Chapter 6
Discovering Your Content Mission
Everything under the sun has been said … you have to find a new way to say it.
Besides the underlying business model (how the money comes in), there is one thing that media companies do with their content planning that nonmedia companies do not do. Do you know what it is?
It’s the editorial mission statement. Media companies start their strategies by developing an editorial mission statement that guides their content creation efforts and serves as a beacon for the overall business. I’ve launched over 30 media products in my career, from magazines to newsletters to events to webinar programs. In every one of those launches, the first few days were spent creating and fine-tuning the editorial mission. It is simply the first step in establishing a successful strategy.
Most businesses today have the opportunity to be publishers. The smart ones follow the basic strategies that media companies have used for years to successfully build their audiences.
YOUR CONTENT MISSION
A mission statement is a company’s reason for existence. It’s why the organization does what it does. For example, Southwest Airlines’s mission statement is to democratize the travel experience. The mission statement for CVS is to be the easiest pharmacy retailer for customers to use. So, in simple terms, the mission statement answers the question, “Why do we exist?”
I cover the content marketing mission statement in most of my keynote presentations. It’s critical to first set the tone for the idea of content marketing … or any marketing, for that matter. Marketing professionals, with both small and large businesses, get so fixated on channels such as blogs, Facebook, or Pinterest that they have no clue to the underlying reason of why they should use that channel in the first place. The “why” must come before the “what.”
Your content tilt (Chapter 5) needs to be expressed in a way that you can communicate to your audience. It’s a bold statement when you put your flag in the ground and tell your audience why you are different.
In Epic Content Marketing, I discuss three parts of the content mission statement:
The core target audience
The material that will be delivered to the audience
The outcome for the audience
My favorite mission statement from a traditional media company is from Inc. magazine. You can find its mission on its About Us page:
Welcome to Inc.com, the place where entrepreneurs and business owners can find useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses.
Inc.’s mission statement includes:
The core target audience: Entrepreneurs and business owners.
The material that will be delivered to the audience: Useful information, advice, insights, resources, and inspiration.
The outcome for the audience: Running and growing their businesses.
Inc.’s mission statement is incredibly simple and includes no words that can be misunderstood. Simplicity is key for your content marketing mission statement.
Note that nowhere in the mission statement is Inc. talking about how it makes money. That’s where most start-ups go wrong with their content creation … they always want to talk about what they are going to sell. If you do that, you’ll never even get off the ground with your Content Inc. strategy.
CASE STUDY: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY SCHOOL
Darren Rowse built two amazingly successful Content Inc. models. The first one, ProBlogger, focuses on small business blogging. The second, Digital Photography School, is one of the leading sources for beginning photographers on how to get the maximum out of their picture-taking skills.
But it didn’t start out that way. Initially, Darren launched a camera review–type blog. As he explains:
Previous to ProBlogger I started a camera review blog that was my first commercial sort of blog and that had gotten to the point where it was full-time, but it wasn’t a very satisfying blog to write. My readers would come for one day to research a certain camera and then disappear and never come back. So I always had this dissatisfaction with it that I wasn’t actually building a community; I think that’s what really feeds me, having ongoing readers. I always wanted a blog that was a bit more about helping people in a long-term way.
After this initial experiment didn’t quite work, Darren came back to photography blogging, but changed his content tilt. Darren’s “aha!” moment came with his focus on one particular audience.
“I guess one of the doubts I had along the way was around focus,” says Darren. He recalls:
Very much early on it was about beginners, so it was very basic content and I had some doubts about whether I should start expanding into more intermediate level content, but I kind of stuck to that beginner stuff for the first two years and really built the audience there until my audience began to grow into the next level of content. So I didn’t expand the expertise too early, which was good in hindsight.
That decision paid off, and Darren saw his total e-mail and social audience grow to well over a million subscribers.
Let’s take a look at Digital Photography School’s content mission. You can find it on the website’s About Us page (http://cmi.media/CI-DPS).
Welcome to Digital Photography School—a website with simple tips to help digital camera owners get the most out of their cameras.
Let’s dissect the mission statement:
The core target audience: Digital camera owners.
The material that will be delivered to the audience: Simple tips.
The outcome for the audience: Get the most out of their cameras.
Darren expands on his mission by saying:
This “School” is not a formal one by any means. There are no classes, no teachers, no exams—rather it’s a learning environment where I think out loud about what I know and where in our Forum we share what we’re learning by showing our photos and ask and answer each other questions. Also, unlike most schools, the information here is free.
It’s no wonder that beginning and intermediate photographers engage in Darren’s site on a regular basis. Darren’s content tilt, the reason why he separated himself, was his insight and ability to turn his focus on a beginner audience with helpful, consistent tips that his readers could use immediately. Long gone are Darren’s days of reviewing cameras.
WANTS, NOT NEEDS
More and more, I find that the best Content Inc. programs revolve around aspirations, not needs. I’ve been guilty of telling marketers to “focus on customer pain points” since, well, forever. Focusing on pain points just gets you to the front door.
To get to the heart of your customers’ needs, you have to focus on what they want to be and help them get where they really want to go. Instead of the basics like “saving money” and “lowering costs,” let’s raise the bar to things like “giving our customers more free time to live the lives they want to” or “being a person that can make a difference in the world.”
It sounds corny, but it’s so critical. To become that one resource that cuts through the clutter, the people in your audience need to believe that your content can change their stars (from the movie A Knight’s Tale).
So, like Peter Thiel preaches, forget what your so-called competition is creating and distributing to your customers. You are better than that. Instead, become the content that your customers want to engage with over everything else. It’s that kind of aspiration that will give you the vision to put a plan and team together that will truly make a difference.
CONTENT INC. INSIGHTS
Once the content tilt is identified, we can begin to build our content mission. A sound mission includes who the specific audience is, what content we deliver to that audience, and what the audience outcome is.
So many companies focus on what their competition is doing. With content, you compete with tens, even hundreds, of sources. Thus, it’s pointless to focus on what the competition does. Focus on your audience.
Sure, you can be successful focusing on informational needs, but take your program to the next level. If you can help people live better lives or get better jobs, you’ll grab them emotionally and keep them as subscribers for life.
Resources
The Nerdist Podcast, Henry Winkler interview, December 15, 2014.
Digital Photography School, accessed April 19, 2015, http://digital-photography-school.com/.
A Knight’s Tale, Columbia Pictures, released May 2001.
Marie Griffin, “The Idea That Transformed Hoyt Publishing,” AdAge.com, accessed April 19, 2015, http://adage.com/article/btob/idea-transformed-hoyt-publishing/273350/.