Solve for the Monkey in Your Content

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“We waste our time chasing the wrong projects,” writes Jason Feifer in Entrepreneur Magazine. “There’s no point in building pedestals if you can’t solve for the monkey,” he explains, referring to a problem-solving framework created by Alphabet (Google’s parent company) – Can you teach a monkey to recite Shakespeare while standing on a pedestal? Unless the essential, pivotal problem is solvable — Can monkeys actually learn to recite Shakespeare? — there’s no use focusing on other aspects of the challenge.

To find your “monkey”, Feifer advises, ask yourself – “If I solved this problem and it was a great success, what major change would have gotten me there?” Stop spending time on fruitless steps, he says. Go get that monkey!

“When we talk with companies about the biggest challenges they face in growing revenues, we hear a consistent complaint,” Thomas Sittenburgh and Michael Ahearne write in Harvard Business Review.  “Companies that have invested millions to dream up new-to-the-world innovations need to become more adept at selling them to customers.”

Should you focus on the problem or the solution?  Focusing on the client means you sell the problem, not the solution, Emma Rose explains in Idea Rocket. Others insist that customers know their own pain points, and what they need is to understand is why your product is special in terms of solving that problem. In a “mature” market, it’s important to focus on the specifics of your solution (what you do better than anyone else and why you are unique).

Applying those viewpoints to our clients’ content marketing challenges, at Say It For You we’ve found that defining a problem, even when offering statistics about that problem, isn’t enough to galvanize prospects into action. But showing you not only understand the root causes of a problem, but have experience providing solutions to that very problem can help drive the marketing process forward. Searchers are unlikely to follow you into a “deep subject dive” unless they perceive that you’ve “solved for their monkey” and know how to ‘tame-and-teach” the creature!

 

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Using Failure as a Foundation

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“This is one tip I’ll offer to any struggling writer out there,” says Heather Fawcett in Writer’s Digest: “If you have an old idea in a notebook or saved to a flash drive, try recycling it into a new form”.

“It’s time you reinvented the word failure and saw it as feedback,” Suzie Flynn, BSc agrees… When you fail you have the opportunity to look at things from a new perspective, to experiment and even playfully have fun with new ways of doing things.

It was back in the early days of Say It For You that my then networking colleague Robby Slaughter had published the book Failure: the Secret to Success.  Based on the thesis of that delightful book, I explained to my readers two ways in which failure could be an important ingredient in blogging for business:

  • Your posts can demonstrate that you understand the problems the searcher is facing, and are devoted to the process of finding – and sharing – unique solutions.
  • Failure can become a standard by which to understand how a successful outcome will look and feel.

Some ten years later, I gained another perspective on failure when then Nuvo editor Laura McPhee devoted an entire section of the paper to highlighting “alumni”, people who worked there but who had departed for “better things”. As a content writer, I understood that the best way to make a company or professional practice relatable is to introduce readers to the people behind the brand, even if those people are no longer involved in making the products or delivering the services. And, of course, some of those stories and memories are going to revolve around failures – things that, at the time, had gone very wrong.

For me, Heather Fawcett’s piece in Writer’s Digest added a whole other dimension to the concept of using “failure” as a foundational element in content marketing: “recycling” ideas and presenting them in a new way more relevant to what’s happening “in the now”… One great content marketing sustainability tip is to keep an idea file, online or in a little notebook or folder with articles you cut out of newspapers or magazines, notes on ideas gleaned from a seminar, from listening to the radio, reading a blog or a book.. Your folder of “ingredients” , I tell newbie content marketers, will make your job a whole lot easier!

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No Explosion Needed – Just Information

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“There was a time when we were taught to start with the explosion, the crisis, the murder, the detonation of the bomb, then go back and show the reader how we got to this terrible situation. I’ll explain why you might want to avoid this approach,” says book writing coach Myra Levine.

As content creators for business owners and professional practitioners, it’s tempting to be enigmatic in order to arouse curiosity, but at Say It For You, we agree with Levine that it’s not always the best idea.  After all, it’s essential for us to assure readers that they’ve come to the right place to find the information that satisfies whatever needs brought them online to find answers. In other words, the opening lines can set the tone and arouse curiosity, but it’s best not to sustain the mystery very long.

In terms of satisfying readers’ need for information, Brightedge.com comments that many types of content simply do not need very long blog posts to provide value for readers. On the other hand, articles with only a cursory treatment of the topic may not be deemed high-quality content.  “You will want to dive deeper and provide more information.”

One technique used in comedy is exaggeration, which, as humor speaker Jeff Fleming explained to me years ago at a National Speakers Association meeting, can emphasize points you want the audience to remember. In content marketing, however, while we sometimes aim to engage readers and show empathy regarding their dilemma and problem, it’s crucial that we be seriously “factually correct” in describing the extent to which our products and services can be of help.

Should your book start at the beginning or in the middle of the trouble? “These are decisions, and they’re not easy ones to make,” admits Myra Levine.  In creating  marketing content, while we’re out to engage online readers, no “explosions’ are needed, just valuable information with a personal touch.

 

 

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Approaching “the Big Reveal” – from Front or Back?

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To create a compelling story line in a novel, one with maximum impact,  Writer’s Digest editor Tiffany Yates Martin explains, you need to understand when and how to reveal crucial information to readers. On the one hand, it’s important to give readers enough information to feel invested, but you have to keep back enough to keep them “hooked”.

There’s a case for having the information revealed sooner: readers need enough information to give them a reason to care. Vague hints at a “dark secret” can feel manipulative, Martin admits. What’s more, “sometimes you gain more narrative mileage by spilling the beans sooner, so readers see the … impact of the secret on the characters and story.”

Nathan Ellering of coschedule.com translates this very piece of advice for creators of content marketing articles. The pro tip he offers is this: “Write your blog title before you write your blog post. This practice will help you define the value proposition so you can connect it into the blog post, which guarantees your blog title will deliver on its promise.”

At Say It For You, one compromise I’ve discovered is often used by book authors is the “Huh?” and “Oh!” title. The “Huh” title startles and arouses curiosity; the “Oh!”subtitle clarifies what the focus of the book will be. For example, the book title Notes from Scrooge entices, while the subtitle Why Gift Giving is a Lousy way to Demonstrate Love – At Least According to Economist reveals the financial counseling nature of the book.

In content marketing, the “reveal” may take the form of a personal story that showcases the unique slant of the business owner or practitioner, even describing the biggest mistake made in starting that business or practice and what was learned from that mistake.  Precisely because it is so very human to act inconsistently, revealing seemingly out-of-character aspects of the people involved in the business or practice is a way to foster empathy and engagement.

Still, content marketing cannot succeed if our messages don’t break through the clutter and deal with online readers’ very short attention span.  “You’ve got to break someone’s guessing machine and then fix it,” Chip and Dan Heath point out in their book Made to Stick.

 

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Don’t Kill With Your Critique

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Kill with your critique, but do it in a good way, Ryan G. Van Cleave advises in Writer’s Yearbook 2025. As an editor, van Cleave is regularly invited to conferences to give manuscript critiques.  He knew his comments were difference-making, but “best of all, no one cried”.

You can offer serious, honest feedback without it being crushing, Angela Ackerman notes, by following these guidelines:

  • being constructive, not destructive
  • praising the good along with pointing out the bad
  • focusing on the writing, not the writer

In comparative advertising, value is conveyed not only from quality, but from the disparity in quality between one product or service and another. The other company or provider serves as an anchor, or reference point to demonstrate the superiority of your product or service. Still, at Say It For You, we advise not “killing with critiques”. Yes, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition, but staying positive is still paramount.

What about the other extreme, offering positive comments about a competitor? While it might appear that praising or even recognizing the accomplishments of a competitor is the last thing any business owner or professional practitioner would want to do, prospective buyers need to know you’re aware they have other options, and that you can be trusted to have their best interests in mind.

 

The challenge posed to us as content writers relates less to critiques of our competitors, but in making clear just what our clients make, sell, and do that sets them apart from their competitors. Even more importantly, we must make clear why any of those differences would even matter to their prospects. In a sense, the purpose of content marketing is to provide a forum for business owners and practitioners to answer those very “what”, “how”, and “why” questions!

 

An essential point I often stress to clients is that the content must represent their opinion or slant on the information we will be  helping them serve up to their readers,  expressing the core values on which  their business or practice was founded.  That way, they protect themselves from being “killed with critique”, establishing themselves as thought leaders and subject matter experts.

 

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