Tune Out the Marketing Advice and Experts to Get Shit Done
When you've read the "same" piece of advice from yet another expert, it's past time to stop "learning" and start working. Yes, even me.
TMI, when it comes to writing and marketing advice, can become a huge problem for writers and marketing professionals.
At a certain point, doing “more research” becomes a form of
Procrastination
Self-doubt
Mental masturbation
Choosing to be selectively deaf is one of the most productive things you can do.
Over the last decade or so, I’ve realized that selective deafness is a good thing. There’s no reason to try to keep up with the massive volume of marketing crap, er, excellent advice, available.
Maybe I’m finally turning into a cranky old git (I think I prefer curmudgeon). However, you don't need to be cranky to quickly grow tired of reading the same article repackaged by multiple “thought leaders” using different words to describe the same thing or many of those same “thought leaders” pitching you to “try this next new thing.”
Right now, any “branding” or “write a viral post” pieces of content make me want to poke my eyes out with a sharp stick.
Tune Out to Tune In
This isn’t a new revelation for me. I tend to cycle between periods of heads-down, extreme productivity and what the team in my days at Prospect Builder called “SQUIRREL!”
All of us had (have) a tendency to tangents. While sometimes valuable, tangents aren’t a good thing when you’re meeting a client’s campaign deadline. I created a squirrel icon to use in our Slack channels so when one of us got off track one of us would slap that in. We’d even say “squirrel” in meetings as short-hand to get back on track (sadly, I can no longer find the icon — he had a hat and trench coat and looked a little like Inspector Gadget).
Earlier this year, I was on an over-consumption, over-thinking virtuous circle of doom of research. I think of it as “squirrel” problem – there are so many nuts! I must find and bury all of them (and then forget where I buried them).
It's impossible to keep up. You don't need to. In fact, trying to keep up can do you more harm than good.
There's always one more idea. One more thing you can try. But when you're always looking for that next idea, you're not working on the good idea you already had. When you're always looking for the next thing the experts are doing, you aren't giving your current campaigns and efforts enough time to mature.
I get it. Today's marketing is all about speed, speed, speed. What's Google doing now? Should you segment everything? How much content do you need? How many times can you email? What about YouTube and TikTok? And let’s not forget the giant generative AI elephant in the room.
If you try to keep up with everything, you'll never have a life (or you're a freaking genius, so you can safely ignore the rest of this).
I’m in the process of thinning out my list of resources – as well as moving to less frequent updates from all them.
Find a few folks you respect and limit your consumption of professional advice to that select few. Regarding writing advice, and this is for business/marketing-related writing, don’t follow anyone who tells you writing is easy. They’re full of shit.
Less Hare, More Tortoise
We need to be less hare and more tortoise.
Take the time to plan your work (email campaign, newsletter, blog series, whitepaper, video strategy, etc.) – and don't feel like you have to junk it because tomorrow you'll read some expert or other writing an article that that is a strategy or technique that no longer works.
Take what the experts say with a grain of salt. Many of the experts in the field are perpetual motion machines, constantly feeding and shifting the industry because something new is always good for their business. Sometimes, the old shit works just fine.
For example, email NEVER stopped delivering results (and has always been a key part of any content strategy). Despite prediction so of the death of email at the beginning of the social media era, email remains the digital glue of all of the social platforms (how many email alerts from various social platforms do you get daily?).
Hell, email is the ONLY THING YOU CAN CONTROL TODAY! Everything else is rented land. The money is in the list, all the gurus say over the past two years.
Well, the money has always been in the list.
Writing content – websites, articles, blog posts, emails, etc. – that teach your customers do something better is a timeless way to connect with your customers. Even a “boring” industry like copier dealers has exciting content. This is my excuse to share one of my favorites, sexy copiers!
Ignore the bells and whistles.
Focus on what works.
THEN experiment with a bell here and a whistle there.
Most importantly, don’t squirrel out!
Ready to move on from your squirrels into creating a content marketing strategy? Drop me a line here or duhonius@gmail.com.
