Bad Advice Time: Write Epic Content

Imagine the following scenario. You are an aspiring author. You have an idea for a story but you just don’t know how to make the most of it. How can you get into the mindset of writing a novel? What pitfalls should you try to avoid as you progress? What obstacles are likely to be the most difficult to overcome? You hear that there are very experienced authors who have been successful with their works. Finally, one day you gather up your courage and approach one of these gurus. You ask all of your questions and hope, pleadingly, for a helpful answer. The response you get is,

“Write something epic.”

This sounds like the punchline to a terrible joke, but in point of fact, if you are a marketer just beginning your professional life, you can encounter exactly this kind of experience when looking for information on how to make your company’s content marketing effective. You probably have a lot of questions. What is the best way to appeal to your existing and potential customers? How can you make sure your content is converting leads to sales? Are the leads you are getting via your content qualified in some way? How much time should you invest in a content marketing strategy?

Your first step might be to use Google to find out what other marketers are offering in terms of advice. What you might be shocked to discover is how many well-established, well-respected people in the online world suggest, in regard to content marketing, that you write “epic content.” Some blog posts even promise to tell you how to write epic content.

You might find this hard to believe, so here are a few examples.

“How to Create Epic Content” – Demian Farnworth for Copyblogger

Key take-aways – You are trying to write a masterpiece, your post needs to be super long, crush the competition with your epic content

“Cutting the Crap: Real Advice for Creating Epic Content” – Francisco Rosales, Social Mouths

Key take-aways – Be edgy/controversial, piggy-back on current events, use a theme to write your post around

“The 6 Principles of Epic Content Marketing” – Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute

Key take-aways – Fill a need, find your voice, should be devoid of sales speak

Refresher course – What does “Epic” mean?

When you look up the word “epic” you find the following:

1.noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series ofgreat achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer’s Iliad is an epic poem.

2.resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.

3.heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.

4.of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

5.Slang. spectacular; very impressive; awesome: Their burgers and fries are epic!

Is this really the kind of content you want or need for your company blog, white paper, or webinar? Can you afford the time investment necessary to create content that is “epic,” especially if that content needs to be devoid of sales speak?

This is not making a lot of sense.

Advice that might be slightly more useful

Rather than suggesting that you write “epic” content, which either means that your content should be actually epic or that you should write content that is good (a no-brainer in our opinion) here are some things you might want to strive for instead:

• Write content that will matter to your customers and potential customers: It is important to remember that a lot of the blogs you read about content marketing are written by people who either make their money off their blogs via advertising or affiliate marketing or who make their money talking about marketing to other marketers. That is not you. As much as we all want massive traffic for our blog posts, the more important thing is that you get the RIGHT traffic. That means that being “edgy” or controversial or newsjacking probably is not the best strategy for you. Write about the types of things your customers often ask about for starters, then go from there.

• Write content that your desired audience will have time to read: A couple of the posts we linked to above suggest that “epic content” means a post that is 2,000 words long. That takes a long time to write, but are any of your contacts likely to sit down and read a post that long, especially if it is not an area of interest for them? That is not terribly likely.

• Don’t shy away completely from mentioning your brand/product/service: Let’s say the ideal happens and your post gets shared beyond your direct community. Would a stranger to your blog post know what your company does? If what your company does is not easy to ascertain, how will your content actually help your company grow?

Advising companies to write good content is like advising companies to make good products. If you are going to put out a representation of your company, of course it be good, epic, totally rad, peachy, divine, and otherwise awesome. That’s easy. The concept of “content marketing” has been around long enough now that it’s time to dig a little deeper. What can that “epic” content do for your company? How do you find the time to create it? How do you measure the ROI of your efforts?

In other words, it’s time to get real.

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