My week started with an 11-hour field trip (6 a.m. departure, 5 p.m. return) with my 10-year-old who got to DISSECT A BABY SHARK.

This is the same child who was traumatized by the surprise snake experience of February 2022.

She was not so put off by cutting a dead animal open as she was by holding a live one.

In fact, she took extreme pride in the fact that 2 of the girls in her group excused themselves and decided not to participate while she wasn’t phased.

This turned into a few rounds of dramatically displaying the shark innards as she removed them so that the children who chose not to participate could see the liver and stomach from far away.

Was it a little over the top?

Yes.

But we all know what it feels like to realize you’re doing something others aren’t willing to try.

And she didn’t rub it in too hard (she’s too sensitive herself to deliberately hurt someone else’s feelings).

But the whole scene–

A research center room with big windows to nature on the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Air thick with formaldehyde

5th graders wearing goggles and blue gloves

Some enjoying the process of cutting flesh open; some choosing to walk away–

It reminded me of the ways we marketers, content creators, and storytellers attempt to bring our audience into a story.

Some jump right in.

“Hand me the scissors. Let’s see if there’s any undigested food in the stomach” (Hers had shrimp eyes in the creases!)

And others walk away.

“Um. No. Not for me.”

No amount of waving a shark liver around made my daughter’s uneasy friends change their minds and decide to rejoin the group.

And that’s ok.

We shouldn’t expect the thing we’re hocking (or doing) to attract everyone.

You can’t just say, “But you SHOULD want to do this,” and make it so.

In fact, it’s not such a bad thing to repel people who wouldn’t enjoy your product or service.

You want to attract the people who get it and love it.

And you can attract more of that ICP if you stop worrying about the people who don’t want anything to do with it.

They’re not willing to ride 3 hours each way in a chartered bus to spend an hour dissecting a shark.

Find the people who are.

And bring a good book (My choice was Ann Handley’s new edition of Everybody Writes. Spoiler: it’s GOOD).

This week’s round up of content carries 2 themes: The idea that prework (briefs, planning, building for a mission, psychoanalyzing your audience before emailing them) matters and How to market in a recession.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think.

Ashley Guttuso | Audience Ops  

Are Your Impact And Business Goals Serving A Mission?

In this TikTok short from Lenny’s Podcast, Alexandra Hardiman shares how working at The New York Times differs from working at Facebook and it comes down to this: the NYT’s impact and business goals are in service of their mission… not the other way around.

Why is this a newsletter tip?

How often do you evaluate purpose? Specifically, purpose beyond revenue?

Alexandra’s reference to subscriber growth as a similar, but different priority at the two companies may prompt you to pause and consider why you send and if it’s mission-driven.

Related: Atlantic contributor Ian Bogost writes that the age of social media is ending. And, to take it further, he say it should’ve never begun. Check out his reasoning.

tiktok.com  

Will Programatic Advertising In Newsletters Ruin Their Appeal?

Is monetizing email a good idea? Mark Stenberg warns of making the same mistakes that were made on the open web (remember when design was ditched for pop-ups and busy ads?) in this Ad Week article. (Disclaimer: you may need to be an AdWeek+ subscriber to read its entirety)

Discovered via The Rebooting.

Related: Newsletters are diverse, resilient, powerful, and multi-purposed. One of those purposes could be to grow / replace declining magazine income. Andy Griffiths explains here.

adweek.com  

Caring > Sharing

As content marketers wrap up 2022 and start prepping for next year, this wisdom from Jay Acunzo is something we all needed to be reminded of from time to time:

“The goal isn't to ‘get in front of’ others. The goal is ensure they care. Don’t make some content. Make a difference. Don’t market more. Matter more.”

linkedin.com  

Craft Better Content Briefs

There’s a sweet spot when it comes to writing content briefs:

Include too much and you’ve killed creativity and should just write it yourself.

Include too little and you’ve left the door open to get what you didn’t need and won’t work for your goals.

Diana Briceño explains how to be “unequivocally clear” and shares what she includes in her briefs here.

Critical elements:

• Draft Due for Review Date
• Estimated Word Count
• Writing Guidelines & Documentation
• Search Motivation
• Angle
• Target Keyword and Related Terms
• Target Audience + Topic Notes
• Internal Links
• Research Notes Summary
• Key Points of Contact Within My Team
• SME Interviews I’ve conducted
• General Formatting Instructions
• Article Outline

dianabriceno.com  

Good SEO Goes Beyond Keywords

Ben Goodey provided a list of the bits that make up “Good SEO” in this LinkedIn post.

Among them are some pieces you might not be thinking of, like

✅ Integrated content strategy

✅ Product management thinking

✅ Psychology of conversion

Read the full list here.

Related: Google is deranking websites due to AI generated-content. Tom Dotan explains why it matters here. (Business Insider account required)

linkedin.com  

Recession Marketing

This week’s unplanned theme:

What to do in a recession?

These insights could help you prepare:

Mobile Marketing: Mada Seghete shares advice for mobile marketing in an economic downtime, including insights on customer behavior, discounts, and ROI in her 14-minute talk.

Marketing Focus: Instead of jumping straight to budget cuts, Tyler Hartsook lists 5 ways to change your marketing focus when times get tough.

KPIs: Bryan Karas shares which KPIs to care about and why they can help to fortify your business.

Putting Together A Paid Social Strategy?

Jonathan Bland explains 4 content “buckets” you can create to execute it. They include

1. Thought leadership
2. Product Marketing
3. Social Proof
4. Content

Details (plus a helpful infographic) here.

linkedin.com  

Quick! Become A Better Writer

Looking for some fast ways to improve your writing? Josh Spector says the 6 tips in this 9-minute video are quick, simple, and make a difference.

youtube.com  

A Content Curation Conversation

In this episode of the Better Done Than Perfect podcast, Jonathan Gandolf shares thoughts on curating content using a manual approach, why distribution matters, and more.

What you should know before you listen:

Jonathan launched The Juice, a content curation platform in the B2B space that serves both individual professionals and brands in the B2B space.

userlist.com  

Having A Writer Help Build Article Briefs Can Be Better Than Going It Alone

In a former life, I was a passionate assignment editor. I spent my days building detailed outlines for magazine articles. I discovered something: the more time I put into clearly communicating exactly what I wanted, the closer to “print ready” a piece would be when it was submitted.

But these days, it seems anyone running a content strategy for a brand—much less a portfolio of brands— has less and and less time to spend building assignments (aka creating really good briefs). Or is it just me?

I’ve found a process that lets me share pieces of the task, though. And I’m now 100% sure that involving the writer who will also be drafting the copy in the brief creation process yields stronger content than if I’d spent my own time building everything, the way I once did.

The premise

To understand the customer’s perspective using Audience Ops, I’ve contracted them to write blog articles for ARPU. When Sara, Director of Operations, suggested I add on article briefs, I agreed. Instead of going from a few bits of info (title, headers, resources) to a first draft, they add in an article brief review phase.

What this meant for me: I could give goals, context, research materials (in this case links to moments in recorded conversations that I know would be great to include), suggest an article framework, and indicate if and how the product should be included, but I don’t have to create the outline.

Instead, the writer creates an outline and I have the opportunity to review it and add comments in the Google doc to my heart’s content BEFORE ANYTHING IS ACTUALLY WRITTEN.

Our workflow (if you’re curious)

Every 16 weeks I take a day and draft summaries of 8 articles I think we should publish (based on conversations that occurred during our live series, Subscription Ecommerce Live, on questions our customers have been asking, and on feature releases that are coming down the pike).

Then, 2 weeks before work on an article begins, I receive a thorough outline to review. I assess the order of ideas, the examples and proof that will be used to back each idea up, answer questions the writer has left for me about the product or the audience’s familiarity with specific topics, and add requests (like, “Please add something about XYZ here. This resource would be good to link to.”).

Two weeks later, I review an article that is 70% “ready” (which I consider really great for outsourced work) and add revision requests. And a few days later, I have a draft that needs only minor tweaks before I hand it back off to Audience Ops to set up in our CMS and send me a preview of the scheduled article, which I also approve (or hop in to make final revisions to) before it publishes.

What I’ve found

The mental load this has lifted off of me is huge. I keep my focus on overall strategy but stay “in the content” without doing all the heavy lifting.

And because I work with the same talented writer week after week, he is both learning my preferences and building his knowledge of how our product works and how to highlight it in noninvasive ways when appropriate.

The collaborative approach has established a stronger relationship than the usual assignor/assignee relationship. I like to think that the process of planning, giving feedback, and going back and forth in the early phase of creating content is keeping us more accountable to each other, which benefits ARPU’s target audience in the long haul.

Interested in testing out this brief collaboration process for your content? Contact Audience Ops.

Become A (Marketing) Psychologist

It’s time to get into your audience’s heads.

This week your Opt In Challenge is to learn about the 7 psychological effects listed in this article and consider if they have a place in your emails.

• The anchoring effect
• The more-exposure effect
• The rule of three
• The reciprocity effect
• The clustering effect
• The picture superiority effect
• The analysis paralysis effect

emailonacid.com  

Let me know. Reply, email me at Ashley[at]optinweekly.com, or find me on LinkedIn to hit me with some feedback. I’d love to know what you think.

Happy content marketing (and newslettering),

Ashley Guttuso | Audience Ops