I have this idea for a post I want to write, everything makes sense in my head, then I start writing and sound like a used car salesman.
Part of the problem with content marketing is that it can be terribly stiff. When I write for work, my brain switches into business mode, and everything comes out awkward and sales-y.
I wrote four blog posts for my business over the last three weeks. The first three were product tutorials, the last one was a comparison post. I’m going to reflect on what I did well, where I messed up, and what I need to pay attention to.
Offer less context
My first post was about how people can use our product to set up a collection of daily tips and automatically tweet one out each day.
For some reason, I started the post with a story about Corey Haines and how he was looking for a tool to tweet out daily tips.
At the time, I thought it made sense to offer some real-world context and a use case. Looking back on it now, someone searching for a post on how to do this, doesn't need the context. They just want to do it.
So much of the advice around content marketing is for writing at the top of the funnel. The aim is to create the most useful and complete resource the internet has ever seen on a topic. A one-stop-shop for all things related to whatever you're writing about.
Bottom-of-the-funnel content is different. By the time people get to the bottom of the funnel, they have already read our ultimate guide to whatever and now they just want to know how to solve a very specific problem.
Our ideal customers don't need loads of unnecessary context, they already know all that. If they didn't they wouldn't be our ideal customers.
Get straight to what people care about
Again, I started with another story. The second post in a row. What am I doing?
I need to stop trying to provide context nobody wants.
There is a massive gap between knowing what to do and actually being able to do it.
I’m learning to kitesurf at the moment. I just finished a beginner’s course. I know what I'm supposed to do. Then I get on the water and everything goes out the window. There’s knowing what to do in your head, and then there’s doing it with your body. Getting my body to follow the instructions from my head takes time and lots of repetition. It appears the principle also applies to business writing.
Once I get past the awkward start, I feel like I did a good job of helping people think through what kind of things they should be thinking about when picking a Twitter marketing tool and how our product stacks up against those criteria.
Just write for one person
The third article was strong off the blocks. It was an article about scheduling twitter threads. I didn't waste any time explaining what Twitter threads are or why you should invest in Twitter marketing. If someone's looking for a tool to schedule threads, they already know all this stuff.
I was a bit unsure about who I was writing for in this post.
Are these Twitter veterans or people who just heard about threads and want to get in the game? Do they use Twitter professionally or just casually? Is this their first Twitter tool or are they switching from a competitor?
Part of the problem is that we don't have a single ideal customer.
Being one of the first thread makers, a large proportion of our user base are the first users of Twitter threads. We're not targeting the creator economy, our product seems to appeal to a more mature crowd: Scientists, doctors, academics, journalists, NGOs, etc. Tech Twitter taking to Twitter threads is a fairly recent maneuver and explains why so many competitors have popped up in the last year and a half.
Lately, we've been focusing on helping content teams collaborate on their Twitter marketing efforts. A lot of the work we've done over the last six months has been focused on building out collaborative features and multi-user support for our team plans.
Writing for an ideal customer is hard because most products that have made it out of the survival stage often have more than one ideal customer. If they didn't, segmentation wouldn't be a thing.
In the second post, I did a fairly good job of speaking specifically to team leaders but then I dropped that ball on this post. Even if our product as a whole has several customer segments, each individual post can still be written for a single ideal customer.
Moving forward, the goal is to direct each post towards a single person, who has a specific problem, and a distinct level of expertise and familiarity with the problem space.
The goal is to get each post just right, for one person.
Tone down the self-promotion
For the final post, I switched gears and put together a comparison post between Chirr App and other Twitter character counting tools.
This time I didn't waste any time getting started and I focused on a single, well-defined ideal customer.
But then I managed to snap back into business mode and it all came off as a bit overly promotional.
Instead of getting all caught up trying to sell, I just need to show what we created, how it works, and how it’s different from the alternatives. And preferably all towards the beginning of the post.
Writing for your ideal customers is so much harder than it sounds.
Rather than going back and fixing all these mistakes, I want to focus on not repeating them in the next few posts. Once I've found my rhythm, I’ll come back and clean things up.
Based on this reflection, I’m going to:
- Forget about trying to sell something. Instead, I’m going to focus on clarifying what we created, how it works, and how it differs from the alternatives.
- Fight the urge to provide unnecessary context. Jump straight to what people care about instead. So everything in the previous point, in the opening section
- Write each piece for a single person. This approach is predicated on clearly understanding their level of understanding, what they feel about the problem, and what they care about in the situation.
If you can relate to the problem of unintentionally awkward business writing then hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. These observations are not meant to be prescriptive, feel free to try them out, but your personal mileage may vary.
These posts are meant to be conversational. If you have questions or thoughts let me know on Twitter.
If you’d like to read through the posts, here they are in order:
- A Twitter auto poster to loop through a collection of daily tips
- The best Twitter management tool for growing teams
- The kickass guide to scheduling Twitter threads
- Finding the best Twitter character counter tool
Related articles
- Why we've decided to focus on content marketing at Chirr App.
- The case for starting a SaaS content marketing effort with bottom-of-the-funnel content.
- How to be useful to the internet - my overall mindset and approach to content marketing.
- How to write lukewarm content no one will care about - a scorecard thingy I'm using to grade my business writing and stay pointed in the right direction.