Today’s guest post is written by Jason Miller.
The widespread fascination with bacon is for good reason; bacon makes everything better.
For example, Google just released a Chrome extension that can un-baby your Facebook newsfeed by replacing all of those “annoying” baby photos with pictures of bacon.
Necessary? No. Useful and entertaining? Absolutely.
This cultural phenomenon didn’t take shape overnight and there are hidden secrets to bacon’s success that can be applied to a content marketing strategy.
So what’s the appeal of bacon, why do so many people love it, and what can we learn about it’s mystical allure?
Five Things Bacon Can Teach Us About Content Marketing
- Bacon is nostalgic. Bacon can evoke emotions of a fuzzy golden heyday of our past. The aroma might bring back memories of newspapers crinkling and bacon frying on the stove. Your content can do the same by taking your audience on a trip down memory lane. Remind them of a piece of pop culture and relate it to something current. A perfect marriage of interesting and useful is a winning combination. Nostalgia is a fantastic way to connect on an emotional level with your audience.
- Bacon inspires. Bacon inspires people with new creative ideas that take the original idea a bit further. Check out the 10 craziest products inspired by bacon. Your content should follow a similar philosophy. Creating remarkable content your customers and prospects find inspiring empowers them to repurpose your original idea and get a link back to the source.
- Bacon makes everything better. Have a problem with a boring, or less than flattering marketing message? Just as bacon can make even a water chestnut taste delicious, a good piece of content can give a full makeover to any lackluster campaign. Push the boundaries of your content, try new things, and see how far you can push your core message outside of your initial reach.
- Bacon doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s great to have serious content with serious messaging, but it’s also OK to have fun and entertain with your content on occasion. Bacon pokes fun at itself on a daily basis. Just look at a site such as Mr. Baconpants and the tremendous amount of engagement and traffic it generates. It’s interesting, entertains, and takes criticism very well without being defensive.
- Bacon is surprisingly diverse. Did you know bacon has 18 ingredients? Six of these are types of umami, which is Japanese for the fifth flavor, after sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Umami is loosely translated as “deliciousness” and it’s highly addictive. Your content can follow a similar formula by drawing upon a diverse number of resources. Chances are your audience is interested in a range of topics, so go ahead and push the boundaries of what you think is safe. It’s all relevant if, in the end, you can tie it back to your core messaging and keywords.
Like a good content marketing strategy, bacon is always top-of-mind. It shows up nearly everywhere it should be, whether searched or not. This should be the goal of your content marketing efforts.
So take a cue from bacon when thinking about your next piece of content. Don’t be afraid to push the boundaries beyond the traditional. By doing so you will soon discover new ways to surprise, delight, and inspire your audience, and isn’t that the key to amazing content in the first place?
Jason Miller is the social media manager at Marketo and a regular contributor to the Modern B2B Marketing Blog. In addition, he is an amateur comedian, Radian 6 evangelist, and Seinfeld trivia champion. You can follow him on Twitter at JasonMillerCA.
(Photo courtesy of www.AVC.com)