Various marketing frameworks – such as PESO or Google’s 3H – talk about what kind of content to create for various contexts across the customer journey. But, there is very little precious advice on how to make it interesting. And this is one of the most difficult things in the world if we don’t know how.
Here is a simple creative framework that should help you find interesting or unusual angles for your content marketing. It is called the SAS (no direct connection to the legendary UK special services, but it is similarly creative!).
S – Subject
What is your topic, what do you want to talk about? The first way how you can be original is to find a topic that is different from what other people in the same category do it. For example, many people cook recipes online, but some show us how it is to work in the kitchen, or how to choose the best ingredients or what happens in food during cooking (food chemistry).
Look for the angles that are relevant to your audiences, but don’t seem well-covered by other content creators. You will have advantage in getting their attention right from the start.
A – Action
What do you want do with your subject? Are you explaining, or teaching, are you guiding them in real time, are you just entertaining them? The way you approach the treatment of the topic could another way to make your content different.
S – Surprise
Finally, how do you talk about your topic, from the creative point of view? This is where the most difference is usually made. Being interesting or creative is one of the most difficult things, but there are shortcuts that we can learn.
This of this phase as a ‘lens’ you are showing your topic through to make it unique or uniquely interesting. Even the most boring topics could be revolutionised via great storytelling using these ‘lenses’ or ‘formats’. Here, literally, anything is possible!
History suddenly becomes captivating for younger generations if delivered via the medium of rap battles.
The same goes for the works of classic literature, explained in the Brooklyn street language.
Cooking is interesting because it is EPIC! Or, because the cook starts drinking when she starts cooking.
Maybe you’ve pranked someone to show that football is as much about head as it is about heart?
Or, how about teaching people how to copy (‘knock off’) your most successful product?
Launch the whole business just by staging bizarre demoes of the product?
Or, just curate other people’s content, but be the first and the relevant one to do it.
Or, create a challenge that may inspire many to replicate it.
In other words, literally anything is possible, we just need to introduce a surprising angle to our story. Half of the job with marketing is being different in some respect, communications probably being the easiest way to achieve that. This little formula used by thousands of content creators worldwide may just be the thing you need!
