How to make your content less boring?

I think many brands don’t succeed at social and inbound because their content is, well... boring.

There are kids out there with millions of views on TikTok and YouTube with an almost $0 budget.

And yet, we have brands that invest thousands of $ into their production and achieve 100x fewer results.

I think there are a couple of reasons why that happens:

We, as B2B marketers, tend to overcomplicate stuff.

Don’t worry about perfection for now.

Just ship it. Execution matters.

As Peep Laya once said on LinkedIn, ask yourself: “What does it take for you to do to win in your category?”

Suppose other brands have two virtual summits a year. You should aim for 4 (without sacrificing the quality).

Lemlist’s first hire wasn’t a salesperson, developer, marketer, or customer support rep.

But guess who?

Videographer.

By producing a lot of entertaining content, we’re able to better engage with our audience, infiltrate into their mind, and then once they’re ready to buy, we will be the first choice in their mind.

You don’t need huge budgets to produce great videos. They don’t need to have all the shiny transitions.

Kids on TikTok create viral videos seen by millions with only their phones and creativity.

Be creative.

We behave like machines.

Remember that you’re selling to companies run by people like you.

They’re human beings with emotions, problems, desires, and cravings for sugar.

(Oh, off-topic unpopular opinion: sugar will not make you fat. But consuming sugar after you consume fats is why you get more weight 🙂)

Anyway,

The content that performs best on social is the content that stops people from scrolling.

Today, we have such a short attention span.

Your content needs to have an engaging hook that will break the scrolling behavior.

But with a great hook, you’re just halfway there.

The content needs to be catchy, entertaining, and valuable.

The most liked video on TikTok (56m likes) is just Bella Poarch shaking her head on beats with the “M to the B” song.

@bellapoarch To the 🐝 🐝 🐝 #fyp ♬ M to the B - Millie B

It’s stupid, but it’s entertaining.

The content we produce is terrible.

Whenever I’m trying to ship something, I ask myself:

• Is this content entertaining?
• Is it useful?
• Will it teach my audience something new?
• Will it make them think?

And the last thing is:

• Is this content native to this platform?

So many people out there are producing content that’s just not the right fit for specific channels.

Putting a 1000-word blog post into a Twitter thread doesn’t make sense. And yet people are doing this.

It doesn’t make sense to put a 10-minute long video on Instagram, and yet people are doing this.

Study people’s behavior on different social channels—test different content types and frameworks. Iterate fast, and you’ll quickly get ten or so winning content formats.

We care too much about our brand

Do you know what exactly the brand is?

It’s not your logo or the colors.

It’s what our audience thinks of us. It’s how they position and perceive our brand inside their mind.

Many people fall into thinking that “professional-looking” content is better than entertaining content.

You shouldn’t create content that doesn’t resonate with your target audience.

I’m not saying that you should.

But whoever is your target audience - they’re human beings. They like to be entertained.

Imagine yourself in a chair of a Fortune 500 CEO that has eight draining meetings today.

In a 5-minute break between the meetings, would he like to be entertained a little bit?

Yes, he would.

I would strongly suggest you go out and see what kind of content lemlist creates on its’ blog and social.

They do videos. They do memes. They do case studies. They do blog posts.

They break the norm and yet publish high-quality, engaging, and entertaining content.

Final word

So the bottom line is, sometimes, to get the best results, we shouldn’t look further than what kiddos in our neighborhood or B2C brands are doing.

We should learn from them.

Oh, and yeah, the final prediction -> top marketing executives in the next ten years will be the kids who’re spending all days at TikTok today.