Listen in on seven minutes of highlights from a session discussing tone in content and the dos and don’ts of becoming a thought leader. Do you face these challenges in your business?

Yeah, I think that just comes down to content execution. Of course, that’s where you get down to the communication aspect of content, which is, how does it look and feel?

Does it deliver the message we’re trying to get it to deliver?

Content and humour

There’s actually quite ironically, a serious debate about humour in content about whether it’s got a place in marketing content analysis.

Well of course it has. Some of the very best content is both funny and memorable, and serious, and conveys a message all at the same time. So I think tone of voice is… My question now speaks to your job, actually, Larissa, if I remember rightly. It’s does your content faithfully reflect your brand? That requires that you know what your brand is, how it represents itself, and the tonality and the tone of voice that you should use, and therefore your content should reflect that.

If you’re a super serious kind of MedTech brand like Shane’s then maybe laughs and jokes, and puns and fun, isn’t really the kind of tone of voice that you should be adopting. Because it doesn’t engender that trust and faith in the messaging, that you could do if you were in a fashion brand, or in a confectionary brand or some other kind of more, less serious market sector.

So I appreciate it. Thanks for the question on that Larissa.

Content and trust

What I was going to ask actually next is this question about trust. The content needs to kind of engender trust because… and you’ll see from the… Gosh, I might bring it across images. I’m just gong to bring this across the chat just one second. Get that moved. Don’t get that. Get like that. We’ll have to get that. We’ll get rid of that. Is this kind of notion of trust is an incredibly important part of what marketing delivers.

Now, this is all marketing not just content marketing.

As the wonderful Seth Godin says, you don’t get trusted by constantly measuring tweaking and faffing around so somebody will buy from you. That’s what I think we have to be careful with content. We don’t spend all of our time just… Not that monitoring, measuring, and managing, and therefore improving, based on the data that we receive isn’t important because clearly it is. But I think I kind of urge all of us here on this call, and on this course, is to try and take a more elevated view of these things.

Because it’s interesting I find that… I don’t know if any of you… It is a bit ironic this week compared to where we are, what we’re speaking about today. But Mark Ritson in Marketing Week this week wrote a very interesting article, very funny, and very, very provocative as usual.

Which says that, “If you’re an out of work marketer at the moment then pretend to understand digital marketing, because that’s what the idiots that write job specs wants to hear.” Now, the fact of the matter is he said that it was simply part of marketing… it’s marketing. Marketing and digital are one and the same thing these days.

If you want to really be a great marketer, you just have to accept that digital is part of your tool set. What you shouldn’t be doing is constantly tweaking and trying to trick and manipulate customers by tweaking and… What’s the word you use? You use something far more profane, I think? In so that the content is adjusted to kind of meet their specific individual needs.

That’s not to say some personalization isn’t important because of course is important. But really you’re better off being trusted or trying to build trust in your brand, and your business through your content by being relevant, compelling, and timely, being consistent, answering unanswered questions, and helping customers move through the buying journey.

Rather than, I see a lot of people out there in the digital world whose job is to kind of basically sit there and look at each and every day at just social media and trying to tweak, an influence and prove that.

Of course, what they will do quite rightly is they’re making incremental gains. That’s not saying that your brand is becoming trusted and giving you a more differentiated positioning in the marketplace. So what I was going to ask you is what is it you can do to become… What is your content can do to help you create more trust?

Trusted advisor status

One of the ways that you can do is to become… We’re trying to achieve this role of trusted advisor. Which is a much, much claimed position that brands suggest that they have, “We are the trusted advisor”.

The thing about trust is that it’s gained. You achieve trust from your customer. You don’t acquire it. I’m saying to you, “I’m trusted”, well you don’t know that. Frankly, that might not be true. I might gain your trust over a period of time by behaving in a particular kind of way.

If I want to be a trusted advisor, I need to behave like a trusted advisor. One of the ways you can become a trusted advisor is to have some kind of thought leadership. Now thought leadership has got to be the most well, worthless kind of phrase I’ve heard in digital marketer for quite some time. Thought leadership is not something you acquire its something you earn. Because if I’ve ever seen content out there that is far from actually having a thought worth following, then that’s most of the thought leadership content I see. I hear it a lot, and a lot of you who work in technology businesses will probably hear this too. Which is your mentors say, “We want to be seen as thought leaders.”

My first question, to them is, “Well, do you have some thoughts worth following then?”

The answer is generally nearly always, “No. We’ve got absolutely nothing unique, or interesting, or relevant, or challenging, or different, or helpful to say. We just want to kind of be seen as thought leaders.”

Well, that’s not sufficient. If you want your content to to that, then it needs to be genuinely posing some interesting and thoughtful questions to the marketplace, that actually might be quite provocative, or left-field, or challenging.

But it actually means you’ve got some unique thoughts worth following.

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