The verbal and emotional abuse that Blake, played by Alex Baldwin, unleashes on his team is the stuff of nightmares. It’s also the stuff of content marketing. Serious content marketers put a lot of pressure on themselves. They also have the same single-minded focus on leads. The good leads.
If you’re a content marketer and you know the film, this post might have a familiar feel to it…
Editor’s note: Watch this video and be scared (I did, as I can relate it to what I do in building my web business…)
Coffee is for bloggers
“Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only.”
When you sit down to start the day, you probably pour a cup of coffee, check your email and see what’s happening on your social accounts. Some people check Twitter before getting out of bed. If this is you, stop.
Content marketers are serious writers. And serious writers write every day. Here’s a trick to writing more: before you do anything else, even before you check email or take that first sip of coffee, write something. It’s a golden chance to produce content before the chaos of the day begins. Get a few hundred words out and let your coffee be your reward.
Write early if you want to write often.
ABC…C Always Be Creating Content
“A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing.”
The greats in this business have rewired their brains so pre-frontal content cortex is always active. If you don’t think “Hey, that could be a blog post” several times a day, you’re not obsessing enough.
You must always be open to ideas about content. It’s in the back of your mind. Ideas for posts come to mind while watching movies (here’s a Bruce Willis-themed post about SEO) listening to radio (here’s a post I thought of while listening to NPR) or even when bad things happen (here’s a post about how our website was plagairized).
Always be open to ideas for new content.
Third prize is… you’re fired
“First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”
In the content marketing world, great is way better than good. This is common across all the different web marketing channels.
- The social media greats have huge followings and influence compared to those who are good. Social media is a skill that rewards the experts.
- Sites with great conversion rates delivery many times the results of sites that are good. They not only convert at a higher rate, but they have more types of conversions.
- A great rank in search engines is exponentially better than a good rank.
source: Chitika, 2010
Even if you don’t have an alpha-dog manager verbally threatening you, keep your activity levels up. Write while the coffee brews, keep the ideas flowing and win that Cadillac El Dorado.
About the Author: Andy Crestodina is the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, a web design company in Chicago, where he does strategy, sales and content marketing. You can find Andy on Google+ and Twitter.