Why Should I Create Non-Sales Content?

This podcast audio served as the source for the blog post “Create Something (Anything) Other Than Sales Content.”

The transcript was rewritten to produce the blog post, which is the cornerstone of the Shortcut Content system.

Shayla: You are listening to the Shortcut Content podcast and I’m talking with Dave Young today. Dave, obviously, at Shortcut Content, you’re all about content. So why should people be sending their clients content, not only when they want them to purchase something?

Dave: You mean content that doesn’t say rush right out in a buying frenzy?

Shayla: Yeah, something like that.

Dave: So the question is why should people be sending content other than sales content? And I think it’s a great question. The important thing about content, and I know we’ve talked about this before, is entertainment plays a big part in important content. Even if you’re talking about a serious subject, if you can do it in an engaging way, you’ll keep people interested in it. And sometimes you need to switch that up a little bit, and instead of being selling, selling, selling, tell some stories. Do some things that are just kind of off the wall. And I’ve got kind of an interesting example that I saw in the last couple of weeks on Facebook. And I don’t know what this guy’s history was, but he’s a Farmer’s Insurance agent from some little town somewhere. And there’s this video on Facebook of this Farmer’s Insurance agent, sitting at his kitchen table. He’s got his Farmer’s Insurance hat on, and he’s got a t-shirt on that says, “Need a quote, call” and he’s got his phone number on it. But he’s also got his two little girls and his wife sitting at the table with him. And I don’t know if it’s a thing on Facebook where, or not on Facebook, on YouTube, where these people that are YouTube stars are doing this thing where you open up a can of this rancid Norwegian pickled shark something, I don’t know even know what it was. But it’s some kind of fish that’s canned in its own awful stew. So the YouTube challenge is eat a bite of it.

The guy promised his two daughters like bicycles and gifts if they would stay in the shot while he ate a bite of this fish. And he promised his wife like a diamond or something if she stayed in the shot. And as soon as he opened the can, the little girls started retching and the wife was just like covering her mouth. And it was hilarious. And they went on, he finally pulled this stringy, nasty piece of shark goo out of the can and ate a little bit and was doing his best not to retch. His wife actually threw up and his kids kind of were just horrified. And it’s like what in the hell does that have to do with Farmer’s Insurance? Nothing. It has nothing to do with Farmer’s Insurance. But what does it tell you about that guy? What does it tell you about him?

It tells you that he’s got a sense of humor, that he’s got a family who he loves and loves him, that they seem to be well balanced, they have a lot of fun as a family. You know, insurance is this commodity, kind of service anyway. Does it matter if you have Farmer’s or State Farm or? Pretty much all insurance, to the average person, there’s not a bit of difference between one company or another. But what you like is to have an insurance agent that you like. And you like having these relationships with people that you like to work with. And so in his case, I mean, if I was a local guy in his town, and I saw that in my Facebook feed, and, no doubt, most of the people in his town, because he’s probably got a lot of Facebook friends, right? So everybody in his town has probably see that video, but it’s been seen, like at the time I saw, this was over a week ago, it already had 23 or 24 million views just on Facebook and that’s amazing, first of all, and so you can make the argument that out of 23 million view, 22,995,000 people will never buy insurance from that guy and that’s true. But there’s a lot of people talking about him and there’s a lot of people that probably feel pretty good about him. And do you think a video that he sat down at his kitchen table and started telling you about why you need to be a Farmer’s Insurance customer would get, I don’t know, 6 or 8 views?

Shayla: Maybe.

David: Nobody wants to hear that. I do want an insurance agent that I like, that I don’t mind sitting down talking about stuff with. So that’s the kind of content where it doesn’t have to be hard selling, as long as you an be a little bit entertaining, as long as you can do some things that are helping people. So think about that when you’re doing content. I mean, nobody cares about the topic that he had. It was pickled shark guts, or I don’t even know what this was. I hope I never come across a can of it. How do you argue with 20 or 30 million views and people just talking about how funny it was? And you seem like a nice guy. But at least, a conversation, at least people getting a feeling that this is a guy they like, a guy they’d like to know and maybe a guy they’d like to work with.

Shayla: Alright. So in addition to sending those “buy our stuff” emails, make sure your clients get to know you, your clients get to trust you and to do that, you can reach out to the team at Shortcut Content. You can find Dave at ShortcutContent.com.