The 4 qualities of top-tier content
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The 4 qualities of top-tier content
Marketing Powerups #58: Dr. Fio Dossetto shares her E.A.S.Y. content framework, a set of principles to evaluate content quality.
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Powerups! 👋🏽
Today's powerups include:
The final chapter of Moz for Rand Fishkin.
See examples of “unhelpful” content, according to Google.
Dr. Fio Dossetto’s E.A.S.Y content framework.
Ready? Let's go! ⭐️
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⭐️ The E.A.S.Y. content framework
Creating great content that resonates with your audience is hard. How do you ensure your content is high-quality, stands out from the crowd, and achieves your goals?
Dr.
Dossetto, an experienced content strategist who has led teams at companies like Hotjar, ActiveCampaign Postmark, and Float, developed the E.A.S.Y. content framework to address this challenge. She created this set of principles to help align her team and give clear criteria for evaluating content quality.The EASY framework has four core elements - Expert, Actionable, Simple, and Yours. Let's explore each principle in depth and hear Fio's advice:
1. Be an expert. 🤓
"As content marketers, we often find ourselves in a situation where the topic is complex and we don't have a matching level of expertise. If you don't talk to subject matter experts and force your way into it, you won't get excellent results."
Leveraging expertise is key to creating convincing, authoritative content. Fio advocates interviewing subject matter experts and customers to incorporate their words and stories into your content. This adds credibility from their first-hand experience and gives a distinctive perspective you can't get otherwise.
For example, when writing about a complex topic she didn't have experience with, Fio interviewed industry veterans at her company. She asked them questions like "What are some things that non-experts believe about this topic and are wrong about?" This allowed her to tap into their years of knowledge.
2. Make it actionable. 🏃♂️
"I think our jobs is to never let people leave asking themselves, okay, but what does this mean and how do I actually do this?"
Help your audience accomplish something important to them. Provide clear next steps and instructions so they know what to do. Show your product or service solving problems and let people see it in action. Actionable content has tangible utility and value.
Fio advocates for "product-led content" where your content features the product as part of the story. For example, you can showcase your software by including screenshots of the dashboard and pointing to relevant features. This naturally makes the content more actionable.
3. Keep it simple. 💡
"Do not make them work to understand you, communicate in a way that is clear and easy to follow without jargon or idioms."
Respect your audience's time by getting straight to the point. Avoid unnecessary complexity, jargon, idioms, and tangents that make comprehension harder. Simplify, but don't dumb things down. Clear communication enhances engagement.
Fio notes that concise writing often takes more effort than verbose text. But putting in that work to prune and refine is worth it. The result is focused content that delivers value quickly for the reader.
4. Make it uniquely yours. 🦄
"Use your unique voice and experience to create this kind of connection with the people you're creating content for."
Reflect your distinctive brand voice and assets in your content. For example, Fio leveraged the quirky, helpful brand voice of Postmark to create offbeat comics explaining concepts like email deliverability.
Also, feature customer stories showcasing your product or service in action. Consistent elements like this make your content uniquely yours. Readers will come to associate these with your brand specifically.
Free powerups cheatsheet 🔖
I’ve created a powerups cheatsheet exclusively for Marketing Powerups subscribers to apply Dr. Fio Dossetto’s E.A.S.Y. framework.
→ Get a copy of this cheatsheet here (a direct link with no email required).
In the latest Marketing Powerups episode, Dr. Fio further explains her E.A.S.Y. content framework.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcast and Spotify now, or watch it on YouTube.
By the way, I encourage you to subscribe to Dr. Fio’s Substack newsletter
. I’m a big fan! I learned about her the E.A.S.Y content framework via one of her past issues.
✨ Mini powerups
Fun-sized tools, links, and blurbs to boost your marketing.
🎥 Get summaries and transcripts from YouTube (tool):
If you don’t have time to watch that podcast, TED talk, or keynote presentation on YouTube, you can use Scriber to get the summaries from them! I tried it on a few of my podcast episodes, and the summaries are surprisingly good!
🏆 Ultimate guide to product onboarding (sponsored):
You can increase your signups with great marketing. But if you don’t nail your product onboarding, you might waste your marketing team’s time and resources. My friends at Inflection.io launched a massive product onboarding guide full of tips, examples, and best practices.
😵 The final chapter of Moz (article):
Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro, finally sits down to tell the final chapter of his first startup, Moz. It’s not the prettiest of stories (he seriously missed out on 14 million 😳), but there’s so much to take away from it.
📝 Google shares the signs you’re writing unhelpful content (thread):
Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, provides some examples of unhelpful content types. In short, unhelpful content is written for search engine rankings and not for a human audience.
That’s all for this week!
If you enjoyed this, you’d love this Marketing Powerups issue from the archives featuring
about his expert-driven content strategy.
That’s all for now, friends!
Have a powered-up day,
Ramli John
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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