November 8, 2012
By Digital Operative,
I hate the drink Kool-Aid, but I have no doubt that if I met the Kool-Aid man I would drink an entire garbage can full of it (and probably get diabetes). His bold entrances, enthusiasm for his product, and brevity of his message make him the King of All Content Marketing. There is a 0% chance of meeting this happy jug of sugar water and not drinking Kool-Aid. The persuasive pull he has on people whenever he explodes into a room, is exactly the effect great content should have on readers. In this article I show 3 ways to emulate the Kool-Aid man’s marketing genius to create great content that your audience will want to drink up. Oh yeah!
1. The Kool-Aid Man knows how to make an entrance
The Kool-Aid man is not going to slowly open the door, sidle up and say, “Hey, if it’s fine with you, I would like to share the variety of benefits you can receive from drinking Kool-Aid”. No! He is going to literally explode through the wall, bricks flying around - like one of Tyra Bank’s shoes - and scream “Ohhh Yeaahh!”. His entrance creates a scenario where all eyes are on him and people listen to whatever he has to say. Like the Kool-Aid man, great content has grand entrances and bursts through the wall of information overload that audiences deal with. Every. Single. Boring. Day. You need to find the main bullet point, the best joke, or the craziest fact and make it the first sentence. Even the most dedicated reader is not going to stick with a piece of content in the continued hope that the article will improve. The phone is ringing, the kids are crying, The Walking Dead is on (and making people cry), and the rest of the Internet is just a click away – people are busy, and unless you grab them they will leave you quicker than Michael Lohan at a good parent conference. Give the audience a grand entrance and they reward you with reading the article beyond the first sentence.
2. The Kool-Aid Man Keeps it Short
The Kool-Aid man comes in and only needs to holler “Oh yeah!” for every single person in the room to understand his message. Great content is constructed in a similar manner. Most newbies to content marketing spend days trying to cover every single angle of a subject to appear smart and their content ends up the size of a phone book (for those born after 1990, a phone book is how we used to look up phone numbers. The premise of the joke is they were large). The actual content is great, but the length prevents readers from engaging with it. Think of the last time you clicked on an article and saw that it was huge. Did you read the whole article? Did you even begin reading it? Probably not. You are busy and don’t want to put a time investment into reading lengthy articles. Your readers have the same mindset.
As one of my favorite comedians - Jim Gaffigan says, “You ever read an article, and at the bottom it says, “Continued on page six? I’m like ‘Not for me. I’m done’”.
Good sharable content is short. If the idea takes a lot of expounding, then turn it into a multi-part article series.
3. The Kool-Aid Man is Enthusiastic About His Product
There is no doubt that the Kool-Aid man is enthusiastic about his product and that his enthusiasm is contagious. When this big jug of happiness explodes through the wall everyone around him feels high levels of excitement. This level of genuine enthusiasm is vital to the creation of great content, and equally vital for content to go viral. Dig deep and find what it is about the content or product that is exciting. If you can’t find what is exciting, don’t write it. Go for a walk to mull it over, and find the right angle (and there is always one). Content producers wonder why their content is not shared - because it is boring! If you are not genuinely excited about the content, how can you possibly expect your audience to share it? Find that enthusiasm and write with it. Your audience will connect with your enthusiasm and want to share it.
Adam Lundquist is DO's content/SEM/SEO/PPC/Bing wizard. His mustache makes him look like Alex Trebek.
Connect with Adam on Google+.
