The Philosophy of Content Creation: 9 Beliefs You Need For Success
Is your content not getting the engagement you hoped for? Well, here’s 9 beliefs that have been critical for me and my team to create better content.
1. Storytelling.
You may not remember all the maths formulas you learned in school, but I bet you remember the story of the child who leaned back in their chair and split their head open. And I bet you didn’t lean back in your chair after that. Stories are powerful influencers. Studies show that the human brain becomes more suggestable when hearing a story. Believing in the power of storytelling in content creation can lead to more engaging, memorable, and emotionally resonant content. It’s number 1 here because it’s paramount.
2. Long-term Strategy.
The longer you build an audience for, the cheaper and more effective it gets. If you can figure out how to sustainably do it at the beginning, just keep going and don’t worry about results. Mr Beast, YouTube’s most subscribed man took 4 years to hit a 10,000-person audience but then hit 50k and 100k in the same year. You must have patience and “do things for an unreasonable amount of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are” - Neil Strauss.
3. Data-Driven Decisions.
While storytelling helps us feel, data helps us understand. The belief in using data and analytics to guide content strategy leads to better targeting, more relevant content, and improved results over time. At the end of the day, we’re spending money, so every action needs to be efficient, so you don’t go out of business. a. Caveat - Just because it’s easy to measure, doesn’t mean it’s important. Ensure you’re picking the right data, even if that means going for qualitative over quantitative.
4. Collaboration.
Believing in the power of collaboration can lead to growing a boarder audience. Think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Everyone has their favourite Avenger, and they bring you the cinema more than anyone else. That’s audience cross-over in action, baby! If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
5. Learn and Act.
If you hear something about how to improve your content and you think “ah, that’s a good idea” and you don’t do it, you are wasting your time. I’ve done this more than anyone with hours racked up on YouTube passively watched during lunch. Information is like a cheque, acting is cashing it in.
6. Give Give Give, Ask.
Goodwill compounds with your audience over time. The longer you wait to ask, the bigger the ask can be. Justin Welsh uses a 1-10 ratio; Gary Vee famously has “Gab, Gab, Gab, Right Hook” and some pages never ever sell anything. Your content might not cost money, but it can cost time, so free might still be overpriced. That’s why it’s helpful to ask, “is this a selling post or is this an engagement post”. You can then focus on making great entertainment or a convincing ad. A wish-wash of both does neither.
7. Quality quantity over quality:
Dedication to quality without perfectionism. Iteration will always make it better. Just focus on “stacking the no pile” as Seth Godin says. This just means that you need volume + feedback to learn, but cowering away from that will just delay the improvement you need to grow. Accounts that post daily grow 4x times faster than those that post weekly. An expert will likely know how to spend a week extra on a piece of content to improve it, but beginners do not. If you’re just starting, you don’t have the luxury of not doing the volume. If you see daily posting as investing, consider your portfolio getting bigger consistently. This compounds over time for out-sized returns. Media companies acquire more and more to consolidate this value. There is enormous value in owning as much media as possible.
8. Nothing is too long, only too boring.
This one is from Christopher Nolan…just kidding. However, it is true that people think you can’t make more than a 9 second video when millions of people watched Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which is 3 hours AND 9 seconds. It’s really just a factor of being continuously engaging throughout the pieces and doing this over time to build up audience expectations.
9. Fame is the most efficient Business Model.
This one is from Alex Hormozi who has grown incredibly fast on social media. One of his sayings is “Fame is the most efficient business model.” If you look at his success, I think you can see why. In this video – he says by using content marketing he’s managed to go from $2 million on paid ads per month compared to the same impression for $70k on organic channels. Pretty great savings for a business. His results are probably even better now as his account is bigger. For most people, if you could just cut your ads budget in half and get the same results, you’d be laughing. Content marketing gets cheaper over time. So go for the long-haul.
a. Caveat: Just remember, only need to be famous to your target customer. And as Shaan Puri says “It’s better to be known well than well known.” So, make sure the content you put out is relevant to what you do and who you are. It’s better equipping your audience for how to engage with you.
Conclusion
There you have it: nine principles that transformed how we create content.
Is data-driven content strategy heartless, or is it the only way to guarantee ROI?
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