(The Cyrkle “Red Rubber Ball” 45 rpm single cover; fair use)
How should thought leadership content present its arguments?
It depends.
Thought leadership content
Let’s say that you’re a content marketing consultant creating thought leadership content for one of your clients. Furthermore, the client works with two types of rubber balls: the old-fashioned gray ones, and the new red ones.
Now let’s say the content describes moving from the old to the new rubber balls, and you list (perhaps in the manner of a sage) all the reasons why you may want to make the move.
Should your thought leadership piece also say why you may NOT want to make the move?
It depends.
Why to only discuss one point of view in a single piece of content
Perhaps the best way to attract your hungry people (target audience) is to convey a single message.
In my example, your single message may be that gray balls are so prehistoric, red balls are hot, and you should go red.
Clear. Unencumbered. Persuasive.
Why to discuss multiple points of view in a single piece of content
Alternatively, your hungry people may want to consider all the facts.
Returning to my example, your thought leadership piece may list all the reasons to switch from gray to red rubber balls, then list all the reasons why NOT to make the switch.
Now this is a REALLY sage-like move.
You could still recommend to go red, but at least your hungry people were exposed to the alternative (and ultimately rejected) view.
Did you see what I did here in this post? I could have written a straightforward post that said to only talk about one point of view. But then I chose to include this section that advocates a second point of view.
Why to discuss multiple points of view in multiple pieces of content
Why not do both? Why not write one piece with one point of view, and a second with the opposite point of view?
In my example, you would write focused pieces about “going red” and “staying gray.” Each self-contained piece is clear, unencumbered, and persuasive. Yet the totality of your thought leadership embodies the complex nuances of cases where there is no one right answer.
And there’s an added benefit for content marketing consultants who write thought leadership pieces for their clients.
If you write two pieces of content rather than one, you (may) collect two fees.
Follow the money.
Speaking of which, Bredemarket can write one or two thought leadership pieces for YOUR firm.
I’m a member of a local Facebook “news” group, and the group just emphatically stated that expression of opinions is NOT allowed in that group.
Because facts are free of bias. (Supposedly. I should address that topic in another post.)
Because this post includes two contentious opinions, it’s no surprise that I will NEVER share this post in that local news group. Their loss.
Actually the post is off-topic for the news group anyway. But as you will see, it is entirely on-topic for Bredemarket. I’ll explain, after I discuss a couple of songs and their singers.
Two Facts and One Opinion About “Girl from the North Country”
“Girl from the North Country” is a Bob Dylan song, which he started writing in 1962 while in England. The song was recorded in New York in 1963 and released that same year on the album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”
I care about Dylan’s cover of his own song, released several years later on the 1969 album “Nashville Skyline.” But Dylan had a special guest on this album: Johnny Cash.
Here are two facts about the 1969 version:
Bob Dylan has a distinctive voice.
Johnny Cash has a distinctive voice.
These are facts, not opinions, since I am not casting a value judgement on whether they are any good at singing. For the record, I love Bob Dylan’s solo songs, and I love Johnny Cash’s solo songs.
Now my opinion: the 1969 version of “Girl from the North Country” is an unmitigated disaster, because the distinctive voices do not blend at all.
If you’ve never heard this version of the song, let me provide a play-by-play account.
The song begins with Dylan and Cash strumming their guitars, accompanied by a backing band of Nashville stars. (Not Starrs.)
Dylan then sings the first verse, in a lower key than his original version, and the listeners were introduced to the newest version of Bob Dylan. Shed of a rock band, he has not returned to his early folk days, but appears in a new version of a peaceful, satisfied country crooner. More versions of Dylan were to follow.
Then we get the second verse, in which Johnny Cash picks up the story about the girl. Cash himself appears in a new guise, having moved beyond the Memphis rockabilly sound and the horn-infused “Ring of Fire” sound. Cash now entered a period in which he associated with people such as Dylan who were leap years away from both traditional country and the newer countrypolitan sound. Cash, like Dylan, would continue to travel all over the musical map, gaining fame at the end of his life by covering Nine Inch Nails.
Back to 1969. After Cash sings the second verse, Dylan returns to sing the third. Everything is going fine so far.
Then (again, in my opinion) all hell breaks loose at the 1:52 mark in the song, because now the two sing together.
Sort of.
Cash starts singing the fourth verse, Dylan joins in a second later, and then they kinda sorta sing the words of the fourth and fifth verses at kinda sorta the same time, with some harmonizing—some intentional, some unintentional when they couldn’t hit the notes. Hear the result on YouTube.
Now I will admit that my negative opinion of the Dylan-Cash duet on “Girl of the North Country” is not universal. A high school friend who shall remain anonymous (just call her “Editor Extraordinaire” and old school Rick Dees fan) thinks this version is charming. I find it amusing in a not-so-good way.
As far as I’m concerned, this collaboration didn’t work.
Which brings us to Christina Aguilera.
Three Facts and One Opinion About “Birds of Prey”
In 2010 Aguilera released her sixth album, “Bionic,” a massive 18-track album featuring a more electronic sound and numerous collaborations with Nicki Minaj, Sia, Linda Perry, and others.
I care about the Deluxe edition, with an even more massive total of 23 tracks.
One of which was co-written and produced by the (then) four members of the UK band Ladytron. As OC Weekly (R.I.P.) documented at the time, Aguilera was a fan of the quartet:
Ladytron followers were startled to learn that Christina Aguilera was not only a fan, but had also already worked with the band on a variety of songs to be released in the near future.
“We went in with no expectations; the whole thing was a massive surprise,” explains Wu. “But it was incredible. She was so musically talented, a vocalist who really knows her voice. The first takes sounded really amazing, and while we’d made demos, it was only when her voice was on them that it all came to life.
One of the songs was “Birds of Prey.” Not to be confused with “Bird of Prey” or “Sunset (Bird of Prey),” the Aguilera-Ladytron version builds upon the usual Ladytron vocal delivery from Helen Marine and Mira Aroyo by adding Christina Aguilera to the mix.
Which brings me to my three facts about this song:
Christina Aguilera has a distinctive voice, with a four-octave range that she frequently exercises to the fullest.
Helen Marnie has a distinctive voice, featured as the light “singing voice” of Ladytron.
Mira Aroyo has a distinctive voice, whose spoken word delivery blends with Marnie’s in many classic Ladytron songs. (For example, “Seventeen.”)
In my opinion, this vocal collaboration—unlike the Dylan-Cash one mentioned earlier—works out beautifully. Aguilera naturally opens the song (it’s her album after all), but as the song progresses you hear Marnie lightly chiming in and Aroyo whispering, building up to the closing of the song. Hear it here.
Again, this opinion is not universal—Aroyo in particular is an acquired taste—but the combination seems to work.
But what do “Girl from the North Country” and “Birds of Prey” have to do with B2B sales—whoops, I mean collaboration? And Bredemarket?
The art of collaboration
Bredemarket’s services are built upon the principle that I work together with my clients. My process includes a lot of references to “Bredemarket and you,” because we are both involved in every step, from the seven questions I address at the beginning to the iterative drafts and reviews that occur throughout.
But that isn’t the only way to manage a project, as I noted in June 2023. There are two others.
The first approach is to yield all control to the expert. You sit back, relax, and tell your content marketing consultant to do whatever they want. They provide the text, and you pay the consultant with no questions asked. The content marketing consultant is the pilot here.
The second approach is to retain all control yourself. You tell the content marketing consultant exactly what you want, and exactly what words to say to describe your best-of-breed, game-changing, paradigm-shifting, outcome-optimizing solution. (That last sentence was painful to write, but I did it for you.) The content marketing consultant follows your exact commands and produces the copy with the exact words you want. You are the pilot here.
So which of these two methods is the best way to create content?
When marketers write content for Chief Information Security Officers, we need to ensure they’re listening. The content needs to speak to their concerns. Understanding their emotions helps us to do that.
Tapping into their emotions helps to ensure the CISOs are paying attention, and that the CISOs are not dismissing our content as unimportant and unworthy of their attention. (See what I did there, dear marketer?)
Are our prospects listening to us?
I’ve talked about emotions and content before. My approach is fairly simple, identifying the emotions encountered at two stages of the customer journey:
The negative emotions faced at the “problem” stage. Perhaps fear, anger, or helplessness.
The positive emotions faced at the “results” stage, after you have provided the customer with the solution to their problem. This could be the happiness or satisfaction resulting from hope, accomplishment, or empowerment.
What do CISOs fear?
I’m reworking a client piece targeted to Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), and I needed to re-examine the things that keep CISOs up at night. I started with a rudimentary list.
Cyberattacks. (Duh.)
Technological complexity.
Resource constraints.
Corporate liability.
Job security.
A good list—well, I think so—but is it good enough? (Or big enough?) The elements are rather abstract, since you can discuss concepts such as “resource constraints” without FEELING them.
What do CISOs really fear?
Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs is (literally) based upon physiological (survival) and safety needs. Can I translate the abstractions above into something more primal?
Loss of all our information, leaving us dumb and helpless.
Confusion and bewilderment in (as the AI bots are fond of saying) “the ever-changing landscape.”
Overwhelming burnout from too much to do.
No money after being sued into oblivion.
Wandering the streets homeless and starving after losing your job and your income.
How should we express those fears?
Now there are various ways to express those primal fears. I could go for maximum effect (will the wrong decision today leave you homeless and starving tomorrow?), or I could write something a little less dramatic (are you vulnerable to the latest cyber threats?). The words you choose depend on your company’s messaging tone, which is why I recently reshared my original brand archetypes post from August 2021. A Sage will say one thing, a Hero another.
Why?
Anyway, thank you for reading. Writing this helped me, and maybe it gave you some ideas. And if you want to know more about the seven questions I like to ask before creating content (emotions being the 7th), read my ebook on the topic.
When a Bredemarket client was reviewing my draft, the client asked about my use of parentheses around individual letters.
“what is the purpose of the “()” in the “(L)eading organizations…” and “(G)en AI…“?”
So I explained.
“I would have to confirm, but presumably the original text said “leading” and “gen.” To properly use the quote as a partial quote I capitalized the words, but enclosed them in parentheses to indicate I modified the original text.”
“When writers insert or alter words in a direct quotation, square brackets—[ ]—are placed around the change. The brackets, always used in pairs, enclose words intended to clarify meaning, provide a brief explanation, or to help integrate the quote into the writer’s sentence. A common error writers make is to use parentheses in place of brackets.”
Well, at least I’m not the only one. Lewis also provided several examples, including this one:
“[D]riving is not as automatic as one might think; in fact, it imposes a heavy procedural workload [visual and motor demands] on cognition that . . . leaves little processing capacity available for other tasks” (Salvucci and Taatgen 107).
I just corrected my client’s piece before publication, and will try to remember to use brackets as needed in all pieces day forward. I’m not going to go back through the hundreds of blog posts here and correct them.
But I provided external samples of what I do anyway: two client short data sheets, three client long data sheets, three Bredemarket data sheets, two client landing pages, one Bredemarket landing page, and two other samples.
So I will share one of the landing pages with you, but not a client one. This is one of mine, for Bredemarket’s identity/biometric prospects.
I have worked with several companies’ content calendars over the years.
Two of Bredemarket’s clients are using Jira to manage their content calendars.
Another of Bredemarket’s clients doesn’t (as far as I know) have an official content calendar, but is tracking some content in a go-to-market Excel workbook.
If I remember correctly, MorphoTrak also used Excel for content management. MorphoTrak’s parent Morpho used a social media management platform, but I can’t remember which one.
At the time I was at Incode, the company used Asana to host its content calendar. (I have no idea how Incode has managed its content since May 2023.)
Bredemarket creates its own content (this is an example), and I also use Asana as my official content management platform.
Sharp-eyed people spotted how I worded that last sentence.
What did I just say?
If you read it again, you’ll see that I only discussed my OFFICIAL content management platform.
Some content, including this blog post/LinkedIn post/wherever else the text ends up, never gets logged in Asana. I just started writing it in iOS Notes and I will add various checkboxes up top as I share it on the blog and social channels.
Some other content, also not logged in Bredemarket’s Asana, is repeatable content that I store in Notes and repost periodically.
Something I post to my identity-related social channels (BIFS = Bredemarket Identity Firm Services).
And sometimes—a lot of the time, actually—I just go to a platform and WRITE stuff.
As a sole proprietor, I enjoy absolute control over Bredemarket’s messaging, and therefore the blog and social media approval process is very…streamlined. That isn’t the case elsewhere, where even a simple tweet requires approval. This makes it hard to live-tweet an event when the approver is unavailable…but there are workarounds. Perhaps I will reveal them one day.
What about process?
But if your corporate environment requires you to impose a strict content management structure, where all content is logged in the content calendar and all content requires approval, make sure that your content logging and approval process protects your company but DOESN’T silence it.
Because if your content approvals are too onerous, you will end up with no content at all.
Or you will end up with…perhaps I will reveal that one day.
I spent most of the afternoon drafting the content for an email nurture campaign, and I’m fascinated by the use of the word “nurture” by product marketers and content marketers.
“Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with your prospects with the goal of earning their business when they’re ready. Lead nurturing is important to inbound marketing because it’s your opportunity to provide value to your leads and customers and help them grow with your business.”
I’ve said it before: You’re not a sausage grinder making sausages. You’re a flower attracting bees.
Marketing leads (and others) like to talk about “eras” and “ages.” But I resisted the urge to refer to an “era” or “age” of uncertainty, preferring to reserve these terms for periods of hundreds or thousands of years. “The dot com ERA”? Come on.
But when we encounter technological or governmental changes that take place in mere days, we need to do things in different ways.
Three tips for dealing with uncertainty
Here are three tips that I am following for dealing with uncertainty. And if you are a marketing lead for your company, the third tip applies especially to you.
Tip 1: De-emphasize long term planning
Note that I didn’t say to stop long-term planning entirely. Heck, Bredemarket has worked on go-to-market processes and plans for three clients over the past couple of months—plans that assume you have months, not days, to execute a launch.
But sadly, the accuracy of any long-term plan is probably not high.
If you assumed that the U.S. management of its nuclear assets would maintain its low level of risk, that changed in a single day when the responsible people were mistakenly fired. We will see how many of them return to work.
Similarly, if you assumed maintenance of the status quo in the generative AI world…what were you smoking?
So while long-term planning is (in TLOI terms) important, short-term planning is very important, and short-term execution is critically important.
Tip 2: Expect the unexpected
This is always a good tip, but especially so today. You and I can name many times when something surprised us, and we had to scramble to adjust.
For example, many of us have received a terse request to meet with our bosses the next day. (Maybe more than one such request over the years.) The next day, after meeting with the boss and an unannounced third person, we adjusted to the new reality that our boss is no longer our boss, and we no longer have a job.
So how can we prepare for the unexpected? By definition we can’t. But we can at least be alert.
Question all your assumptions. (Yes, even that.)
Determine what you will do if the unthinkable happens.
Tip 3: Move quickly
Normally things remain constant for a day or two. So take advantage of the temporary certainty. When you can, execute now.
For marketing leads:
Get that content out. Conceive, draft, review, fix, and publish. Don’t spend months searching for the perfect words; there aren’t any.
Publish before the content goes stale. If you’ve been working on an explanation of a Biden Administration executive order…put that work on hold or kill it entirely.
And if you’re swamped and don’t have the time to generate the content, or write the proposal, or perform the analysis, call on the short-term help here at Bredemarket to bail you out.
To learn more, you can watch Bredemarket’s short, medium, or long videos about my “CPA” marketing and writing services. I can work with you to fill your content, proposal, and/or analysis gaps.
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