Zombies, Snapchat and Content Marketing

It happened one night while I was watching an episode of The Walking Dead. (You know, that show where flesh-eating zombies stagger about in search of a few remaining survivors to feast on?) Meanwhile, the living barricade themselves inside abandoned buildings, only risking going outside long enough to get food or other supplies.

The zombies, for the most part, are very sluggish and slow moving. I guess their senses are dulled from being dead or whatever. So whenever somebody live steps out in view of the zombies, it usually takes about 10 seconds before one of the zombies manages to get close enough to take a bite out of one of them.

That in turn made me think about content marketing. Research suggests that when someone visits your website, the probability of them leaving is at it’s highest during the first 10 seconds of their visit, then drops off dramatically after that. This is a metric webmaster's monitor, called bounce rate. So just as with zombies and snapchat, in content marketing, you have about 10 seconds to reveal something we care about, or we will click away. After all, there are lots of other choices out there bub. Don’t get mad, get even.

Good content marketing always starts with a story. Notice how I gave you the story above before giving you a lot of facts? The story sets the stage for the data. It gives you some context to hang it on that fits with your schema. Once we have the story, then we are able to plug in all the details where they belong. Also – we are more likely to retain and recall facts when they are part of a story.

Content Rules author Ann Handley turned me on to this one. Lots of marketers make the mistake of using all the right mediums, all the right formats, but their content looks and feels just like everybody else’s. You have to find a way to present your value in a differentiated way, or else it’s just adds to the already noisy internet. If you have writer’s block and can’t think of anything unique to say, try this trick from Tina Fey’s book Bossy Pants. Think “Yes, and….”

In comedy performances, Tina mastered the art of improvisation by agreeing with the other comedian and adding to what they just said. It works because of the same principle above. The laughter flows because the audience is able to follow the jokes, building on the last one. If you’re stuck and can’t seem to find your way to creating original content marketing material, you can find pieces, concepts and ideas that are in the news, etc. and build on them. Yes, and…