Weekly Alert: Get Uncomfortable With Your Content

Follow these 6 steps to tell clear and compelling visual stories through infographics. [View Message] in Browser / [Whitelist Instructions] to Safe Sender List This Week - How to Create a Best-in-Class Infographic Series in 6 Steps [This Week in Content Marketing] Connect with CMI [Forward to a Friend] Creating an infographic series can be much less painful than it sounds. The secret is in following a clear framework. Follow these six steps to tell a clear and consistent visual story in one of the most powerful ways possible. [Read more]by Richard Silvester Some more of this week's best stuff: - [How to Create Super Shareable Video Content] by Neil Patel - [8+ Tools to Find Related Keywords for Your Content] by Maggie Barr - [How the World’s Best Journalists Bring Interviews to Life] by Andrew Littlefield - [Merging Two Blogs: Strategies for Content Success] by Aaron Agius - [Confused About Agile Marketing? Your Questions Answered] by Andrea Fryrear A Note From Joe Pulizzi Get Uncomfortable With Your Content Right now, I’m absolutely loving the book, Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss. I read Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, a while back and didn’t particularly love it... but I treasure this newest one – in fact, I already have 20 pages of notes and I’m only halfway through it. One section of the book focuses on James Altucher, a former hedge fund manager and a seasoned entrepreneur. With a minimal learning curve, James was able to grow his audience more quickly than almost anyone else on the web. How did he achieve this? Here's Altucher's answer, as cited by Ferriss: “We all have, let’s say, two or three dozen massive pain points in our lives that everyone can relate to. I try to basically write about those, and then I try to write about how I attempted to recover from them.” Ferriss goes on to explain how he’s personally followed Altucher's advice, asking himself, “What am I embarrassed to be struggling with? And what am I doing about it?” Let’s be honest: It is incredibly difficult for brands of any size to do this with their content marketing... but it IS necessary. Answering customer questions and covering the basics of your industry niche are the minimum table stakes in this game. But to truly win, you also need to differentiate your content in some way. Time and time again, as I visit brands around the world, I see that the content they are creating is nothing special at all. Frankly, it’s all been done before. As Seth Godin says, “We cannot out-obedience the competition.” Same begets more of the same, so by creating this "safe" content, they are just wasting time – both their company’s and that of any audience members they've managed to hold onto thus far. Now is the perfect time to go back and re-analyze your content niche, your editorial mission within that niche, and whether or not you are even coming close to creating differentiated content. If you are like most companies, you probably aren’t. We need to do what James Altucher advised: really go into the pain points of our audience, whether they are engineers or entrepreneurs. If we don’t know what their pain points are, we need to talk to them... and to our sales reps... and to our customer service reps. The data is available, we just need to reach for it. You have the opportunity to do what most companies are scared to do: use your content to directly address these pains in an authentic, and perhaps even humbling way. You should never feel completely comfortable with your content. It should make you squirm... just a little bit. When that happens, you know you are hitting close to home. Now go out there and get uncomfortable. Yours in content, Joe Pulizzi Founder Content Marketing Institute This article from Joe is available only in this newsletter for you, the newsletter subscriber. If you have friends that would see value in Joe's weekly updates, please have them subscribe [here]. Content Marketing Job Listings Currently on a job search? Thinking about switching gears with your career? Please check out our job listings below. Available Positions: - Content Marketing Director, MembershipAvenue.com, Milwaukee, WI - [Learn More] Interested in posting a job here? Please see our [CMI Careers page] for more info. A Word from One of Our Benefactors Devour Work Chaos with Workfront Effective content marketing starts with an effective workflow. Escape the woes of chaotic workflows with Workfront Marketing Work Management, the most capable work and project management solution available to content marketers. Learn how Workfront can empower your content marketing team and simplify your workflow processes. [Request a free trial.] More from CMI Content Marketing World 2017 is back! Now in our 7th year, CMWorld has advanced with the industry, and is ready for you with intermediate and advanced sessions from some of the leading marketers and practitioners from enterprise brands. Register now for super early bird rates, plus code CMI100 saves an additional $100! [Register now!] CMI Video of the Week Your First Agile Marketing Effort The power is in the planning effectively, and putting that planning into action. During CMWorld 2016, Andrea Fryrear and Jeff Julian share how marketing teams have employed sophisticated and agile techniques that work best for your content deployment. 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