisdom of writing (and yes, other media might qualify too but those are not in my area of expertise).

Writing is thinking made organized against its will. And it is our job to put everything we’ve got into ensuring that our efforts are a reflection of our very best selves.

There’s a better way to look at the ideas you create and share. Think of it as your material.

Just as if you were building a house, you want something that won’t fall down when greeted by the first gust of wind.

You don’t want something that chases trends or quickly falls out of fashion.

Solid material–assembled with care, shared with love–has a timelessness to it.

That is how we can learn well from the Alexandrians, if we choose to.

It is our best defence against the corrosive effect of indifference.

Heck yes, you need to write better headlines: here’s how and why

By Patrick Gant

Pay more attention to headlines in what you do.

Sure, you might be tempted to say “but I don’t write headlines in my work.”

Oh yes you do.

Ever find yourself needing to send an email but struggle to get readers to respond or to take some kind of action? Do you do analytical work that involves creating in-depth reports? Maybe you’re trying to find a stronger hook for your fundraising letter. Or maybe you’re looking at ways to get better at giving presentations that connect with people.

These are just a few examples where headlines can be valuable. We just don’t often think of them that way.

With email, we call it “coming up with a good subject line.” With reports and presentations, we ask ourselves “how can I cover all these complicated ideas in a way that doesn’t lose the reader?” See my point? Part of a headline’s power is its ability to compress an idea.

Sure, a great headline can attract attention (a practice that was alive and well 2,000 years ago in Rome when the first gazette, Acta Diurna, couched hard news with salacious stories).

But what they really do is give your reader a good reason to keep reading.

David Ogilvy—the true original MadMan of advertising—once said that “on the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

He wasn’t kidding about that last part. Even in my own work, I spend an inordinate amount of time crafting and refining headlines and subheadings, because it’s “the ticket on the meat” (another Ogilvyism).

Why does it matter so much? Because as I like to regularly remind: people are busy.

We live in a world now where the thing that is most scarce is audience attention.

You have to earn it and keep earning it. With that in mind, here’s what I know about how you can write better headlines that will help you keep earning those readers and find more homes for those ideas you want to share.

Make friends with action verbs
Cut out the fluffy features behind your idea until you’re left with a raw verb that describes what it can do for the reader (e.g., “Do…Grow…Make…Get…Take…Expand…”). It might not seem stylish to use them, but action verbs never get dull and they deliver the goods on answering that one question every reader has: “what’s in it for me to keep reading?”

Be more specific
Boring writing happens when you don’t know where you want the reader to look. As fiction writer Nancy Hale tells us: “The more specific you are, the more universal you are.” That applies to more than just fiction. Headline writing is compressed storytelling. And that’s something you can apply to any business. Find the glowing core in your story.

“How to” is your BFF
Veterans of advertising copy will tell you that you can’t write a bad headline that starts with “how to” (see what I did in the subject line of this email?) Granted, this is more relevant to email subject lines and presentation copy, but never say never when it comes to creating a surprising header even in dense analytical reports. I’ve seen it done.

But say no to link bait
You might think it’s tempting to mimic the linkbait strategies of Buzzfeed and others who peddle McContent (e.g., “You’ll never believe what happened next…” or “Seven ways to do X”). But don’t do it. That’s a race to the bottom and one that’s become so common now that readers are wise to the game. No amount of link baited traffic is going to erase the impression that you’ve snookered your audience into reading something that just wasn’t all that good or memorable. Your best ideas and your readers deserve better than that.

Do the unexpected
“State the opposite, not the obvious.” That’s what Sam Horn says in her book “Pop! Stand Out in Any Crowd.” Sometimes the best way to present an idea is to turn it inside out and say something that goes against conventional wisdom. Often that’s where real insight lives. Longtime CreativeBoost readers know that I’m quite fond of that particular strategy.

Yummy, tasty morsels
Break your ideas up into smaller ones. Assign a subheading to each one. Notice how I do that with by blog posts and newsletter? It’s a great way reward your readers for their attention and to honour their time. The trick is make it look like it’s not work to read things all the way though.

Hey, much like what you just did! See how that happened?

What you give away like the Elvis of Punk

By Patrick Gant

Today, the business of being creative is a lot like the way things used to be in the making of punk music.

Behind what you do, there’s that raw sense of purpose. You burn with mission and conviction. Your work comes from that same Do-It-Yourself ethos that gave early punk acts the verve to plug-in and play from the heart.

“(It) remains one of punk’s singular achievements,” writes Warren Kinsella in his excellent book Fury’s Hour: A (Sort of) Punk Manifesto “It hasn’t been co-opted or compromised. Do It Yourself and change yourself. Change everything.”

It remains a pretty great way of putting a nice big dent in the universe.

But take it from Iggy Pop, the true Elvis of Punk: you also need to pay very careful attention to what you’re giving away.

Especially to what gets done for free.

“When it comes to art,” he says, “money is an unimportant detail.” But he also cautions “it just happens to be a huge, unimportant detail.”

There are two kinds of ways that work gets done for free.

The first is when you offer people something and don’t expect something in exchange (which otherwise typically takes the form of financial compensation).

This includes pro bono work, volunteering your time for a cause, or even in generating what some like to call content (but really it’s something more meaningful…it’s your material that you use to build your platform online). It also includes this post and my newsletter (hey have you signed up yet?)

There are many reasons why you might choose to do this, just like those early-era punk rock pioneers who cut their own recordings and sometimes even gave them away.

Whether as a gift, as a donation, or to serve some strategic end to your business or your career, what matters most is that it’s your call.

You own that choice.

The second way that work gets done for free is the one you have to watch out for.

That’s where the other party–be it a client, a prospect, or someone who says they dig what you do–expects you to work for nothing.

It often includes this classic invitation: “do the work and then I’ll pay you if I decide it’s any good.” This is what’s known as working for spec.

It’s commonplace. But that doesn’t mean it’s something you should do.

Recognize what compels most people to agree to such terms: fear. For example: “If I say no, I might miss my big break.”

This is one of the great lies that gets told by talented people who frankly would know better if they paid more attention to honing their craft than to what others are prepared to pay for to own it.

In a wider sense–if you include working for next to nothing in that equation–it’s a mistake that used to be perpetuated in the record industry by a surprisingly high number of artists.

And that includes Iggy Pop: “If I had to depend on what I actually get from sales I’d be tending bars between sets.”

That’s coming from a guy who has 20 records under his belt.

Being a professional starts by treating what you do as something of intrinsic value. Emphasis on intrinsic, as in it has a quality that is inherent, not assigned by outside forces.

Don’t ask the market “is this any good?”

Don’t ask “how much will you pay for this?”

Figure out what’s the problem the market has that you can solve with your work.

It does have real problems. You can very much solve those problems.

Be a punk with your talent but don’t let your talent get punked.

There are still many good reasons to engage that DIY spirit and to be generous with your talents and share what you know. Just make sure you do it with your eyes wide open.

Here are three tests that I use, and that you can apply to your work when deciding whether you want to give something away.

1) Whose idea is it to give it away?

Ask yourself: whose idea is it that I do this work for free (or for next-to-free)? If it’s yours, fine. But if the request originates elsewhere, proceed with caution. Yes, there are cases where this is entirely valid, particularly where volunteer work is concerned. But those are exceptions. Know the difference.

2) Who decides the value of your work?

Never make it someone else’s job to assign the value of your work. When you do this, you will wind up settling for less than your worth.

That doesn’t prevent you from negotiating on price and on what you will provide in exchange for an agreed upon price. Do not confuse that with the value of the work itself.

Even work that you choose to give away for free has an intrinsic value. But if you don’t know what that is, then how can you expect others to treat your efforts or your product the way you want it to be treated?

3) Who owns your idea?

No, I am not going to bore you here with a discussion on intellectual property rights. Instead, I invite you to think about this little anecdote about the other Elvis. The original one. Hear me out with this.

Back in the early 1970s, a young songwriter got what she thought was her big break. Elvis Presley wanted to cover one of her songs. And then came this from his manager: ‘You know, we have a rule that Elvis doesn’t record anything unless we take half the publishing.’

She refused.

She said no to Elvis.

No to the money.

And the opportunity to get that song in front of millions of listeners.

But she retained full publishing rights to her song.

Things worked out okay for her.

Okay so that’s not a punk story for a closer.
But it ought to be.

Recognize that whatever talents you have in you–whether it’s being able to paint a masterpiece or being able to mange people or to balance a budget–these are things that lead to outputs that are uniquely yours.

You are a maker of things. Protect your right to set the value and the price of your work. Own your choices.

Be ready to say no to the real Elvis if the deal is not a good one for you.

Be generous like the Elvis of Punk.

Burn with purpose.

But learn from his experience, too.

What your business card absolutely must do

By Patrick Gant

The modern-day business card is carry-over from the Industrial Revolution and dates back possibly as far as 15th century China. It once was a tool to communicate status. Later, it became one of very few ways—other than the phone directory—to help people know how to reach you.

Things don’t work that way anymore.

It’s not hard to find someone’s contact information anymore. What is difficult today is finding the right tools to attract and sustain someone’s attention—to be memorable.

Your business card communicates an experience to your audience.

I know it’s old fashioned, but…

Let’s just get this out of the way. Some don’t believe business cards anymore.

I still do. I believe that little things count for a lot in business.

The information your card contains and how it is presented instantly defines the way your audience perceives you, along with what you have to say and what you are selling.

Even with something as simple as a business card, when you design with your customer in mind, you’re creating a powerful suggestion about how you work and of how you can help people.

Taking the time to ensure your business card delivers a great experience isn’t all that hard to do.

Let me share with you what I’ve learned”

Print on the best stock you can find.
This is the number-one thing you must do. Buy the very best paper stock you can. Print in smaller batches if you have to. Good stock looks professional and avoids the frayed, dog-eared look that afflicts so many flimsy cards. Personally, I’m quite happy with the stock they use at moo.com.

Avoid glossy finishes, but ensure white space.
There’s a practical reason why you should say no to glossy and yes to generous use of white space. Business cards can be really handy to write on. Don’t underestimate this benefit. A short note jotted down on the back of your card can do amazing things. It’s one of the subtle ways that something mass produced can become personalized. People like things that are made just for them.

Don’t be clever at the expense of being useful.
Look online and you’ll find lots of examples of clever business cards. Some of them are even useful. But many are just wasted expressions of vanity. What am I going to do with an all-steel embossed card that’s impossible to read in low light and that I can’t write on? I mean really.

Be selective.
Most people today are drowning in too much information. Make it easier for them to reach you by being selective about what you include on your card. If phone, email and your website are the top-three places people go to reach you, then include just that. Unless you’re in a business that predominantly uses fax (and you have my sympathies if you are), then cut that from your card. There’s no penalty for leaving some things out. Keep it simple. We’re not living in the 1970s anymore. There are other places people can go to find additional information about you if they need it.

Include a photo, but only pro-grade.
Since all business is personal and so much of marketing today is relationship-based, including a professionally-shot photo of yourself on your card is never a bad idea. But do this only if the photo is a professional headshot.

Short and sweet.
The life of the modern business card is short and sweet. Gone are the days when the cards you give to people would be tucked into a rolodex and used repeatedly when someone wanted to call you. Most people today aren’t going to keep your card for very long: just until they can enter it into their address book or CRM. Keep your card simple, purposeful and memorable: that’s what sells. Complement it with other products to serve as leave-behinds that can deliver substance: free ebooks, guides and reports are just a few examples.

Think about the reader’s experience.
Focus less on what matters to you and instead ask what creates the best experience for the person who receives your card. Remember: the more information you put on that 3.5 x 2 inch piece of paper, the smaller the typeface you’ll need, and the less white space you’ll have.

Rethinking the professional speaker’s one-sheet

By Patrick Gant

Photo: Gawker Media

Now that so much marketing is digital, the professional speaker’s one-sheet is looking more and more like an anachronism.

It was a time-honoured tool for generations, consisting of a headshot photo, a brief bio and an overview of your area of specialty.

It was a speaker’s key marketing tool. It got the job done.

The traditional one-sheet was designed based on three assumptions: it would be almost exclusively used as a paper-based product, you could reuse that product for a mass audience, and it was an acceptable, unidimensional substitute for introducing yourself personally to someone.

Let’s challenge those assumptions.

So much about the way we market has changed. Today, it’s more relationship-based, far, far less dependent on paper, and people learn a lot more about you faster than ever.

On top of all that, there are tools out there that just everyone has to quickly (and regularly) create a more engaging, personal introduction with your audience.

I’m not saying you should blow-up your one-sheet. Far from it.

The copywriting sales mastery that used to go into that product is as vital as ever. And if you don’t invest in developing a professional product that’s engineered to sell, you’re leaving money on the table.

But you do have to stop thinking about it as a static, single sheet printed on paper.

If you are a professional speaker or presenter, this is still one of your top marketing products. It just has to catch-up with the way people make decisions today. That’s at the root of professional speaker marketing (and it’s why it’s a fast-growing part of our business here at thinkit creative).

Think of your product—your bio, photos, benefits statement, testimonials and areas of specialization—as modules. These are components that you can rearrange and tweak to suit the interests of a specific speaking engagement. Put them all in a folder and generate digital products on the fly. There are pros who can help you with this.

Don’t stop there. Consider shooting a short video and posting it to a special webpage on your site…just for that upcoming speaking event. Link it to you what you send. Integrate what you have to say with your other material on your website, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles (among other sources).

Static, mass-produced products are out. Personalized, interconnected and flexible digital products are in.