On December 8th, I finished a series on the incredible power of serialized content.
In order to give you some more examples of serialized content, I decided to do a series on Christmas content marketing lessons (i.e. content marketing lessons we can learn from Christmas).
Here are the first two posts of “Christmas Content Marketing Lessons”:
- Christmas Content Marketing Lessons: A Lesson from Christmas Songs
- Christmas Content Marketing Lessons: How Content Marketing Gave Birth to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Today is my final post in this series.
And it’s a Christmas content marketing lesson from St. Nick himself!
If you’re ready, then let’s get started…
I hope I don’t get in trouble with ol’ Chris Kringle, but it’s time to reveal the secret for his incredible fame.
It’s the one gift he’s been keeping to himself.
It’s how he has stealth-fully used content marketing all these years.
When we talk about content marketing, we usually think of content that is created by the business itself (the owner or someone on their team).
But what we often overlook is some of the most potent content around: customer-created content, or what I would call “social content.”
This is the type of content that has been Santa’s secret for a long time.
Santa’s Secret 3-Step Content Marketing Strategy
Here are three steps he’s used to spread his fame around the world using the power of “social content”:
1. Determine to do something so bold and amazing that people will want to share your story (content) with everyone.
The way Santa does this is to do something so bold that people can’t stop talking about it:
He gives presents to strangers.
Example of How Others Have Done This
Two years ago the folks at WestJet decided to borrow Santa’s method.
Watch what happened when they did….
Amazing isn’t it?
And when this video first came out, people shared it like crazy!
That’s why doing something so bold that everyone can’t help but tell your story is a powerful strategy, but it’s only his first step.
Let’s look at Santa’s next step…
2. Bring on an amazing team and let the story of who they are (content focused on their unique talents, qualities and gifts) be told for all to see/hear.
Santa does this in many ways: he hires elves, uses flying reindeer, and even uses a reindeer with a shiny nose to lead them.
Example of How Others Have Done This
A woman named Tia Torres has done something similar. She has hired a team of people that most others have overlooked: parolees.
Why would she do this?
Because after her husband was sent to prison, she knew how much getting a second chance meant to someone who has a criminal record.
That’s why Tia decided to hire parolees to help her rescue pit bulls, animals who also know what it’s like to need a second chance.
Now Tia redeems parolees’ and pit bull’s lives through Villalobos.
Her team is so amazing and memorable that Animal Planet decided to do a show about her and Villalobos (create content about them).
It’s called Pit Bulls and Parolees.
Watch her celebrate the ending of parole for the first parolee she ever hired whose name is Earl…
Powerful, isn’t it?
But having a memorable team doesn’t just help you to have something that is worth creating content about.
It’s the thing that enables you to change people’s lives!
Now let’s look at Santa’s last content marketing strategy…
3. Allow and encourage others to freely share your story in many content forms.
Santa has never focused very much on creating his own content.
He’s always focused on doing and being someone worth creating content about.
Then he just lets others tell stories, create tv shows, movies, and even music about him.
I think that Airbnb is a good example of this. I’ve never seen any commercials or ads about Airbnb.
The only reason I’ve heard about it is because other people have created content about it.
This video from SoniasTravels is an example of content that others have created FOR Airbnb…
Takeaways For You & Your Business:
This post is obviously just meant for fun.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize there are two overlooked content marketing ideas we really need to consider…
I) Who you are (and who your staff, employees & associates are) and what you do is a rarely tapped source of powerful content.
If you’d like to learn more about this idea, then take a listen to a recent interview I did with Ed Gandia on his podcast High Income Business Writing.
In that interview, I shared how changing your “Who” can change your business.
You can listen to the episode here…
II) The second overlooked content marketing idea is the power of getting others to create your content for/about you.
Doing this gives you more leverage and exposure than you could ever create by yourself.
*In fact, aren’t these two things the reason so much content has been created about Steve Jobs/Apple, Tony Hsieh/Zappos, Richard Branson/Virgin, and Jeff Bezos/Amazon?
With these in mind, here are some questions for you to think about as we enter into 2016:
- What bold, different and amazing things can you do in 2016?
Focus on things to make your life and business more exciting. Think of things that will make your story worth sharing. - Are there amazing or interesting things you or your business has done in 2015 that you can share in 2016?
- What interesting facts, hobbies, and stories about you and your staff have neglected to share? (Obviously your staff needs to give you permission.)
If you sat down as a team and brainstormed/dreamed together I bet you could come up with some pretty interesting answers to these questions!
BONUS IDEAS:
Don’t focus on doing these things just so people will create content about you.
Focus on them because they would be fun, exciting and meaningful to do.
- Do things that help to change your industry.
- Do things that change/improve people’s’ lives (the best reason to do this).
The accidental, side-benefit will be that you will have a story worth sharing and content worth creating/spreading – whether it is created by you and others.
I hope you have enjoyed this series.
If you have, then please share this post and the other posts in this series with others. Thanks!
Photo by Kevin Dooley
If You Liked This Post…
If you liked this post, then you might want to:
- Subscribe to this blog, so you don’t miss my next post!
- Read part one of this series: Christmas Content Marketing Lessons #1: Christmas Songs
- Read my book: 51 Content Marketing Hacks
- Hire me to help you implement suspenseful, content serialization into your content marketing
- Hire me to come speak about this topic (or another topic)
- Learn why your content marketing isn’t working here
- Share this post with your friends and followers
- Or ALL OF THE ABOVE!
I’m a business strategist, consultant, content creation specialist, and speaker. I’ve been studying effective marketing and business methods (both online and offline) since 1999.
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