In my humble (but accurate) opinion, the most profitable kind of content you can create \u2014 whether it\u2019s email, video, social media, your products, speaking on stage, ranting on a podcast, or anything else\u2026 is not benefits, hard \u201chow to\u201d information, or value or any of the usual suspects.<\/p>\n
Those are important, no doubt.<\/p>\n
But they ain\u2019t king, in my way of thinking.<\/p>\n
What is king when it comes to content creation?<\/p>\n
To answer that (and I may lose some of the tee-totalers on my list with this, the price I must pay for creating *this* particular bit of content\u2026) let us look at a couple movies:<\/p>\n
“Sideways” and “Bottle Shock”.<\/p>\n
Both are supposedly movies about wine.<\/p>\n
(Incidentally, \u201cEmail Players\u201d subscriber Troy Broussard and I might do another Wine Villains event this year in Napa, CA \u2014 stay tuned for more info this summer).<\/p>\n
But, I argue they aren\u2019t both about wine.<\/p>\n
Bottle Shock is, yes, for the most part.<\/p>\n
It also had a heavier hitting group of celebrities in it, too, from what I could tell.<\/p>\n
But Sideways?<\/p>\n
I say thee nay.<\/p>\n
It looks like a movie about wine on the surface. It even behaves at times like a movie about wine. But it\u2019s not really a movie about wine if you unravel it.<\/p>\n
Yet, it destroyed Bottle Shock in ticket sales.<\/p>\n
In fact, Bottle Shock \u2014 with all its star power, like the actors who played Snape in Harry Potter, Captain Kirk in Star Trek (although it was pre-Kirk), and Dennis Farina \u2014 only did a whopping $4,628,553 at the box office.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Sideways did $109 million.<\/p>\n
It also made Pinot more popular than it ought to be.<\/p>\n
(In my humble, but snooty opinion).<\/p>\n
And, it destroyed Merlot\u2019s commercial wine appeal, for many years, too. (One of the local Oregon wineries I frequent said they had to change the name of their Merlot after the movie came out \u2014 and then sales went right back up, such was the stain Merlot had on it).<\/p>\n
The reason Sideways did so much better?<\/p>\n
I believe it\u2019s because it wasn\u2019t \u201cabout\u201d wine.<\/p>\n
It was about something quite different.<\/p>\n
And, it has a lot to do with what King of Content is.<\/p>\n
And guess what?<\/p>\n
One of the things I teach in the May \u201cEmail Players\u201d issue is what this king of content really is. And, also, a 15-word question to ask yourself before writing any piece of content to make sure you use it to stick out like a fart in a library (but in a good way) over and above everyone else in the inbox.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about benefits.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about giving more value.<\/p>\n
And, it\u2019s definitely not about having the most how-to hard content.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about something else altogether.<\/p>\n
And, if there is one thing you can do in your emails (and anything else you use to sell with \u2014 podcast, webinars, speaking, social media posts, articles, books, courses, programs, sales letters, etc) to run right over the people you compete against (including people with more \u201cstar power\u201d than you in your niche, and who have more knowledge, loads of experience, better positioning, etc) it\u2019s this.<\/p>\n
This 15-word question has created miracles for my sales.<\/p>\n
And, I suspect it\u2019ll do the same for you.<\/p>\n
The May issue is going to the printer in a few short days.<\/p>\n
To make sure you get it in time, grab your subscription here:<\/p>\n