Newsletter: You Can’t Make Their Heart Feel Something It Won’t

mlns='> CMI Consulting Services can help you! [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 12.4.20 Connect with CMI [How to Create a Performance Dashboard for Your Content Team [Tools]]( Too often, content creators are left in the dark about their content’s performance – the very numbers that are monitored to determine how well it’s working. Here are three tools to help you change that. [Read more]( By Ann Smarty [Measurement and Reporting] Some more of this week's best stuff: - [Activating Empathy: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Market With It]( [by]( [Gina Balarin]( Strategy] - [67 Book Picks for the Ultimate Content Marketing Library]( by Ann Gynn [General Success Tips] - [The 9 Awful Circles of Content Operations Hell]( by Chris Gillespie [Editorial Process and Teams] - [Cyber Monday Emails Show Why Brands Need a New Content Play [The Weekly Wrap]]( by Content Marketing Institute Team [Trends and Research] Join Our Weekly Wrap News Crew Did you come across an exciting content idea, unique example, or puzzling trend this week? Help us share it with your fellow Content Marketing Institute readers by completing [this form](. If we include your submission in an upcoming Weekly Wrap, we’ll credit you as the source of the inspiration.  A Note From Robert Rose You Can’t Make Their Heart Feel Something It Won’t When content marketers talk about a brand story, it can be distilled into the universal truth a brand stands for. Some invoke Simon Sinek’s [Start With Why]( focusing on the reasons behind what the company does, rather than the specific activities. Others look to Seth Godin’s book [All Marketers Are Liars]( where he invokes the power of belief as a “self-fulfilling truth.” At CMI, I teach the idea that great brand stories (and brand differentiators) are those that illuminate universal truths. But truth needs something else to make it matter. It needs belief. It needs trust. It needs someone to care. If people don’t care, it doesn’t matter that your truth is factual. It doesn’t matter that it’s universal. I was the CMO of a software company in the early 2000s that was one of the earliest software-as-a-service, cloud-based platforms. At the time, few people understood what “the cloud” was, and fewer purchased solutions that used “cloud-based” as a differentiator. But, as Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM began to popularize the idea, we leaned into the future of SaaS and the cloud as our brand identity. Our universal truth? We believed the future of computing would lie in the cloud and that our solution was the leader in our space. Our key brand story was that our platform was architected as a “true software-as-a-service” platform to separate it from our competition, which offered their standard, installed software, served from a remote location, and called it software as a service. It wasn’t a cloud-based software-as-a-service technology, it was simply installed software (just installed in somebody else’s data center). We screamed and yelled our truth louder and louder. And, in return, we heard … deafening silence. Customers didn’t care. They’d acknowledge our truth. But it didn’t matter to them. Something so fundamental and so real to us was nothing more than a semi-interesting bit of trivia for them. This can be a hard pill to swallow for content marketers. You sweat over what you believe is the most in-depth, hard-hitting, industry-shaking, and helpful thought leadership piece ever created. You follow every guideline, hone your story structure, check the best-practices – and it still lands with a resounding thud. Sometimes people just don’t care about your universal truth. And you can’t make them. So, should you abandon your universal truth? You should give up some ideas – not because you don’t care, but because the audience doesn’t. You should hang onto other ideas because they’re just that important – but you might have to mold, change, and evangelize them. How do you decide which ones are worth hanging onto? Ask yourself this: What would the world be like if our truth weren’t true? What would happen? Would anything be missing from the audience’s personal or work lives? Had I asked that question in 2002, I could have saved us from trying to drive the belief that “true” cloud computing was the future. Because, frankly, not that much would be different for our customers if that wasn’t true. And, we might have dug a little deeper for something more meaningful to them. Your truth – your story – needs to matter to someone. Otherwise, it’s just an idea that leaves your audience asking, “So what?” It's your story. Tell it well.. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute This article from Robert is available only in this newsletter for you, the newsletter subscriber. If you have friends that would see value in Robert's weekly updates, please have them [subscribe](.  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 Manager, Cooper Carry, Atlanta, GA - [Learn More]( - Content Marketing Manager, Alfa Laval Inc., Richmond, VA - [Learn More]( - Content Marketing Specialist, LifeSOULutions That Work dba Brave Thinking Institute, Remote - [Learn More]( Interested in posting a job here? Please see our [CMI Careers page]( for more info.  Sponsored Content  Successful marketing strategies start with effective content management. Organize, collaborate, and execute all while focusing on your number one priority: building your brand. Whether it be launching a new Facebook campaign, or posting a photo to Instagram, your content needs to be easily managed and aesthetically pleasing. [monday.com]( is not only the easy-to-use platform that understands this, but puts this into practice. [Try it for free »](   Sponsored Content How-To Guide On Content Marketing Strategy People engage with content nowadays in fleeting moments, drawn to whatever is eye catching, funny, or emotional. The same can be said for B2B content as well. Whitepapers, eBooks, case studies – they’re all similar in the eyes of a reader. That’s why the strategy of how you develop, deploy, and track your content is incredibly important. In this guide, we’ll look through each one of these aspects. Take your content marketing strategy to the next level and increase sales and marketing ROI; download the white paper. [View here »](   More from CMI 2020 is a strange year. If businesses were under the impression that digital marketing was changing fast in 2019, 2020 just said “hold my beer.” The acceleration of change in the way marketers use content to drive demand has been exponential this year. We’ve got some examples of some of the best marketers in the world, and how they’ve managed to evolve in this year. Join us for Marketers Rise December 16-17. [Register today »](  Content Marketing University is now open for winter enrollment! Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategy advisor, is bringing his Content Marketing Master Class series right to you, to work at your own pace, no matter where you are. Aside from the core curriculum, new lessons have been added from other marketing powerhouses. [Enroll today]( for 12 months, and use code GIFT200 by 12/15 for $200 off. [Enroll today »]( [COVID-19 CONTENT MARKETING RESOURCES]( Events [Content Marketing World]( [ContentTECH Summit]( [Master Classes]( [Content Marketing Awards]( Resources [Research]( [White Paper/eBook Library]( [Content VIPs]( [CMI Business Directory]( Education [Content Marketing University]( [Chief Content Officer]( [Webinars]( [Career Center]( Interested in advertising with CMI? 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