Missing Words

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello there!

I have committed the cardinal sin for content creators and missed a few weeks of publishing this. I’m afraid that vacation and increasing client work meant that something had to give, and I couldn't send this as the Rockstar CMO podcast and my Tuesday 2¢ column got the love.

And hence the subject line being Missing Words, a track by The Selector, which is probably another cardinal sin in terms of building an audience as this is probably a bit of an obscure track, but it’s a classic if you like 1980’s two-tone. That might be a big IF ;-)

Aside from my musical choice this week, the cardinal sin, whether you are publishing a relatively small newsletter like this or you are steering the content strategy for your business, is breaking the rule that being there consistently is the perceived wisdom and rule #1 of content marketing.

While I agree, and I am not using this as an excuse, just as an opportunity to explore this theme, I think publishing for the sake of publishing seems somewhat flawed as a strategy.

As content consumers, do we want a regular drip of mediocre content published because the creator or marketing team felt the calendar was more important than the consumer? Or do we want an intermittent hit of the good stuff?

Not only do I do this email newsletter for Rockstar CMO, my personal Tuesday column, and the podcast, but we also do a LinkedIn Newsletter for Rockstar CMO. I’ve not done that for a few weeks either, and the reason for that is that we’ve not created new content on the website to share. The premise of that newsletter is that it’s a roundup of what we’ve been doing. If I sent an issue, it would be purely to keep the cadence, not to help the audience.

True, a constant drip of content keeps us top of mind for our audience. The more we can throw into the flowing river of social media with its seemingly random, myopic algorithm of what it chooses to put in front of whom; each new piece of content is an “at bat” for our audience’s attention.

Yeah, for some reason, I’ve decided to use baseball analogies. Yep, British two-tone and baseball.

And, of course, if we channel our inner Seth Godin, we know that we need to ship, commit to it, the very process makes us better and the old expression of “the enemy of good is perfect”.

We need to stop naval gazing, get on with it, and realize that what we publish today may be worse than something better we might publish tomorrow, but hopefully, it will be better than what we published yesterday.

Now I’m conflicted: what would be the best practice?

Occasional gems?

A regular stream of mediocre?

A regular stream with occasional gems?

Of course, let's throw into the mix that we may not know what our audience thinks are gems. I’ve published stuff quickly that has surprised me with its popularity, and I’ve published what I would consider gems that I’ve polished and polished, and very few people cared.

But if you have lovely people who open your emails (thank you), do that, and don’t neglect your friends.

Enjoy your week!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Say hello, reply to this email or find me on LinkedIn or my personal website.

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