If you’ve been to a professional conference in the past decade, chances are you’ve heard a lot about “storytelling.”  

What’s usually being discussed here is content strategy: using your own social media, newsletter, blog, or other channels to share messages you want audiences to associate with your organization. Sometimes those messages are meant to drive sales or donations, other times they’re meant to convince people you share their values.

The consensus of these talks is that content strategy is important—even crucial—to set yourself apart from all the competitors who are also selling widgets or saving whales. So it’s a little puzzling that most organizations are still so bad at it.

The exceptions prove the rule.

Red Bull is synonymous with adventure thanks to a nonstop flood of extreme sports content (its Red Bull Adventure Instagram account has over 2 million followers). Food52 has had similar success among the “thoughtful eating, joyful living” crowd with its recipes and meal presentation tips (their Instagram has a whopping 3.7 million followers).

For most organizations, though, the fruits of their content strategy are underwhelming at best. This discussion among marketers on reddit shows just how widespread the problem is. Try googling “content marketing dead” for more proof.

If you’ve ever stumbled upon a fitness apparel brand’s blog when searching for a guide to yoga poses, you can probably guess why: most of this “content” just sucks. The most common reasons why:

• The content is made in a hurry by people who don’t care* about the quality of individual pieces or the coherence of the overall body of work
  • *Either because they’re freelancers paid to produce in bulk, or because they’re in-house people with a hundred other responsibilities and a fondness for ChatGPT.
• It’s clumsily SEO-ified
  • Keyword stuffing, unnecessary verbosity, weirdly oversized headers… you know it when you see it.
• It’s designed to meet the organization’s needs—not the audience’s
  • Giving your audience a list of things they can buy from you is exciting, from the perspective of your sales team. It’s also obvious to your audience, who are less likely to be enthused.

Having said all that, content strategy can be just as valuable as all those conference panelists claim (and examples like Red Bull and Food52 illustrate). This requires treating content with respect—investing in a talented team to make it, producing it consistently, and ensuring that its primary purpose is to be useful to your audience. And if they happen to buy the plate that your recipe is presented on… well, everyone goes home happy.

None of this is rocket science. But much like long division, it’s trickier than expected when you actually sit down to do it.

(Or, you can just hire someone like us to do it for you.)

Oh, and one more thing…

Because the last word is rarely the end of the conversation.

• Admittedly, the Dull Men’s Club sounds like a drag at first. But the more you learn about it, the more you start to see the appeal.
• Nobody’s quite sure what orcas are trying to communicate by wearing dead salmon like tiny hats. But whatever it is, PSE supports it!
• Since everyone needs a take on Jaguar’s controversial rebrand, we’d suggest, “If you want people to pay six figures for your new luxury product, perhaps show them the product.”

Pebbles of the month

Much like penguins, we enjoy bringing you little gifts to show we care:

If you’re a fan of headlines that involve LL Cool J puns and not a fan of digital sharecropping, “Don’t Call It a Substack” will make your day.

Documented—an investigative watchdog and journalism project—is now hiring for multiple Democracy Researcher positions, all fully remote.

The Watermelon Grant offers $2,000 to Palestinian creators in speculative arts, and applications are open now!

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