Becoming a Content Brand, Part 3: Continuity
“If the label fell off your product, would everyone know who you are?”
I was interviewing Ann Handley for a series on email copywriting six years ago when she dropped this nugget of wisdom.
Right then, I knew I’d always remember and come back to it. I didn’t need the benefit of looking back.
The only way you or I could identify a product with no label is if it had something truly distinctive beyond its name or existence. This only happens when brands are purposeful about who they are, what they make, and how they make it.
Kinda like Content Brands.
To recap: Content Brands are brands that create content so good that they inspire brand loyalty even from those who may never buy from them.
They do this by creating truly distinctive content that stands alone as its own brand, separate from whatever product or service its parent company sells.
Text. Audio. Video––the channel or medium doesn’t matter. Whenever or wherever Content Brands show up, they’re consistent in who they are, what they make, and how they make it.
Wistia could create a tri-fold brochure and you’d still know it was their content.
Ahrefs could create a point-of-purchase display in your local grocery store and you’d still know it was their content.
Label or not, you know who they are.
Continuity, or a brand’s ability to stay consistent in its approach and message across different channels and mediums, is paramount to achieving Content Brand status.
Let’s get into the details…
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Continuity doesn’t mean much when you are consistently publishing uninspired content across different channels and mediums.
To borrow a line from the previous issue of Good Content!, all of these various channels aren’t what unlocks growth. It’s how you show up in them.
Many brands have been blogging for years. Many of those brands now have a podcast. And many of those same brands are publishing videos, sending a newsletter, and so on.
Few brands, however, are able to connect all of this together in a way that forms a compelling and cohesive presence.
A presence that, no matter where or what you’re consuming, a new video series, an old podcast episode, last week’s newsletter, etc., it all feels like it’s woven from the same cloth. Like a continuation of a favorite TV show, a sequel to a classic book (the kind with the weathered and worn cover), or a reunion of your favorite musicians or artists––part of what makes it great is that it feels familiar.
This is where Content Brands shine.
They don’t view new channels or mediums as more opportunities to promote, but instead as opportunities to further the message and deepen the relationship with their audience.
To create that familiarity.
It doesn’t happen quickly, and it doesn’t happen accidentally.
Continuity is deliberate and the foundation for it is typically built early on by leaders and early employees.
Here’s how.
The leaders model the behavior
In my conversations with Justine Jordan (former VP at Litmus) for this series, we got talking about this idea of brand building and how, if the foundations aren’t built by early leaders, it becomes much harder to achieve.
“They’re either founders or very early employees,” said Jordan. “One of the reasons why that is that no one can care as much about that brand and what it stands for as those people. And while I wasn’t a founder at Litmus, I certainly felt like one.”
Litmus published a ton of great content across mediums, but perhaps the one that best exemplified Continuity was its Email Client Marketshare report. It’s a monthly report that aggregates data from millions of email opens using Litmus in order to detail the applications and devices people are using to open/view emails most.
There was a page on the website that was updated monthly with the latest data.
There was a blog post published complete with analysis from internal subject matter experts.
There was a video posted that distilled the key trends and insights into a digestible and shareable format.
There was an infographic created that visualized the data and included key insights that would be given away to other big publishers in the space. (HubSpot, for example, published one of the infographics with their own writeup.)
The report was sourced (seemingly) everywhere. Customers would even ask if there was a way to get the data even earlier––they’d even pay for it. That’s how much they relied on that data to help direct their email design efforts.
This was only one piece of content, but it was a microcosm of how Litmus approached all of its content.
Justine drove the creative on this in the early days. But, as the team grew, the standards were set and others were able to step in and follow suit.
This is how we create content.
That early example is critical. Chris Savage (Wistia’s cofounder and CEO) talked a bit about this in our conversation a few weeks back.
“There are a very small number of us where [Wistia’s brand] emanated from in the early days that are all still here. Today, I’d say it is embodied through our marketing organization.”
They encourage creative risks
“I cheer on this type of risk-taking and always push for more.”
This was also Chris Savage when I asked him about the type of content Wistia creates and how, no matter if its text, video, audio, product marketing, sales collateral, etc., it all feels like Wistia, which is to say, a little quirky and fun.
“This book was very inspirational to me,” said Savage. “The lesson is that the right small team can scale what they are doing massively as long as they can continue to work well together.”
In Wistia’s case, this meant encouraging creative risks in order to maintain that brand voice and experience as the team grew and their creative output inevitably grew into new channels.
In other words, they needed to instill Continuity into the fabric marketing at Wistia. By doing so, they felt they’d be able to scale their efforts even with a team much smaller than the other brands trying to make noise in the martech space.
Ultimately, Continuity is embodied through examples of leaders and/or early employees and encouragement by cheering on those who continually take creative risks. In other words, Continuity isn’t achieved passively. It has to be deliberately maintained.
They clear a high bar
Creating good content for one channel is hard.
Creating good content across multiple channels is exponentially harder. The approach that worked for one channel doesn’t always translate to another.
But again, leveraging various channels isn’t what unlocks growth, it’s how you show up in them.
Content Brands understand this and establish a high bar for publishing new content and exploring new channels.
Some, like Jordan at Litmus, do this to an extreme degree.
“I remember when the founders asked me to blog about something related to our product, and at the time, I told them no,” said Jordan. “I wasn’t going to write a release post about the product because I hadn’t yet used the product enough yet where I felt confident enough to write about it in a way that didn’t come across as just pushing product.”
“It had the meet the bar of, ‘will this continue to earn trust and credibility in the eyes of our audience and not only serve the interest of the company?’”
Maybe not ideal? I dunno. I’ll take this level of commitment and have these arguments any day over the alternative. Because, when you establish and maintain a high bar like this, you’re much more likely to succeed in achieving Continuity across channels and mediums.
So, wherever and whenever your brand publishes content, it’s likely to be great. To uphold a high level of quality and service to the audience. To feel familiar.
And when quality is familiar to your audience, well, you’re in just about as good a place as you can be.
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I've had a lot of fun talking with old friends and exploring this concept of Content Brands over the last few weeks. I really (like, really) appreciate all of the kind feedback I've received via the replies, DMs, etc., on this series.
What started out as, "is this a thing?", was quickly validated by your feedback and experiences. Thank you for sharing.
Much more to come. Until next time, enjoy your day. And make good content. We need you.
- John
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