This is a useless recipe, but it’s not wrong. It assumes, however, that accurate advice on what you should do is as valuable as advice on how to do it—the “Should-How Fallacy.” But being right doesn’t create value; empowering others to succeed does.
When it comes to content marketing, all the branding and differentiation (and money) is in the latter. But most content resembles the former.
So how do you get content to where it should be?
The difference between “should” and “how”
“Should” can look damn good. A novice can churn out a comprehensive list of best practices that tells you exactly what you should do—without helping you do it.
Take this snippet from an “ultimate guide” on delighting customers:
Empower your potential and existing customers with educational resources, recommendations, and tools for success to build your brand’s inbound experience. You can do this by writing helpful blog posts, sweden cell phone database sharing tips on social media, and creating a self-service knowledge base.
All correct, all useless.
“Should” content also tends to focus on the “what” and “why” components, which pad word counts (and appease search engines) but achieve little else.
Most of your audience arrives on your site aware of what they need to fix. They don’t need you to define a strategy or tactic, or to tell them why it matters. (And if they do, they don’t need 2,000 words to be convinced.)
They need you to show them how to do it. Or how to rethink it—“how” content doesn’t have to be hyper-tactical.
explanation of why email marketing is important.Email marketing is important, huh? Never knew.
The before-and-after of consuming your content should change at least one of three things:
The way someone does something.
The first two are more familiar to B2B marketers; the last one often applies to B2C. (Exceptions abound.)
In any case, ask, “What’s the combined delta of the content I’m creating?” How much will this sentence/paragraph/article change someone’s process, perception, or attitude?
So why is “should” content so ubiquitous?
Because it’s cheap to produce. Even a below-average generalist can pillage Page 1 of search results to piece together an academic overview. For well-funded companies, it’s a quick way to build a content machine that publishes three or four long-form articles a week.
That type of content ticks all the boxes that search engines—most companies’ dominant distribution channel—reward. Google won’t give you credit for nuance or expert takes that counter conventional wisdom. Novel metaphors don’t improve rankings.
But all the long-term value is in the “how.” And that’s where my brain has been the past several months.
Distilling marketing content, then distilling it again
I’ve been working with a small team on a new CXL product, Adeft. Adeft is marketing knowledge distilled into checklist-style “playbooks” (a neurotically meticulous version of what we strive for with the CXL blog). We’re trying to turn water into wine grain alcohol.
screenshots of adeft.
By helping develop our process (yes, it’s hard), I’ve become hyper-sensitive to wiggle words, the specifics that novices tiptoe around, and how experts unknowingly build assumptions into their workflows.
It reminds me of the apocryphal story about Michelangelo unveiling his sculpture of David. “How did you create such a masterpiece from a crude slab of marble?” asked an admirer. “It was easy,” Michelangelo responded. “All I did was chip away everything that wasn’t David.”
We’ve been chipping away every word that’s not a playbook. We haven’t ushered in the High Renaissance of marketing content (yet). But what I’ve learned—at Adeft and CXL—has made me pretty handy with a chisel.
The five lessons below are as valid for action-oriented content as they are for thought leadership, for lengthy ebooks or pithy tweets.
5 keys to money-making, how-focused content1. Experts aren’t best-practice repositories—they tell you what happens when you try to implement best practices.
You don’t see a nutritionist to ask whether a salad or deep-fried Oreo is the more heart-healthy choice.
So why would you ping Peep to ask for his “best CRO tip”? Or Kaleigh Moore to ask if freelance writers should network?
Advance, thorough research of best practices—all the things someone should do—are the base upon which experts offer contrast and depth. Experts explain what it’s like to actually do the work—stories of the real-world how.
Ask Peep: “Which CRO ‘best practice’ do you disagree with most?”
Ask Kaleigh: “What’s the most underrated networking channel?”
At Adeft, this led us to a layered editorial pro