13. It's time to embrace your inner oddball (yes, even in B2B)

Hi friends,

What influences your decision to work with someone or buy from a particular brand?

The recent service providers I’ve worked with and brands I bought from had these 3 characteristics.

• They share their stories. Stories of how they failed and tried other things. Of how they’re still a work in progress or stories of how they’ve given up. Shared experiences = relatable.

• They’re not afraid to get vulnerable. I can get a listicle of tips of how to build a content marketing program anywhere online. But an interview that’s not afraid to tell me the in’s and outs of building a content marketing program at a company? Yes!

• They’re interesting. I want to hear the story behind the content. I want to see evidence that you’re human and share that humanness in an interesting way. Maybe I resonate with their values of authenticity, openness or personal style of showing up on their space on the Internet.

Besides identifying the way they package their service or product was the right fit for my needs, I found myself resonating with:

1. The way they showed up online

2. Their message or story

3. Their values expressed through their content.

Pure information is so easy to find these days. But how you show up and present that information makes it different.

Sure, there’s always a demand for how-to content and information, but I believe people now want to see the story behind the information. Besides story, maybe it’s how your product solves a distinct problem, or how your first-party data explores a specific issue unique to your brand.

You see this a lot in personal newsletters, YouTube creators and lifestyle content, but less so in B2B content. Well, I’ll love to share a few ‘weird’ examples of B2B content that I personally enjoy, and why.

Weird Example #1: Weird Marketing Tales blog

I am very inspired by Weird Marketing Tales’s approach to content creation and teaching marketing to small businesses.

It’s the first blog in a while where I spent a good hour reading through their writing, not because I wanted to learn about marketing, but because I found their writing and subject matter truly engaging.

They somehow manage to talk about Taylor Swift, Daft Punk, Mario and SpongeBob SquarePants, among many pop culture references on a marketing blog.

But in no way is it frivolous or BuzzFeed level of cringe - their posts are well researched, interesting to read and most importantly, FUN.

It ticks all my boxes - thoughtful analysis, riveting storytelling, cultural engagement outside conventional B2B marketing and fun, smart writing.

You feel like the writers genuinely enjoy putting together their articles and understand marketing enough to extract business and marketing lessons from pop culture icons.

More importantly, Weird Marketing Tales sounds so different from all the B2B marketing stuff out there (read, interesting).

When you think of content marketing blogs, it’s easy to default to well-known industry names like HubSpot, Ahrefs, etc. These are industry icons in their own right and have their own depth of knowledge.

But the Internet is a big place, and people enjoy different things. There’s space on the Internet for a more technical approach to marketing (Ahrefs) and a more fun approach to teaching about marketing (Weird Marketing Tales)

These are pieces generative AI cannot write. AI's gonna make it easier to flood the Internet with boring, mediocre content. It’s even more important to lean into what makes you human in 2024 - like what Weird Marketing Tales does here. Plus, it’s easier to create when you find it fun (plus, your audience is more likely to feel like you’re having fun and enjoy engaging with your content more).

Weird Example #2: TONIC Site Shop’s email newsletter

One hallmark of engaging content is asking myself:

And the newsletter from website template provider Tonic Site Shop ticks all these boxes with flying colors.

Every newsletter is a remarkable piece of personal, vulnerable storytelling.

For a business selling website templates, the emails are surprisingly … plain. Few buttons, no fancy newsletter layout, animated slideshows and all the other bells and whistles you might expect a business in their category to use. (showcase your product's capabilities, right?)

It’s just text. But oh, what great text it is!

These newsletters tell stories. And not the sanitized, 5 things I do before 5AM that make me successful drivel.

These emails, written by the masterful Jen Olmstead, share embarrassing stories from high school, use memes and GIFs liberally, and tons of other amazing personal anecdotes.

And they’re long, almost rambly.

Kinda goes against everything you learnt in email marketing (people’s attention spans are short, so keep them as short as possible!)

Turns out, people do want to read, but your stuff has to be pretty damm good. These newsletters sound intimate and honor their subscribers' email inboxes' personal space and attention.

And they sound VERY human. Almost like a person writing a letter to you, for your eyes only.

They DO tie it to business at the end, but you don’t care if it does or not, because you’re swept up in the story and wondering how it all ends.

This makes the business lessons land even harder because there was all that personal context to make you care.

I don’t use their design products, but if anyone was in the market for a new site template, they’ll be one provider that comes to mind. I’ll also recommend subscribing to their emails if anyone loves great personal writing with fantastic storytelling.

Weird Example #3: My own journey with showing up on LinkedIn

I’m a sucker for these unusual examples because it mirrors my journey of turning my LinkedIn presence from a stuffy B2B Joshua in 2023 to a Joshua who’s more comfortable showcasing the other sides of himself on LinkedIn today.

See, LinkedIn is known as the place where you show off your Corporate Self. You’re on LinkedIn to either:

• Get work-related insights

• Creeping on your peers, colleagues or bosses

• Hire people

• Look for a job and stealthily update your profile to start looking for a job

• Announcing that you’re starting a new role at XYZ company

• Sharing company posts or engaging with company posts on your personal account because your marketing team told you to do so (I’m guilty of this lol)

For months, I’ve wondered if talking about topics like food, gaming, or ‘lifestyle’ topics wasn’t appropriate for LinkedIn. But connecting your interests to your work makes your content more interesting to people AND fun for you to create.

Tbh, my LinkedIn metrics are all over the place, so I don’t always know if this approach works. But I get people wanting to work with me despite never interacting with any of my content. That I sound like a person. Or I’ve managed to connect with amazing people in my DMs through being active on LinkedIn.

That’s pretty awesome - and receiving comments like these is 1000% better than hitting a certain metric.

More importantly, it’s fun to show up online like this for me. So I’m optimizing for fun, and making sure the way I show up on LinkedIn is 1) enjoyable and sustainable for me 2) provides value to my audience.

Thoughtful reads and cool discoveries

Analysis: TikTok is for Millennials (Ryan Broderick from the Garbage Day newsletter)

This one shocked me because it flips the script on everyone saying, “TikTok’s the way you reach young people!!!” (read, Gen Z people.)

It’s also an excellent piece of content. Well-written, integrates research seamlessly, and relevant. Perfect if you wanna stay up to date with the crazy world of social media.

Tip: 44 Google search operator tips (Joshua Hardwick from the Ahrefs blog)

I thought I knew how to search on Google until I read this incredible list. Useful tips to learn if you’re hunting down an obscure stat, want to go beyond the typical top 10 results for an SEO keyword, or refining a search query.

App I’ve been loving: Timing

After using auto time-tracking, I don’t want to go back to manual tracking again. 

Timing tracks all my computer movement within my working hours so I have hard data on all my activity within the day. I can see when I’m focused and when I’m not, there’s no denying things cos the hard data is just there).

If you’re looking for a better way to track your time, Timing comes with a generous 30-day trial!

See you soon,

Joshua

If you’re looking for content support in 2024 …

Here’s how we can work together.
⭐ B2B SaaS product-led content: People look for solutions and information online. Why not position your product to illustrate a point and show why your product is the best at solving a problem? It attracts visitors and educates your customers while motivating and guiding them to use your product. Talk about a win-win!

⭐ Customer case studies: Highlight how you’ve worked with a customer and celebrate their success! Case studies build trust with potential customers and show how your work has solved their issues. Attract customers like your ideal clients who want to solve a similar issue.

⭐ Whitepapers, research reports and e-books: Nurture valuable leads for a marketing campaign with an in-depth, persuasive long-form piece highlighting an issue and articulating your brand’s expertise. They help start sales conversations and showcase industry authority with original data. Besides interviewing stakeholders and research, I'll assist your team from outline to design to publication.

⭐  Content repurposing: Don’t let the content you worked so hard to put together collect digital dust after publishing. Repurpose your existing content to reach a new audience. For example, I’ve worked with clients to repurpose speaker recordings into blog posts and turned internal sales slides into e-books.

I’m fully booked at the moment, but you can still join my waitlist (earliest estimated client opening around April). DM me and let’s schedule a call to chat about your content! Let’s figure out what types of content fits best for your customers, and craft a way forward together.