The Content Marketing Hurricane: Using Proven Content Marketing Principles to Blow Your Competition Away! by Justin P. Lambert - HTML preview

1 WHAT ARE DISPARATE FORCES?

A successful content marketing program needs to consistently offer high-quality content that builds strategically in pursuit of specific goals and a targeted audience. Sporadic explosions of effort here and there are not going to accomplish the purpose, and neither is a constant flow of worthless content.

But that level of commitment, that seemingly endless supply of quality material, and that creative flair that fuels the whole enterprise doesn't just appear out of thin air.

It has to come from somewhere.

As noted in the introduction, the correlation between a successful content marketing program and the formation of a hurricane is striking.

Long before a hurricane hits land, draws attention, or even gets named, it gets its start out in the middle of nowhere as a mixture of "disparate forces" that need to be in the right place at the right time if it's going to have a future ahead of it.

What Disparate Forces create a hurricane?

The two forces every hurricane requires are warm water and moist air. Thunderstorms that drift out over warm water and encounter converging winds are starting to put those forces together.

When warm wet air from the surface of the ocean rises rapidly due to evaporation, then hits cooler air, which makes it condense into storm clouds, conditions are really starting to ripen.

This condensation also releases latent heat, warming the cooler air above the clouds, which in turn makes more room for warm air from the ocean surface to evaporate and rise.

This ongoing cycle of heat exchange and moisture collection, if it goes on long enough without being interrupted, causes the storm to begin spinning around a central, relatively calm, eye.

What Disparate Forces create a Content Marketing Hurricane?

Just as the temperature of the air, the temperature of the water, the amount of available moisture, the prevailing winds, and a number of other factors combine to create the perfect environment for a powerful hurricane, there are certain "disparate forces" that combine to allow for an optimal Content Marketing Hurricane too.

These are:

• Your upbringing – what kind of work ethic you were taught, whether or not your creativity was nurtured, how risk adverse your parents were
• Your background – the cultural, economic, religious, and social circumstances you grew up in
• Your circumstances – your current economic position, family responsibilities, professional responsibilities
• Your unique worldview – whether you're an optimist or pessimist, selfish or helpful, committed or easily bored
• Your knowledge base – your level of education, areas of expertise, your experiences
• Your desire to learn – whether you enjoy reading and study, learning by trial and error, your willingness to adjust your thinking
• Your passion – what truly fires your imagination

All these forces and more combine to make you who you are.

But that's not all.

They also combine to determine what you have to give to the world. And that's a huge factor in how successful your Content Marketing Hurricane is going to be.

After all, when you're marketing a product or service with content, your personality is going to bleed through into the content you create. As a matter of fact, if it doesn't, you're doing it wrong because it has to have a strong human element to touch people.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Let's spend some time breaking down these “disparate forces” so you can get a full grasp of what each entails.

Exercise #1 – Preparing for Greatness

1. Grab yourself a plain lined notebook and pencil, or if you prefer, your laptop. (Something you can write on comfortably.)

2. Grab your drink of choice for relaxing contemplation.

3. Read the next chapter.