Have you ever found yourself wondering if you should produce ‘more content’? Or wondered what the hell content really includes? And whether you should be evaluating its success? Content marketing is an effective way to offer value to your audience, but it can be hard to navigate, and especially hard to navigate without getting overwhelmed. A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to host an event with the incredible Camille Ricketts, Head of Marketing at Notion, to explore exactly this. 

If you haven’t come across Camille before, she’s a hugely respected voice in content marketing (and all round lovely person). Her career spans from Tesla to the White House, and it was Camille who led marketing at First Round Capital and created the First Round Review - a blog resource that is now essential reading for entrepreneurs across the globe. She’s now Head of Marketing at Notion - the all in one workspace. If you missed the event, you missed a great one, but here are some of her tips for how to create great content (without the overwhelm).

Create content based on your audience’s needs 

Wondering if you should be on Clubhouse? Or Twitter? Well, not every brand should be on every single social media channel according to Camille. You need to go where your audience are. If your users don’t use Twitter but they are on Instagram, you need to be on Instagram. Simple. Remember, content doesn’t just mean writing, you can do whatever your users need. The key is to start to figure out where your users live online, what type of content they consume and what influences their decision making. 

You might ask yourself: who are the recipients of this content going to be? Can I schedule quantitative and qualitative activities to get a better understanding of who they are? This might include surveys or speaking to them directly. 

Don’t sidestep discovery time

Content is labour intensive, and there’s nothing worse than spending your time on initiatives that misfire or don’t land at all. Camille advises spending a good amount of time figuring out how to measure success, and deciding who the content is targeted to.

For example, she suggests you can run 10 to 15 qualitative interviews, where you’re looking to really understand what utility your content could have. You might want to ask: ‘Where are people getting advice? Where is that lacking? Where do people still find themselves stumped on a day to day basis? What does that cost them?’ 

Create content based on utility or entertainment

High utility (actionable) content and highly emotional content works the best, Camille advises, as people don’t tend to share content that isn’t one of those things. Emotional content is very difficult to do well but it can be done. Camille cites Dropbox as a great example: when they crossed 100M users they hosted a site where they featured cascading tiles of people talking about emotional stories of Dropbox. For example, there was a story of someone who lost their passport in Thailand who needed it to get home to a wedding and had received help through Dropbox. This kind of content shows the human side.

Think about the jobs to be done

Whatever you build has a certain number of jobs it should be doing, and thinking through those jobs carefully is important, advises Camille. Jobs aren’t just practical, there are emotional jobs to be done, too. This is true for products, but it’s also true for content.

You want to press yourself on what the emotional impact is: what are the pains to kill, and what are the gains for the user?Most people buy something because you’ve made them feel very capable to be a great user for them, Camille says. Customers understand the problem and they feel extremely capable.

Use a framework to come up with new ideas

Ideation takes time and needs a set space for planning. It can be helpful to come up with a feedback loop that allows people to feedback on new ideas, especially as you start producing things. You don't want to just ask for people’s opinions once. Camille suggests you might ask: ‘What have we admired that people have done? What is the delta between the best and the average and what can we provide?’

Remember, it can be time consuming to do it from scratch, so don’t forget you can also play a role by curation: helping them find and connect to content that will help them.

Whatever you do, don’t stop

Camille advises that it’s likely that Pareto’s rule stands true here: around 20% of pieces will drive 80% of traffic. You just don’t know which pieces will resonate. Consistency matters. After all, different things resonate with different people, but the ubiquity of the brand helps. 

If you hone your consistency, and hone your craft, making sure that you keep a check on how your audience is responding, you will get to a good place in time - Camille assures us. To use your time wisely, choose a content schedule that is sustainable for you. Consistency helps, and you should be specific about the day it will be released as that ends up being meaningful over time. Create what is reasonable for you in your current schedule and then just keep your eyes on how many people are sharing it, viewing it, opting in to receive more of it - and that's how you can tell where you’re netting out. Remember, attribution can be tricky. Some people need to see something three times and only then they’re ready to go to the home page. 

Newsletters are a critical resource for brands

Newsletters, Camille tells us, are essential. Newsletter subscribers are a good Northstar metric, as they are an indication of how many people think this is valuable enough to opt into permanently. The more personalised, and segmented, the more valuable it tends to be over time. 

But don’t waste your time analysing unsubscribes. See a newsletter as you’d see a product: look at churn but you also look at new business growth. Unsubscribes are common, says Camille, people will always unsubscribe at large enough numbers, and that’s ok, you don't have to wonder what went wrong in each of those instances. Their unsubscribe may have nothing to do with you - it could be to do with how many other things they are subscribed to. It’s better to look at sharing metrics - how many people are sharing this? 

YES, Clubhouse requires some strategIC THOUGHT

Many people have been wondering about Clubhouse and whether it’s worth the the investment. Clubhouse, Camille says, is a good way for people who don’t usually speak in this forum to engage with an audience, but it comes with a warning. Unless you have a way to attract an audience into a room it might not be a good use of your time. People tend to go to rooms where there are people they follow, or lots of people who follow them, so influencer strategy will need to be a core part of your ability to succeed on the platform. 

You might ask yourself: ‘who could attend this event who will pull in their audiences because they will receive the push notification?’ You’ll have to be strategic about the network of relationships you’re operating in. You also need to come prepared: spontaneous audio format means you have to be flexible with which questions you’ll answer. 

The value of community for marketing

Community is the thing that a lot of companies are talking about. Camille reminds us that there’s a reason for that: first paid marketing was a thing, then content marketing emerged as a thing for a more consultative approach. People were saying ‘you can't just drive me to a place and I'll take action’. Content helped scale those interactions. People don’t want to see content from the brand itself any more, they want to hear from the people who have used the product, they’re trusting that halo more than anyone at the company itself.

Distribution matters

Sometimes there will be stories that seem great, but just don’t end up resonating. The reason can be the lack of distribution: a lack of seeding the content with the right people who will share that type of content. It’s important to have a number of influencers that share to small communities and it’s important to make it easier for them to share and tell them why it was helpful. Sometimes you also just don’t have the magic with what you produce, and that’s when self compassion matters. The best writers in the world have had that experience, Camille reminds us, every stand up comic has this story of ‘I bombed for a few years and then…’. Just keep going, stay useful and keep a check on what’s resonating.

If you use these tips, let us know at hello[@]outofhours.org!

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