Must Content be Entertaining?
This podcast audio served as the source for the blog post “Does Content Have to be Entertaining? ”
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 founder Dave Young today. Dave, in the age of entertainment, does our content that we’re creating need to be entertaining?
Dave: Does content need to be entertaining? I really, really, really think it does. And see, I’m trying to do this content and in my office, I’ve got windows that look out into a big, wide open area, and as I’m sitting here trying to talk about being entertaining, the guy that owns the building, the landlord, is standing outside the window with his thumbs in his ears, doing this at me. That’s why I just laughed a second ago. I don’t if that’s entertaining in and of itself, but it kind of gives you a giggle, it kind of makes you go “ha, that’s kind of cute”, right? He’s trying to mess up Dave while Dave’s recording for his Shortcut Content video, and podcast and blog post.
And here’s the reason I think that content should be entertaining. Have you heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? So according to Maslow’s hierarchy, if our physical needs are met, we’ve got shelter, we’ve got food, we’ve got air to breathe and we’re warm, we’re otherwise happy, right? We don’t have these desperate needs for the things on the lower rung of Maslow’s hierarchy. Contented people look for entertainment. We go, well, I got all that stuff done. What’s on TV? What’s showing at the movie theater? And as we scroll through Facebook, we can either get ourselves tied up in some kind of political argument, which can be entertaining for some people, or we look for memes and gifs and videos and all kinds of things. And when it comes to creating content for your customers, they appreciate you doing a little bit to entertain them.
Think about some of the most iconic advertising campaigns just in the last few years. The Old Spice ads where the guy is “I’m on a horse.” That ad? That was highly entertaining, but it was also related to the brand, it was related to the product, but, man, was it well done and entertaining. There’s a video going around here lately for a photobook where it’s basically a busy mom saying, “I don’t have time to do photo scrapbooks, but here’s a company that can do it for you and if you haven’t seen that, we’ll link to it, or maybe embed it to the blog post that we create as a result of this conversation. It’s highly entertaining and it’s very effective. If you’re talking to busy moms and we all want to have printed pictures of our kids, but all of those pictures are living on our phones and living on Facebook and they’re not where we can just pick them up and thumb through them and she really makes the case for creating these books and using the company that she’s talking about. And the video is not short. It’s probably five or six minutes long. It does a good job and stays engaging. So whether someone’s just making faces and trying to make you laugh while you’re doing content, even if you’re talking about something serious, I think that helps it. It helps people engage with it. It helps people understand that you’re human and it helps people feel like they get to know you a little bit and like you. And so part of the way that we can entertain people is just to get better at telling stories and we aim to be doing a lot more story telling in the future here with Shortcut Content and we hope that you’ll join us in that journey.
Shayla: So if you want help telling your story and maybe some help figuring out what will be entertaining for your audience, all you have to do is reach out to Dave Young at shortcutcontent.com.