Letter #75: Stop obsessing over content quality, focus on this instead
Here’s how to set the foundation for creating a forget-me-not content experience
Hola amigos 👋
How’s it going?
This long weekend, I hosted a small dinner — planned a tailored menu, ordered a custom grazing board for the guests, lit some lavender-scented candles to set the dinner mood, and all that jazz.
Throughout, one thought kept swimming to the surface of my thought pool: the experience has got to be memorable.
And today, as I write this issue, I’m musing over this:
We obsess too much about quality. Which is good, yes.
But getting caught up in the details can sometimes prevent us from seeing the big picture: the content experience you’re offering ✨
In other words: we need to refine our focus:
Obsess over the content experience you offer instead of the quality.
But wait, what’s content experience, M?
It’s the overall impression your content leaves on your target reader.
Which means: it’s not about your content’s copy alone — though ‘words,’ your ‘brand voice,’ the ‘angle’ you take, and the ‘expertise’ you share, all make a solid part of the experience you offer.
But a good content experience also depends on your content's:
✅ Readability
✅ Accessibility
✅ Design
See what’s happening here? A remarkable content experience is one that ensures all aspects of your content program are designed with your target reader in mind.
And because your target audience enjoys that first and subsequent experience they have with your content, they remember your name + return to your content moat when they see more of your posts reaching them on social media or whatever marketing channels you’re using.
In short, creating a forget-me-not content experience builds you a family of content loyalists.
In business speak, this translates to higher conversions.
The question now is: how can you create a memorable content experience?
You get the foundation right (there’s more, but we’ll focus on this today). Here’s how:
Take an empathy-led approach to create your content program
It’s easy to overcomplicate and trap yourself in the funnel approach to building a content program.
But you can almost always create a better program by simply asking yourself:
Is this a leading struggle my target buyer is facing?
What resources will help them solve their concern on their own?
If I were my target reader, what would I feel as I read this piece?
Dive deeper: Your target reader is you — not your buyer.
Understand that a forget-me-not experience has got to be cross-channel by nature
The recipe for poor experience: putting out friendly, helpful social content to take people to your blog that shares shallow advice.
Or excellent social and blog experience but overly salesy, unsegmented email content 🤮
Reverse this and offer memorable touchpoints at each step of the customer journey, and you’re halfway there.
Give audience research and content repurposing the front seats
Not knowing your target buyer, their pain points, and where they spend their time online = throwing darts in the dark.
You’ll end up creating a content plan based on assumptions.
Meaning: your content won’t be able to *talk to* your target audience.
Content repurposing, on the other hand, helps you improve your content output without compromising its quality.
Dig deeper: 3 content repurposing mistakes to avoid.
Create a culture of content to create genuinely valuable content
You need internal subject matter experts including your execs to share their insights, frameworks, and feedback.
It’s the only way to create content that’s bookmark worthy.
To build a culture of content:
Start with creating a content vision to inspire and bring everyone on board
Then, use internal content enthusiasts to build up the excitement
Request internal SMEs to schedule time to talk to you (if you have to, fight them to co-create with you)
Fix your internal processes (the workflow and documentation)
Identify who will work on what and what your approach to doing things will be.
Once you have your content value proposition nailed, document it all.
This way, you can scale things faster.
Dig deeper: How to optimize your content workflow?
I’d love to go on, but since my promise is to keep these letters short, I’ll put a pin on this for now.
Will be back with more on creating a forget-me-not content experience in subsequent issues.
Bye for today!
And before you leave, please do drop your feedback so I can improve your experience with this letter :)
Cheers,
Masooma
I look forward to seeing how this series develops Masooma.
Awesome content and insightful tips thank you Masooma. Keep it up.