#45: To Be or To Do
The MessageUp Newsletter | Edition 45
Hi there! It’s Matt from MessageUp.
What a week it has been! Craziness in the banking sector, more crazy weather, and no shortage of crazy clothing on the Oscars red carpet.
Thankfully, the world of B2B content marketing is far less volatile.
That being said, my world of content marketing was thrown for a loop this week when I read a thought-provoking account of the achievements and teachings of Colonel John Boyd—probably the most influential military tactician you’ve never heard about.
At the heart of Boyd’s personal philosophy is a question: Do you want to be somebody or would you rather do something impactful?
He coached subordinates to anticipate reaching such a fork in the road, where they would face the decision between doing what they felt was right (and risking career success in the process) or keeping their noses down and doing what they were told.
As is my wont, I considered how this line of thinking might apply to growing businesses and it stopped me dead in my tracks.
I observe many businesses reaching a similar fork in the road.
They must eventually choose between continuing to pursue their purpose, doing something impactful, but risking a less-lucrative exit, or being what investors and pundits what them to be in pursuit of outsized growth and the big pay day.
Consequently, they must choose whether to use content marketing to help others achieve great things or to cultivate a business image that conforms with external expectations.
I’m still coming to grips with what this means for my companies’ marketing and that of my clients, but that didn’t prevent me exploring the topic in this week’s post on The Framework blog: To Be or To Do: A Question for B2B Content Marketers.
There are implications for corporate strategy and personal life decisions, too, so I’ll be thinking—and potentially writing—more about this in the weeks ahead.
Bringing things back to center, the web has provided its usual array of fun and helpful reading. Scroll down to What We’ve Been Reading to peruse this week’s summaries. They range from articles on understanding and measuring your dark funnel and the evolution of B2B marketing to pieces on writing about your competitors and using interactive content to boost audience engagement.
I particularly enjoyed Ramona Sukhraij’s piece on writing skillfully about your competitors—something many businesses are leery of doing but which has an important role to play in effective B2B content marketing.
For this week’s One Step actionable tip, I captured four quick-fire questions that ran through my mind when I began applying the “to be or to do” philosophy to content marketing. I’m curious to hear your thoughts when you’ve had a chance to answer them for your business.
If, like me, you’re involved with startups and early stage businesses, I hope your exposure to the crisis swirling around Silicon Valley Bank (and others) is limited and resolves itself rapidly and favorably.
For those without such interests, take note of how dependent a large swath of emerging, disruptive companies (on both sides of the Atlantic) were on a single financial institution and please lend your support to any emergent initiatives that offer broader financial support for what is a critical sector in any economy.
Have a stable, solvent, and successful week!
Cheers,
~ Matt
o/b/o Team MessageUp
Get Ready to Read All About It!
My books—Content Marketing: Mission Critical, aimed at CEOs, and Content Marketing: Making the Magic Happen, for B2B marketing leaders—are almost ready for publication!
Both manuscripts are now approved for printing and are being converted into eBook format.
If you’d like to know when the books are ready for pre-order (and receive a special discount coupon), click below to join the wait list:
Our Latest Posts on The Framework Blog
Mar 15, 2023 - To Be or To Do: A Question for B2B Content Marketers
Mar 08, 2023 - 11 Critical Tasks Content Marketing Can Accomplish for Your B2B Business
What We’ve Been Reading
Here are some articles we’ve been reading this week that we hope you will enjoy and find valuable:
3 Questions B2B Marketers Should Ask About the Dark Funnel in 2023
The term "dark funnel" encompasses many nonlinear touchpoints that a business cannot control, influence, or measure, but which significantly impact a prospect's buying decision. This excellent overview by Chitra Ayer, writing for CMS Wire, provides guidance on how to understand and measure your dark funnel, and a handy graphic to help visualize what's going on.
The Evolution of B2B Marketing in 5 Charts
We write frequently about shifting B2B buyer demographics and the rise of B2B e-commerce, so it's helpful to find supporting data, such as this set of charts compiled by eMarketer and published on their Insider Intelligence page.
How to Skillfully Write About Competitors on Your Blog
As Ramona Sukhraij points out in her piece for Impact Plus, writing about your competitors might sound counterintuitive but, done well, it can be some of the most effective content your company publishes. Read this piece to learn the reasons why and for some tips on making it work.
Top 8 Interactive Content Creation Platforms and Tools to Boost Audience Engagement
Interactive content generates twice as many page views as static content and four times more conversions than passive content. So why not take advantage of the power of interactivity? Many of us simply don't know how. In this informative piece for FlipHTML5, Shero highlights eight interactive tools that take the hard work out of generating high-engagement content.
One Step…
Reflecting on the teachings of Colonel John Boyd that I described above and explored in this week’s blog post, I asked myself four questions about the content marketing strategy being implemented by my companies.
Try answering these questions for your own business and see what implicit choices you might be making between being something and doing something.
Four questions on being something versus doing something:
What fraction of your content marketing is designed to help others do great things?
What fraction of your content marketing is designed to cultivate an image that you believe customers, investors, employees, and other stakeholders expect a business like yours to have?
To what extent has your company made an explicit decision to pursue its purpose, irrespective of any impact that decision might have on growth, profitability, exit potential, industry rankings, or media coverage?
If your company has yet to reach that fork in the road, how will you approach the decision and what do you want the outcome to be?
There are many possible answers and outcomes here, so I’m not offering to diagnose your situation or to recommend corrective actions.
Instead, I hope the exploration of these questions will force a conversation to happen within your organization that—at a minimum—helps prevent you from blindly following the “be something” pathway without considering the “do something” possibilities.
Subscribe Today and Recommend Us To Your Network
If you aren’t already receiving our latest updates in your inbox every Wednesday morning, what are you waiting for? Subscribe for free today!
We greatly appreciate your support.
Then, take another thirty seconds and share the love with a deserving member of your network. Send them our Substack link (messageup.substack.com) so that they can sign up too.