I’m always amazed when someone finds meaning, a theme, symbolism, or a message of some sort in my work that I never intended. That was especially true when I came across this article by Samantha Gluck discussing all the things you can learn about content marketing from THE HEIST, the novel I wrote with Janet Evanovich. Here are just a couple of the tips she says you can glean from the story:
1. Know your target audience – content marketing requires that you understand and know your target audience. Nick and Kate take time to learn all about their target, Derek Griffin. They find out about his interests, his fears, his weaknesses, and his habits. Any good content marketer takes time to learn about his target audience. You can do this through conducting focus groups and demographic studies. Read the book to see what Nick and Kate did to learn about Griffin. You’d do well to use the same diligence.
2. Share the work load – one reason Nick Fox enjoys so much success in pulling off his heists and cons is that he knows how to share the load. Nick has an uncanny knack for finding and enlisting very talented and loyal accomplices. He finds a person to play a specific part in each aspect of the elaborate plan. Each of these recruits is the very best as what he or she does. If you want to achieve success – and achieve it in a big way – with your content marketing efforts, you’ll need to follow Nick’s lead. Assess your contacts and network. Look at the best engagers on your various social media profiles.
Many people who regularly engage on Twitter, Google Plus, and Facebook work on a freelance basis. Take your time and find out a little more about them. What makes them good at what they do? Could you use their skills to benefit both your cause and theirs? If so, start courting them and let them know how running with you can benefit them.
3. Identify and understand key objectives – obviously, Kate and Nick have a key objective of nabbing Griffin. But to do that, they have to pull the proverbial wool over the eyes of a few other folks first. Each of these smaller objectives represents a critical step that the hottie duo must pull off to achieve their ultimate goal. As a content marketer, you’ve got to outline each of the foundational objectives that will help you achieve your ultimate goal.
Figure out how you’ll measure the success of each step along the way. Kate and Nick have it easy for this part. They either pull off each part of the con, or they don’t and they fail. Content marketers must come up with their own metrics for measuring project success.
I should really follow my own sage advice. I just wish I’d known what my advice was before this! I wonder what else I don’t know that I know… 🙂
It just criminal not to follow all of your tips above in not only running a business, but writing a crime novel that you want to climb the best seller list! (HINT, HINT….young writer, hint hint). This, my friend, is why The Heist is soaring in sales! (Shhhhh……Samantha is the best at drilling these little tips into her minions heads.)!
I tell my indie author clients if they want to see a master at work integrating FB and Twitter and his own blog to market “content,” they should study what you do. You make it look easy.
This is the realm of the “literary critic,” which is what my education in Literature taught me to become. Patterns are sought within the work – play, verse, novel – from a point of view such as the author’s biography, Marxist or other economic theories, psychological theories, etc. Nowadays, it’s fashionable to try to view works as expressions of “post-Modernism,” a series of reactions away from the ideas within “Modernism.” What happens, says the literary critic, is that the author takes his own point of view for granted, expresses it unconsciously, and it’s the job of the literary critic to bring the patterns of the work into the consciousness of the culture. But I wouldn’t worry about it, Lee. For unless you know all of the patterns and associations and ideas in your mind, and what they mean from every possible point of view, you and I and everybody will go on learning about ourselves in many, many moments of future epiphany. Every person who reads a book has an experience unique to them in some way and different from the author’s intention. The value of “tolerance” for others is what acceptance of this tends to develop in us, I guess.
Lee,
I am a longtime blog lurker. Must say loving The Heist! To be honest– help out my poor girl Evanovich and start co-writing the Stephanie Plum stuff. I have read every book in the series but she needs some help. There is a huge difference between the Heist and her old book. I speak for many of us who are loyal followers of the other stuff help her develop the plots. Great Book:)
There is an entire book of this sort of thing all about what we can learn about success and business etc from the career of Bob Dylan. The outcome of life’s natural coincidences and changes are seen as strategy, and hindsight invests all manner of chaos and nonsense with sense and purpose. Of course, you, being brilliant, planned all those lessons in advance when blocking out the book!