Nobody Likes A Know It All

When creating content, too many companies fall for the expertise trap. Whether it's a video, a podcast, or a written blog post, it all winds up being about how much the designer knows about designing, the doctor knows about the body, or the woodworker knows about wood. The question is, does anyone really care?

Don't get me wrong -- educating your client base can be a great tactic -- but there's a big difference between teaching your audience things they care about and teaching them everything you know.

For example, if you're an art gallery catering to the middle class (i.e. not super wealthy collectors), your content would probably better serve you by focusing on how a customer should choose art for their home -- lessons in color theory and stories of interior design -- than by focusing on the frontier of modern art or details of art history, things that only collectors and academics care about.

Next time you're creating content, think about your audience. Are they mothers? Are they business owners? Are they cogs in a corporate machine looking for a way out? Instead of ladening your content with jargon, industry references, and minutiae, it's a lot more effective to create content that people will enjoy reading because it's interesting and resonates on an emotional level.