Let’s face it, making regular marketing content can be tough. You might not be feeling particularly inspired every day and simply focusing on the same types of content for long stretches at a time can become demotivating.
But when we enjoy what we’re doing, we tend to tackle it with more enthusiasm and regularity. So it’s worth it to find ways to inject some additional fun into the day-to-day work of creating content.
Here are four tips for adding fun to your content marketing work:
- Step outside yourself. You know what you’ve created before and you know what you’re likely to make next. But what would someone else make? If they had your level of expertise and knowledge of your company’s brand, what would someone else do in your shoes? What’s another perspective they might add, or a different style or approach they might try?
Patterns of behaviour become ruts when we don’t actively attempt to switch paths and try new things. Putting ourselves in someone else’s place, or putting them in ours, is a fun way to open our minds and let the creative ideas flow. - Look outside your speciality for inspiration. When we go looking for inspiration or ideas, we can tend to focus on our own industry or our own type of content. If we’re working on a newsletter, we’ll think about other newsletters in our industry and how they approach their topics. Instead, spend time investigating how people in completely different industries, working in completely different media, accomplish their goals.
If you’re a manufacturing company writing a blog, watch a few tech YouTubers and study how they create their intros, approach their subject, and establish strong calls to action. How do they inject extra flavour and style into their work? What tricks have they developed for keeping their viewers’ attention? Then, identify ways you can derive inspiration and ideas from their techniques. - Make it a game. Add a sense of whimsy to your work by making it a game. Break your content marketing project into a series of bite-sized tasks and then identify rewards you can give yourself as you make progress.
Remember, in board games your piece moves every turn, not all at once at the end. And it’s that sense of movement and progress that keeps us engaged and having fun. So don’t approach your content marketing as a monolithic project with a single end-point. Make it a series of small tasks you’re working—playing—through and give yourself a high-five and encouragement as you make progress.
You might think it sounds silly now, but it’s worth feeling a little silly to keep a smile on your face and enthusiasm in your work. - Be your customer for a day. Put yourself into your ideal customer’s place for a day. What are they doing? How are they spending their time? What are they thinking or worrying about? Get into character, visit the websites they likely visit, and imagine in as much detail as possible what their day-to-day work looks and feels like. Then, think about the things your business could say or do today that would make them feel better, happier, or more productive.
By taking ourselves out of the equation—what we want, what we’re trying to communicate, what we have to gain—and focusing solely on the customer, we’ll have better ideas for what to create, and we’ll have a lot more fun doing it.
Finally, remember to find things you like about each content marketing task on your plate, even if that’s occasionally quite difficult. By focusing on what you enjoy, you’ll attach more pleasant memories to the experience, which will make you more likely—and more motivated—to get our important work done every day.
Work can still be fun, even if it takes concerted effort to make it so. But it’s well worth it.
If you need support with the content marketing strategy of your business, contact us and we can help.