“Marketing is easy.”
This is how Matt started his talk as part of Humber Business Week 2024.
Unsurprisingly, when he asked the room who agreed with him, nobody backed him up. Luckily, Matt went on to explain his thinking, saying “Marketing is easy, good marketing is hard”.
A bit of a cop-out but true nonetheless, especially when it comes to content creation. We can all post but regularly posting good quality, engaging content is tough.
LocalIQ’s “Digital Minute” data is quite well known. But if you haven’t seen this year’s release, here are some mind-boggling stats that show the scale of digital activity EVERY MINUTE…
65,972 images and videos are uploaded to Instagram.
293,000 status updates are shared on Facebook.
350,000 tweets are sent.
625 million videos are viewed on TikTok.
6.3 million searches are made on Google.
3.5 million YouTube videos are watched.
This infographic shows some more of the key findings from the data, but it’s well worth looking at the full report to truly understand the scale of what’s happening online.
But don’t be overwhelmed!
With all of this content out there, how much of it is actually good?
If 625 million videos are being viewed on TikTok every minute, we’d argue not much.
So, what constitutes “good” content? Well, we think it’s easier than it sounds.
What makes content, “good” content?
To us, good content is remarkable.
Now you might be thinking, “A second ago, my content only needed to be good, now it needs to be remarkable? Stop moving the goalposts!”.
But don’t worry, it’s not as drastic as it sounds.
Remarkable, simply means, to be worthy of remark. Which, if we break it down even further, means worth talking about (aka word of mouth).
In the modern world, this can take many forms. It could be leaving a comment on a post, sharing it with your network, or even sending it privately on a messaging app. In a non-digital world, remarkable marketing includes leaving a leaflet on the side for your partner, sharing your restaurant experience with colleagues in the office the next day, or passing on the number of a tradesman you recently used.
Being remarkable is that simple.
The next step is how to create remarkable content.
How do you create remarkable content?
When we’re looking to make remarkable content for our clients, or even ourselves, we look beyond the obvious.
But what does that mean?
It might sound a bit like thinking outside the box, but we don’t like to use that phrase. Again, it’s semantics but thinking outside the box is a more extreme version. Looking beyond the obvious is much simpler.
So often, we speak to clients who tell us they have nothing to create content about. But that’s very rarely true!
There are so many content opportunities floating around every business, you just need to look at them differently.
How to look beyond the obvious and create remarkable content
When it comes to social media and content creation, the obvious for many brands is to go “Here’s our product/service, please buy from us”.
You’ve probably seen these people. You might even be one of them. Or maybe you’ve not done that, but it’s the only thing you can think to do.
So, how do we use the concept of looking beyond the obvious to create remarkable content?
The key to this is being open to inspiration.
And that’s possible by harnessing the power of something called the Frequency Illusion, AKA the yellow car phenomenon. It describes the cognitive bias we experience after we become aware of something. For example, you’ll probably spot a yellow car in the next few days because we’ve brought it to your attention.
There are a couple of reasons why this happens, one of which is Selective Attention.
We see so much stuff every day, but we don’t register it all. Our brain filters out things that are irrelevant and focuses on the important bits.
For example, if you walk down a busy high street, you might see hundreds of faces, many of which you won’t take any notice of. But if there’s someone you know 30 yards away, you’ll spot them in the crowd.
So, given that you’re probably not going to take inspiration from a yellow car, what should you be training your brain to focus on?
Here are 3 places anyone can take inspiration from…
Competitors – Identify the common themes in your competitors' content. Once you have these, think about how you can tweak what everyone else is doing to make it remarkable.
Industry leaders – When you see something remarkable from outside your industry. Ask yourself why it was worthy of remark. Then think about how you can adapt that to your industry.
Customers – How are your customers interacting with your business? What are they saying about it? What would they like to see? Use the signals they are giving you to craft content that resonates with them.
Wrapping up
Coming up with content ideas that break through the noise on social media can seem daunting. But it doesn’t have to be!
You can cut through by training yourself to spot inspiration and adapt that inspiration into remarkable content.
Every now and then, you might come up with that “thinking outside the box” idea that becomes a record-breaking piece of content. But day-to-day, focus on looking beyond the obvious and being remarkable.
It’s that simple! 😉
Until next time, thanks for reading.
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