6 Homeless People With Better Content Marketing Than You
If you live in a major urban area then there is no doubt you have seen your fair share of street signs and panhandlers. When you live in the city and become used to seeing this sort of thing, over time it becomes more natural to tune it out.
As painful as it is to say, it’s true.
Marketers deal with this dilemma in a different way – people are exposed to so much marketing that they become great at tuning it out. It should come as no surprise given that we are exposed to 5,000 and 20,000 marketing messages everyday.
6 Content Marketing Lessons From The Homeless
1. Be Honest
Seriously. Do you think you’re fooling anybody when you are “bending the truth”? People can instantly sniff out a fraud online and those who get away with it always find that karma catches up to them in the end. Those who remember the Domino’s Pizza Turnaround campaign know what I’m talking about. 
2. Challenge Your Audience
Anytime I have challenged my audience, I get huge engagement. The idea here is you want to appeal to their egos by giving them an opportunity to show everyone how well they can do something.
To give you a simple example that you can try right now, go ask your Facebook audience for a recommendation for a book or a movie. If your audience is anything like mine, they will pounce at the chance to share some wisdom.
Look at the picture below and tell me you can resist the urge to toss a coin at the target. It’s very difficult to resist a fun challenge!
3. Appeal To A Niche Market
It’s really difficult to target an audience with your content marketing when you are trying to include every person on the planet. If you are trying to marketing to everyone, you are in fact marketing to no one! You need to get more specific – even if your product does appeal to just about anyone. It important to focus on the target audience that are most likely to talk about you, spread your message and become your biggest brand evangelists. That is where real marketing begins.
Before you go all cookie-cutter and try to please everyone, think about what type of group you are most likely to blow their socks off. Not only are they who you should market to, they are probably the audience you understand the best anyways since you create products or services that they need. 
4. Do Their Dirty Work
Ah, yes. This one works like a charm when executed properly. To give you an idea of a business context of this rule, check out this blog where we made it really easy for readers to tweet a bunch of great tips to their Twitter feed. Since our audience is interested in social media, we can be sure that they need some content to tweet out on a regular basis.
By making your audience’s job easier, you become indispensable or, at the very least, useful to help them complete the tasks they have to do anyways. Think about the mundane tasks that you can help your target audience do really well and provide it for free in your blogs or social media posts.
5. Always Over Deliver
Nobody ever remembers the guy that under delivers and if they do, it’s for all the wrong reasons. Famous comedian Louis CK vows to never use the same material in his TV specials when performing on tour. Why? Because they might enjoy it but they will never come back again.
I feel like content works in a similar way. If you under deliver on your blog or with your social media posts, you can expect those visitors won’t be coming back. Even worse, they might see your posts and not even notice them because they have already tuned you out. Ouch.
6. Be The First To Admit Your Weaknesses
There is something endearing about admitting weaknesses. Not only that, it gives you a free pass from being overly scrutinized for things outside of your expertise. Don’t pretend to know something if you really have no idea. The internet is a vicious place and there are many people that will make it their duty to prove you wrong, expose you and even smear your name in the mud.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the reactions you get when you’re the first to admit you’re wrong or not good at something. People hate liars but they always love the underdog. 
What Are Your Most Valuable Content Marketing Lessons?
Content marketing is a strange beast for many but once you get the hang of it, there is no better way to communicate online with your ideal clients and prospects.
Content marketing gives you credibility while positioning yourself as the expert in your industry – that’s pretty tough to beat with other forms of marketing and advertising.
What are some of the most valuable content marketing lessons you’ve learned so far? I’d love to hear your answers in the comments below!
