How porn makes me a better content marketer
“Do not waste my time” – everybody on the internet lying to themselves as they waste time
In the digital age long, boring content is Snooki from the Jersey Shore – useless and you wonder how much longer this phenomimum will be around. This is the digital age, and users have a million and a half different distractions, each requiring time and attention. Whether users search for spaghetti cat or review recipes, one lesson is clear across the entire internet – get to the f#cking. Website users demand to see exactly what they want in the quickest and most entertaining way possible. If content on the internet is a song it starts with the chorus. If content is the movie the 6th sense, Bruce Willis just looks at the camera and goes “I will be dead this entire movie”. This is not my original idea – I stole the lesson “Get to the f$cking” from a seminar about traditional media. I will show you how to successfully apply this lesson from traditional media to digital media and how to never have boring content again.
To understand how I came to the conclusion it is important to take a very brief detour to see my path. In 2008 Radio Guru/Powerpoint enthusiast Steve Reynolds put on a seminar for traditional media (radio). I was lucky enough to I attend this seminar in either Nashville or Denver – I can not remember. Either way it was not an important city like New York, Boston, or San Diego. In his seminar he discussed trends (one from the porn industry) of what makes content work and why it was all important to “get to it”. In this article I distill 2 of his main take-aways that applied (at the time) to traditional media that I now apply in digital media to achieve blogging success.
Lesson 1:
“Get to the f*cking”
The first rule of content is “Get to the f#cking” . Users refuse to deal with fluff, in either porn or content.. I learned this lesson as Steve began his seminar with a New York Times article about the changing porn industry. The main point of the article is this: in past generations the porn industry was big into elaborate scripts, make-up, stories, and acting (and lots of hair). The digital generation has neither the time nor the patience for any of that. They digital generation wants action now and then they want to move on. Reacting to this reality, the porn industry now shoots movies with almost no script and more shall we say action (also called dancing the mattress jig, threading the needle, and laying some pipe). The digital generation will not wait around while a plumber comes in and makes some sort of vague reference about “Cleaning the pipes”. If a user will not wait through 5 minutes of talk in a porn movie, do you really believe they will read your 17 page blog post?
Applying this lesson to digital content:
- Get to the point. Nobody is going to sit there and wait for your story to unfold.
- Put your most exciting point first. As my old boss Blazer used to yell at me “Use the inverted pyramid”. He is right (only point he was right on). Put the headline first and get the idea out that needs to be said. If it is a funny article put your best joke first, if it is a an informative article put your best statistic first.
- Do not bury the lead. Similar to point two, except that sometimes you will discover the lead as you write the article. Be on the lookout for it.
- A good example of a short blog come from Smirk New Media
Lesson 2:
“Once you get to the point, your audience will stick with you”
To illustrate this Steve reviewed a study of the Mark Sanford’s press conference. This gentleman was the governor of South Carolina who flew to Argentina to have an affair, and at the time had just recently held a press conference to discuss this. Steve looked at this from a broadcast standpoint of where the listenership was. He found a report that concludes that people tuned in and out of the radio broadcast until – bam – that moment came when Sanford apologized and began discussing his affair. After his apology listeners became glued to the radio, and listened through the entire broadcast. It seems like a simple point, but I needed to hear it: once you give the audience what you want they will stick with you”. It is the same in any form of content: if the rock band Poison went on stage and started with “here is some new stuff”, it is time for the beer garden. However, if they start with a couple of their classics, you might stick around through some of their new stuff.
Applying this to digital content:
- Know that once you get your big reveal your audience is not going to leave you. For this reason don’t wait for some whacky twist at the end – this isn’t an RL Stine novel.
- Here is a good artcle about the inverted triangle
Another article by Adam Lundquist is chief nerd of Nerds Do It Better – he used to cry under a tree when his mom dropped him off at preschool. You can connect with him on Google Plus