DISCLAIMER: No, I don’t believe I’m the universe’s gift to DevRel. I don’t have all the answers, all the skills, or even all the Pokemon. What I have is my experiences, collected over the 11 years I’ve been doing this work. That – my experiences and observations – are what I’m sharing in this series.
In my last post I talked about re-factoring your content from one form into another (blog to video, video to conference talk, conference talk to podcast, etc.). Which is good as far as that idea goes, but there is so much more you can do.
In fact, let’s do a thought exercise:
The Idea Engine Challenge
Challenge #1: Put 1 minute on the timer, take your hands off your keyboard / phone (meaning: NO INTERNET!) and then:
name 10 (or more) sports teams
How many did you get? How many more could you have come up with if you had more time? How many could you have gotten if you could have used the internet?
Challenge #2: Put 3 minutes on the timer, take your hands off the internet, and then:
List 25 (or more) songs with the word “love” in the title
Good work! Once again, take a moment to reflect: How many more could you have done with more time, with the internet, or if you could have worked with a partner.
Challenge #3: Put 5 minutes on the timer, once again no internet, and then:
List 50 (or more) recipes – just the name/title, not the ingredients
And for the last time, take time to think about how many more you could have done with help (internet, friends, more time).
The Real Challenge
Now give yourself a luxurious 10 minutes on the clock. You’re allowed to use the internet, or phone a friend, or whatever else you want. And see if you can:
List 100 content ideas
OK, stop (whether it’s been 10 minutes, or 1 minute, or no minutes at all). If you’re like most folks, that challenge felt distinctly different, and not in a good way. If so, the first thing to understand is that it’s totally normal. Coming up with content ideas isn’t the same as coming up with city names or sports teams or song titles.
The second thing to consider: Why? What was so different about coming up with content ideas versus songs or recipes? Likely, one of the primary reasons is that, whether consciously or not, you had a system in place for the first 3. You probably started listing:
- Sports teams from places where I’ve lived
- Pop songs from high school (or some other significant period of your life)
- Recipes I know how to make
- …etc…
BUT… your brain, if it’s anything like mine, gave no such immediate framing when it came to the challenge for content. Again, if you’re like me, reading that question felt like opening a door onto a vast barren, featureless wasteland where there was very little to latch onto, to connect the dots with, to even build a series of ideas around.
Framework is the Key
That is the brilliant observation behind Melanie Deziel’s book, “The Content Fuel Framework“. In the book, she outlines a few central issues with content creation, and then offers a single conceptual solution which is simple, repeatable, and effective.
I’m going to stop here and ask you to at least click the link and consider buying the book. I believe it’s that good. In fact, if you plan to buy the ebook or audiobook version, then your time will be better spent reading THAT instead of THIS. But if you’re still on the fence, by all means keep reading so that I hopefully convince you by the end of this post.
Format Follows Focus
“I NEED AN 800-WORD BLOG POST ON ______!”
These words, uttered by far too many of my managers over the years, are as frustratingly vague as they are common. I’ve taken to muttering (usually under my breath and after ensuring my zoom call is on mute) “Would you like fries with that?” When I’m feeling slightly less snarky I try to get some details. “OK, so you want 800 words on Kubernetes and IOT. Anything specific ABOUT kubernetes and IOT?”
“Nope!” Chirps this (only slightly fictionalized) manager, “The SEO is trending on those two terms, so I just need you to, you know…” (and then they waggle their fingers at the computer screen as if casting a spell.)
Ignoring the whole “SEO-term-driven content management strategy of doom” for a moment, a deeper issue is the belief that CONTENT == BLOG. Content can, obviously, take many forms. But equally problematic is when we are asked to “make me a video on ______”, or “Can you whip up a podcast episode about _______”.
The issue, Ms. Deziel points out, isn’t the fact that they are asking for content, it’s that they (and we) are starting with the format, and working backward to a topic. Worst of all is that a distinct framing, or point of view, isn’t even part of the consideration.
First and foremost, “The Content Fuel Framework” advises, we need to start with the FOCUS of the content piece.
What do I (and more importantly, Ms. Deziel) mean by “focus”? It’s not the topic. Your topic can be kubernetes, or IOT, or mainframes, or kubernetes mainframes running on IOT, or whatever.
Your Focus is “…the approach we take to sharing [our message].” If you feel like that description is unhelpfully abstract, let me offer some examples. Your focus might be:
- Basics
- Details
- People
- History
- Opinion
The first two are the easiest types of focus to understand. For “Basics”, just think of a content piece titled “Getting started with _____”. Meanwhile “Details” is the grown-up cousin of Basics. Imagine a title like “Everything you need to know about _____” or “A S]Step by Step Guide to _____.”
But the other focus examples above are less obvious. “People” might include a title like “What led John Smith to invent the mainframe?” or “A profile of the top 3 movers and shakers in the world of kubernetes today”.
In her book, the author shares 10 focus areas, with detailed descriptions of how they work. My goal today is to give you a sense of how a “focus” works, but not to outline them all.
Once a focus is chosen, then (and, I’d argue, ONLY then) can you consider the format. Some of the formats are obvious – writing, audio, and video. Some might not have leapt to your mind but make sense once you see them – Infographic, timeline, Quiz. Others require explanation to fully understand, like “Tool” and “Map”.
Again, my goal here isn’t to list or describe them all, but to indicate that as content creators, our habit of always reaching for the same old formats doesn’t serve us well. Expanding our range of options allows us to find new angles to tell familiar stories; and to find formats that better suit those stories rather than shoehorning everything into a blog or a stare-at-the-camera-and-talk style video.
Greater Than The Sum of It’s Parts
“The Content Fuel Framework” offers 10 focuses (focii?), and 10 formats. These are somewhat interchangeable, meaning you could start with a “People” focus and create a blog, AND a video, AND a podcast, AND an image gallery, AND…
I’m no Alfred Einstein when it comes to math, but I’m pretty sure that 10 x 10 gives us, theoretically, a single topic (Kubernetes and IOT) with 100 content pieces.
Realistically, you’re not going to do that. Some focuses simply lend themselves to certain formats better than others. More importantly some core topics will more readily lend themselves to certain focuses than others.
But having explained The Content Fuel Framework, I’d now ask you to scroll back and consider the challenge I set before you at the start of this blog: 100 content ideas in 10 minutes. As you think about how far you could get before the buzzer sounds, it’s my sincere hope that you feel better, if not equal to the challenge.
Through Structure, Freedom
It turns out that having a framework – a set of rules, guidelines, even limitations – can create clarity by eliminating ambiguity.
I’m not implying that this is the only way, or even the One True Way to create content. “The Content Fuel Framework” is just one way to break out of a rut and find a new way to approach what is, for most of us, a significant part of the day to day work of DevRel. There are, of course, many others ways (feel free to share them in the comments).
More importantly, your newfound confidence (however you got it) in generating ideas, angles, and implementations for content will translate to an improved ability to collaborate with the teams at work: First, you hopefully now have a structure you can use to teach them that there’s more to DevRel than writing a blog; and from there you have ways to help them tell the best possible stories. Stories that reach, help, and resonate with the greatest number of people.