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I’m not used to doing a shitty job at things.
For the most part, when I have something I need to accomplish, I like to think I do a great job. I go into most tasks assuming that I’ll succeed and that the results will be good at least and, quite possibly, they’ll exceed expectations.
This is why failing with our content marketing efforts caused me such pain.
We put, as a team, hundreds of hours into content creation. Dozens of blog posts were written and published. White papers too. We tweeted. We shared things in social channels.
We picked up some followers and we generated some leads, but nothing ever took off. Nothing caught fire.
Don’t get me wrong. We also grew at a rate many companies would envy. But our content efforts fell flat.
In hindsight, none of this should have been a surprise. We were doing pretty much everything the experts advise you not to do.

• We did not have an overarching strategy. If we thought of a topic that might be useful to marketers we would write about it. Maybe.
• We commonly delegated the writing to junior people who lacked a deep understanding of our industry and the challenges our customers face
• We were inconsistent. When we didn’t see the results we had hoped (read: not strategized) for, our focus would shift elsewhere for a while and content would take a back seat
• We took no chances. Nothing risked, nothing gained. Our content (for the most part) lacked any personality that readers might find engaging

In other words, we produced content that strongly resembles much of the shite that is published every day.
Even worse, I was the problem.
We’re partnered with dozens of marketing agencies across the globe. Pretty much any one of them would have readily recognized the symptoms of my disease: lack of commitment.
I’m over simplifying here, but the content strategy I had laid out for our team could largely be summed up as “we should have content, let’s publish stuff”.
Our people were sharp – even those youthful ones I alluded to earlier – and talented as well. But without a solid foundation we were going through the motions.
It seems I wasn’t alone.
The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs hooked up for a survey of B2B marketers in 2014 that showed 57% of marketers rate the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts as mediocre at best (my interpretation/words, not theirs).

Only 9% reported that their content marketing initiatives were “very effective”.
So we were part of the herd. Our aimless mooing blending in with that of all the other cows.
Damnit. I like to think of myself as better than that.
But what to do?
I decided to get religion – to get serious about content marketing. I became a student of content and how to use it effectively to grow audience and brand. And when I get serious I get busy learning…
Scanning the interwebs I found many great resources. One article I found useful is from Neil Patel of KISSmetrics. Neil lists 10 Common Reasons Why Content Marketing Isn’t Working for You.
Number 4 on Neil’s list was plain enough: Your Content Sucks.
Well shit. That hurts. And not because it “hit close to home”. It targeted my home with military, laser-guided bomb precision. It ripped straight through the roof and blew my house to smithereens.
Ok. My content sucks. So what am I going to do about it?
Neil’s post helped me get real about the fact that my content sucked, but his post wasn’t designed to make clear how to fix it (he leaves us with some homework, “Make a list of five things you can do to create better content“).
I love his post but the homework wasn’t very useful to me. I wanted to know exactly what to do to create content that people would love. I wanted the steps spelled out for me (because, underneath it all, I’m a lazy sack of suds. Just like you 😉
Given that you’re still reading this post, I’m going to make a bold leap and assume that you think my content no longer sucks (hey now! thanks for the compliment 🙂
This is no accident. As I said before, I made myself into a student of content marketing. I invested time and effort to pull together lessons from various sources and came out not just a better writer, but a better content marketer.
The first lesson I learned? You must use a Narrative Arc to serve as an anchor for your content and drive engagement.
Before I explain this in detail, I’d like to point out that this post is Part 1 of a mini-series on “How to Create Content That Doesn’t Suck“. I’m going share with you the specific details about all the changes I made to go from writing content that sucks to writing content that you’re reading right now.
Send me your email address via the form below and I’ll let you know when I publish more posts. I promise that your email won’t be abused, sold or shared. You’ll simply receive emails from me, mward@Net-Results.com, letting you know when new content is published here on my Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires blog.

So, this narrative arc thing…
We’re a marketing automation company, so we should always blog about marketing automation topics, right? We’ll write about lead scoring, lead nurturing and drip email campaigns and we’ll be on our way, right? Wrong.
I’d like to ask whether you’ve ever watched a TV series like the Sopranos or Game of Thrones. How about a book/film series like the Hunger Games or Harry Potter?
What do each of these have in common? They each have a compelling narrative arc.
A narrative arc is the overarching storyline that binds all the (episodes or books or films) together into one long, compelling, multi-year story.
 

Keep your audience with you as you pontificate: A Narrative Arc in action

In case you didn’t know, you’re in the midst of one right now. This blog post is part of a narrative arc I settled on and chose to title “Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires“. Here’s the theory (or storyline, or plot to stick to the tv/movie analogy)…

• Net-Results (that’s my company, I’m the founder & CEO) is a bootstrapped company competing successfully against the billion dollar giants of the marketing automation industry – Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot, etc. We’ve learned a lot going head to head with these monsters and winning. We’ve got knowledge to share.
• It’s a compelling, David vs. Goliath story: a smaller company with limited resources growing successfully in a market full of giants. You could learn a lot from us.
• Every marketer has a limited budget, no matter how large a company they work for. Every marketer deals with resource constraints. Our story is one that every marketer can relate to and learn from – it offers value to marketers from organizations of any size.
• We will share everything we’ve learned in the past and everything we learn going forward. We’ll be transparent and authentic about our failures and our successes. We’ll offer marketers the chance to learn – deeply – from our experiences good or bad. Because that’s what professional marketers want most – they want to be excellent. I guarantee that we’re not excellent but we will try like hell to get there and help you by being transparent on our journey.

That’s the thesis or underpinning logic behind Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires. That’s the storyline that forms the backbone of this blog. Every post I write, every post I contemplate writing must adhere to this storyline and advance marketers’ knowledge along this narrative arc.
Having a narrative arc does two very powerful things for us…

• It guides me and our team as we decide what I should write about. Rather than picking random topics related to marketing or marketing automation (like we used to do) we now have a theme we stick to – a theme that we can leverage for years to come. You’ll never find a post in this blog that’s not an all-out effort to help marketers with limited resources compete against deep-pocketed competitors.
• It ties together all of the articles into a larger, cohesive, more compelling story. In other words, it gives you a reason to give a shit.

I’m trying to hook you. I want you addicted. I want you to be anxious for my next blog post. I want you to comment and share it with your colleagues in the places where marketers lurk online.

Having a solid narrative arc increases the chances that the excellent people who consume your content will share, comment and return to read more in the future.

It turns out that crack can’t smoke itself. So I’m trying to cook some up and push it to you. (I’ve always been amused by that phrase so I’m pretty excited to have worked it into this post 🙂
Want to see the actual game plan for part of a massive, multi-year narrative arc as plotted out by one of the most successful authors ever? Check out this hand-made spreadsheet created by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter stories.
 

Wow, that’s quite a narrative arc you’ve got there.

Look at that thing! She’s plotted the months of the character’s school year at Hogwarts, the bigger picture of the “prophecy” thing going on in the story, sub-plots relating to Harry’s romantic interests, Dumbledore’s Army, the Order of the Phoenix and more.
See that? Narrative arcs (sub-plots) within the context of a larger narrative arc (the book she was working on) within the context of an even larger narrative arc (the Harry Potter series). It just blows my mind to see how she kept it all together as she worked for years to bring that massive story to life. And here I am stretching my limits just to write a blog post.

I’ve got to ask… Did you catch my sub-plot? I wasn’t exactly hiding it. With this blog post, the 3rd in the Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires narrative arc, I’ve introduced my first sub-plot: How to Create Content That Doesn’t Suck.
It seems clear to me that marketers with limited resources should be leveraging content in their efforts to take on deep-pocketed competitors, so that totally fits the Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires theme. All good there.
Then the Content Marketing Institute/Marketing Profs survey opened my eyes to the fact that plenty of marketers are struggling to create excellent content that engages readers – content that doesn’t suck – just like I was. Thus was born my first sub-plot.
Both of these plots give readers reasons to subscribe. Both ensure that this blog’s audience continues to grow and provide a path to achieving our marketing goals. Boom!
But wait, there’s more…
You may have noticed at the top of this blog a bit of navigation that leads to two other blogs: Relevance and Product.
We’ve not had time yet to get going on these plans (being resource-limited bootstrappers), but soon I’ll be rebooting our marketing automation best practices blog with a fresh, new narrative arc of its own.
Ok, enough about all that. Let’s put some more meat on the bones by getting specific about how you can pick a narrative arc for your content.
To be successful, your narrative arc must:

• Have strong appeal to the audience you’re trying to target. Yes, this means you need to understand the personas and challenges of your target market (which is outside the scope of this post. And thank goodness for that, this thing is long)
• Provide a fountain of content topics – all fitting your arc – that will continue flowing for as long as you need it to
• Have a hook for your readers, a reason to subscribe. Mine is Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires.GrooveHQ has an excellent hook in their “Startup Journey“ blog where they’ve shared their experiences growing their revenues to $100,000 per month and now beyond. They also happen to make excellent helpdesk/customer service software.

To choose your narrative arc, you must:

• Think deeply about the audience your content needs to reach. What are some common threads that affect their lives?I recently was asked to provide mentorship to some early-stage entrepreneurs. One of the teams I spoke with has a business that delivers healthy office snacks on-demand via a web portal where customers can manage recurring orders and payments. They asked me for my thoughts on how they could scale sales.They told me that office managers were the decision makers they need to reach. I advised them to consider a content marketing strategy that leverages humor: a day in the life of the hard-working, under-appreciated office manager type thing. They could talk to existing customers to learn more and source funny stories that can be shared.I don’t know whether those entrepreneurs will head in that direction or not. The point is that they probably shouldn’t write content about the nutrition information in office snacks – and you don’t necessarily have to write about the particular widgets you hope to sell more of. You want to produce content that impacts hearts and minds. Think deeply about your audience. (If you think I can help, feel free to tell me about your audience in the comments and we can discuss in a way that benefits everyone reading this)
• Think like you’re creating a TV show designed to entertain and educate the audience you need to reach. Literally, I advise you to do this. Imagine yourself in the position of a TV producer (or whoever the person is that comes up with this stuff) creating a show for exactly these people. You want it to be a hit don’t you? Put in the thinking. Take your time. A mis-fire here will waste your time, money and energy.
• Avoid at all costs that most human of characteristics: self-deceptionHaving spoken with plenty of marketers, it’s clear that many of them *think* they’re writing great content. They think they’ve got a hit concept/narrative arc. Their results indicate otherwise but we humans, we’re weak. We are incredibly good at convincing ourselves things aren’t so bad. This can be good but it’s not when you’re thinking through the narrative arc that will anchor your content marketing strategy for months or years to come.

To be clear, I’m still very much a student of content marketing. The fact that I feel I have to explain to you that this post is part of the Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires narrative arc tells me that I need to do a much better job of tying my articles together and making clear that there’s a bigger picture here, one that’s of great value to you.

 
This post is about creating content that doesn’t suck. That brings me back to Neil Patel’s post and his 10 reasons why content marketing isn’t working for you. I’ve focused here only on his 4th point.
Examining the rest of Neil’s list I realized something else: if your content does suck, the rest of his advice wouldn’t make much of a difference.

• Your strategy will fail if your content sucks
• Spending more money won’t help if your content sucks
• Promoting your content more won’t help if your content sucks
• Your tough niche will be even tougher if your content sucks
• Goliath will kick your entire arse if your content sucks
• Wait all you want, you won’t succeed if your content sucks
• You better lower your expectations to zero if your content sucks
• Finally, content marketing will never be any fun for you if your content sucks

It would seem content that doesn’t suck is a prerequisite to benefitting from the rest of Neil’s wisdom. So I think we’ll stay with this topic for a while: creating content that doesn’t suck.
Up Next: From where does authenticity flow? How to dig deep to create connections with content. Subscribe to be the first to know when the next Bootstrapping vs. Billionaires post is published.
I’m glad you stuck with me through all 2,700+ words of this post. I hope it was helpful. If it was, the biggest compliment you could pay me is by sharing the post and letting me know your thoughts in the comments. I hope you will.
Thanks for reading,
Michael
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