From Here to Autonomy

What Pyromaniacs Can Teach Us About Content Strategy

(Correction: Apologies to the four people who read this post since I posted yesterday--the title was inaccurate. I never meant for the title to be "What Kleptomaniacs Can Teach Us About Content Strategy", but rather, "What PYROmaniacs Can Teach Us..." I was exhausted while eaking out the thoughts in that post and surely meant the reference to be to Pyromania, as I have no idea how Content Strategy relates to Kleptomania. Surely that's another post. Thanks to those of you who read the post and kindly said nothing, thinking I would read this post again in a more rested frame of mind and realize that I was making no sense.)

Despite my many career reinventions, there has been a thematic commonality in all of my jobs: content. Sometimes I create it, sometimes I sell it,  always I pitch it. Despite the twists and turns that interactive technology has forged in the media world, content has still come to the forefront as not only a differentiator but a media strategy.

Early in my career I could not have cared less about how to promote good content, or how to disseminate it, or how to do deals that would increase its exposure. I just wanted to create and consume interesting shit. Period. The past 18 years has been an exercise in learning the business around good content; not a wasted effort given the most recent bend in media toward self publishing, or personal empire-building. Content creators who are not good alliance builders or marketers have a tougher time monetizing their passion to create good content. Show me a purist who refuses to learn the trade of promoting her (or someone else's) content, and I'll show you someone with low traffic. The problem for me, personally, has been spending so much time on the empire building side of the equation that content creation eludes me.

I recall a seminal point in my career when I was a content manager and made the choice to cross over to the revenue generation side. It seemed that content creation wasn't such a challenge or talent, but monetizing it was. But, 13 years later, that's simply not the case. Brands need a content strategy to compete, just as content creators such as bloggers need to learn about the business of content.

A number of sources in my online reading today point to what is undeniably a renewed appreciation for content as a business builder, from Altimeter's fascinating study on the rebalancing of brand marketing toward content creation, to questions on Quora about how to become a content manager (hilarious, since bloggers and former book/magazine editors gone online were ghettoized into this bucket before it became cool), to pieces for marketers about how content can bolster their brand identity and hit KPIs.

Of course, given my background in media, I am inclined to say no duh to all of this. Even before I moved to online pastures I worked in print syndication for The New York Times and Time Inc. Custom Publishing where we developed content for brands that wanted to attract or retain customers by providing informational, even inspirational, value. Even then, the value of good content was appreciated.

But that reaction isn't really taking into account how social media has transformed content creation. Back in 1999, I was purely a content creator, not a marketer, and not a community builder. You told me what content you wanted and I created or found it. Now, content creation is so much more than that. It's applying a marketing strategy to content strategy; it's applying a working knowledge of the technology, and the principles of  trust across the social graph. The content must be good, but it must also be where the right people are, and offered in a way that will inspire them to share, and will back into business objectives.

Content creation is, in effect, firestarting. And this firestarting is no longer accomplished by lighting a match under an already-established, mainstream publisher. I'm not a true pyro, but I do know it's a sustained effort and begins in the grassroots. Mostly it's knowing everything about your materials, and how small embers can build over time, with the help of other traveling sparks. Sometimes the secret isn't brilliance; it's spotting when something is catching and then knowing which way to blow.

Separation Anxiety

I came back from a business trip and got the report from H-band. He'd gone to one of the local Montessori preschools in our neighborhood to see if it would be a fit for Liv. His take: It wasn't.

"The kids seem so, I don't know, depressed."

"Depressed? Gosh what do they do over there?"

"Well it's not that overt. I just think that they must be … there's not a lot of space for running around outside."

"It's a Montessori, hun. I would think that they engage the kids..."

"I'm sure they do. But not like we engage Olive here. She's better off here."

Of course by the word "we" H-band actually meant "I". "But not like I engage Olive here." He's taken an immense amount of pride in her development. I come home from work or a business trip and am always amazed by the new words, the new skills, she's taken on.

It's been tough approaching alternative means of childcare with H-band. He knows it needs to happen. Hell, most days when I come home he threatens that it NEEDS to happen soon. There's so much that he wants to do that being the primary caregiver makes impossible--from working on freelance projects to training for a bike race. I've never disagreed with him. I've always wondered when he would take steps to get his career back on track, more because that's what I would do than because I think he needs to. While I think he worries about his professional future from time to time; I don't think it's as much of a driver for him to obtain child care than having more time for himself.

Perhaps more to avoid my disapproval H-band went on another preschool tour last week, while I was on another business trip. I suggested that he go, and if he liked the place enough I would be happy to accompany him on a follow-up trip.

That night we spoke on the phone.

"So what did you think?" I said.

"It was fine," he said.

"Enough room for the kids to run around?" I said, wondering if there were perhaps criteria other than square footage of the play yard we should be applying to our search .

"I guess," H-band said. "It was alright. Sort of precious."

"Precious in a snobby way?"

"Precious in a Berkeley way."

I could live with that way.

"Alright enough to apply?"

"I don't know about that."

"Are there openings?"

"In the fall. She might not make the cutoff, though. She's two weeks too young."

"Well can you find out if we can still apply?" My voice was becoming increasingly desperate. Friends of ours with kids a similar age had applied for preschool months, even years, ago, knowing full-well that there were often waitlists, and you could not always get your first choice. H-band had agreed to take on this "project" of ours of securing child care for our daughter, and though as the full-time caregiver he had gone through many of the motions of researching, the suggestion of even looking at all--and the nudging--had been made entirely by me.

After much cajoling, H-band agreed he would write the preschool director and ask if we could apply. Several days later I saw that this hadn't been done. I did what I knew was most effective--threatened to do it myself--and H-band wrote the email. We found out that we could still apply. H-band said he had the application and would work on it. Last night I asked him about it. It hadn't been done.

I cringed at the thought of what it would be like when it came time to look at colleges; preschools were hard enough.

"I'll fill out the application," I said, curtly. "It needs to get done."

"But what if we decide that's not the preschool for her?" H-band said.

"Then it's not, but we need to at least get her on some waitlists, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

H-band gets this way sometimes, and it annoys me, but after several years of marriage I know this: There are things that H-band is passionate about, and those are things that get done. And then there are things that he is passionate about, and because of that passion things don't get done.  I realized that, perhaps, the latter dynamic was in play. He was passionate to the point of true apathy. He didn't want our daughter to get into a preschool.

"You know," I said. "She needs to be around other kids. She can't be around you forever."

H-band nodded; of course he knew that.

"She was so sick today," he said. "I'm not dropping her off someplace when she's that sick."

"Of course you won't. Why would you?"

"I won't do that."

"She won't be sick like that very often."

H-band went back to loading the dish washer. The conversation ceased.

Later that night he asked me, "Have the two of you ever napped together?"

"Who? Me and Olive?"

"Hmm mmm."

I thought of the times on the weekend when all I wanted to do was curl up on the floor and fall asleep while she played with her toys, "Nope."

"It's nice," he said. "You can feel her little breath on you. And sometimes when she's not sleeping yet she'll feel around and touch your face. She just wants to know what it feels like. But then she falls asleep." He was overcome with the memory.

I had filled out the preschool application a few hours earlier, put it in an addressed envelope, and left the envelope in our foyer, to go out with the mail the next day. I said to H-band, "You know, you'll get to see her every day. We don't have to send her full time. Let's see how it goes."

H-band nodded OK.