The How-I-Did-It Content Marketing Model

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“Why don’t you introduce your business and tell us what’s so great about it?” The editor of Start Your Own Business 2025 suggests to the founder of London-based ‘Go Car Shine’, posing three specific questions to guide the entrepreneur’s response:

  1. What made your business perfect for crowd funding?
  2. How was the experience?
  3. What advice would you give somebody with a great idea and a need for funding?

Score.org’s Rieva Lesonsky offers entrepreneurs some dos and don’ts about crowdfunding:

Don’ts include overpromising, launching a campaign before forming an actual entity, and forgetting to pay taxes on monies raised. Must-dos, on the other hand, include:

  • storytelling, sharing why you created your product or service
  • knowing your audience
  • setting realistic goals and timetables

Storytelling is an essential element in content marketing. However, as Seth Godin points out in his book All Marketers Tell Stories, not all stories succeed. The ones that do, he reminds us, are never aimed at everyone, only at an audience that already wants to believe. At Say it For You, we realize, knowing our target audience is the key to marketing success. The “Go Car Shine” story becomes the jumping-off point for offering advice to cash-strapped entrepreneurs, along with advice about marketing auto care services.

Whether recalling the start of your own business or professional practice or creating content for a client, it’s important to remember that recalling past failures can often turn out to be an indispensable tactic. Here’s why:

  • True stories about mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to connection readers feel with the people behind the business who overcame tremendous odds on the road to success.
  • By sharing tales of their own struggles, owners and practitioners demonstrate they understand the obstacles their readers are facing.
  • As Jamie Gutfreund once suggested in Forbes, “Gen Zs consider taking risks an important part of life and mistakes as badges of honor.”

The How-I-Did-It content marketing model is all about past failures ultimately leading to success.

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Writing About What Almost Never Was

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Long before the Masters golf tournament became what it is today, Augusta National overcame serious financial woes. Although co-founders Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones had had extensive plans, many never panned out, David Owen explains in Golf Digest. In three years of trying to build membership, the pair had sent out thousands of postcards, had hired salesmen to travel the country, and had bought membership lists from country clubs. Despite all those efforts, when the first National Invitation Tournament was held in 1934, the club had enlisted only 76 members. Then, just as, in 1939, they were beginning to realize some modicum  of success – the country was entering a war!

As a content marketer, I absolutely loved reading this “failure-turned-success” story. There’s an important lesson here for content creators for business or practice owners:  Writing about past failures is important. In fact, true tales about past mistakes and struggles are very humanizing, adding to the trust readers place in the people behind the enterprise. What tends to happen is the stories of failure create feelings of empathy and admiration for those who overcame the effects of both outside forces and of their own errors.

 

Because the Masters Golf Tournament story relates to people no longer living, the story is told in third person by the club’s historian In posting marketing content today,  I recommend using the personal pronouns “I”  and “we”.  As Brandon Royal explains in The Little Red Writing Book, first person is personal and specific.  Readers appreciate knowing how a situation relates to the business owners or practitioners in terms of their personal experiences.

There’s another important aspect to recalling past failures, I explain — demonstrating that you understand the problems the online searcher is dealing with. To the extent you can truthfully say, “I know how frustrating the problem is, and that’s why I’m devoted to solving that problem through my business or profession,” you are infusing your content with more power.

 

While our Say It For You content writers are often the voice behind the “I” or “we”,  we know that “writing about what almost never was” can help make things happen for our clients – and for their readers!

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Nice Try. Do it Again.

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(image by Mike Hindle)

I invited friend and writing colleague Myra Levine to contribute a guest blog post for the enjoyment of  our Say It For You readers (and my own, of course!)  …

 

 

We were reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and Mrs. Painter pointed out that when the author wrote dialect, he wrote the way his characters spoke.

“When you write dialogue,” she said, “the reader
wants authenticity, not perfect grammar.”

Naturally, I wrote my next assignment (Discuss three ways in which Dickens develops the theme of self-sacrifice) as a conversation between two semi-literate high school students.  Mrs. Painter handed it back to me with these words in big red letters:

Nice try. Do it again.

I didn’t mind. The smile on her face was a drug. I had entertained her. And the freedom to ignore comma rules? Intoxicating. The smartest thing I did was tell everybody my new life goal—to write novels. It’s harder to give up on a goal you’ve made so public. Enthusiasm comes and goes; pride is eternal.

But writing a good novel turned out to be HARD. I spent ten summers taking writing classes at the University of Iowa to learn what I hadn’t been taught in high school and college creative writing classes.

Inspiration turned out to be everywhere. The germ of the idea that turned into my first novel came from a bunch of gossipy mom friends. The idea for my second novel came from a health scare. It turned out to be no big deal, but the thought How do you raise your kids after you’re dead stayed with me.

Whatever you do for a living might give you inspiration. Think John Grisham. Or you might be one of those “What if…” writers, like Stephen King. Going through a terrible breakup? Get your psychic revenge by writing a murder mystery. I slip people who annoy me into my novels. No lawsuits yet.

And you know more than you think you do. When I had my first hip replacement, I was surprised to learn that you don’t hold a cane on the side of your bad leg. (If you test this, have someone nearby to catch you when you tip over.) It occurred to me that someone could catch a suspect who’s faking a limp when he holds his cane on the wrong side.

What have you learned in your years as a ________ that would make a character feel real? What personal demons could you turn into inspiration? And what did you never learn in English Class that you can ignore… or hire someone else to fix? Think about it.

 

      Myra Levine is a novelist, memoirist, and writing coach. Her free online writing seminars on Eventbrite have attracted over 2,000 writers from all over the world. She publishes as M. E. Levine on Amazon.com & Audible.com.

Find her at www.MyraLevine.com

 

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Keep Readers in Touch With Trends

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The Old Farmer’s 2025 Almanac offers a variety of pleasures, with information ranging from astronomy to folklore, and from pets to sports. Since, at Say It For You, we focus on creating marketing content for blog posts and newsletters, I was particularly taken by the Almanac authors’ focus on current farming trends…

“By understanding the latest developments and technologies in your field, you can ensure that your skills and knowledge remain relevant and in demand,” Baris Bingol of sertifier.com advises the career-minded. “Keeping up”, she explains, includes staying informed about:

  • new products or services
  • changes in regulations
  • shifts in consumer behavior
  • emerging technologies

In farming, Almanac readers are informed,

  • Scientists are using “bee vectoring”, in which special hives allow bees to transport trace amounts of pest control powders blueberries, apples, and tomatoes.
  • Farmers are teaming up with restaurants, growing heirloom crops for sale to local chefs, who then create dishes featuring them.
  • There is increased demand for microgreens, as people embrace a lifestyle that values freshness.
  • Gardeners are interested in growing herbs for medical use.

Our readers, whether or not they’re inclined towards the “trendy”, like to feel they’re keeping up with the trends. But what I’ve learned over the years of developing content for clients in different industries, is that customers expect their service and product providers to do the work for them, keeping them up-to-date and putting all that information into perspective.

 

There are two positive sides to wiring about what’s “trending”, I explain to business and practice owners:  While your content keeps your readers savvy about what’s trending, it helps establish you as a thought leader in your field!

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If You Want Them to Listen, Watch Your Language

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With now 60 countries of the world naming English as their official language, English comes out on top by a large margin, Paul Anthony Jones writes in Mental Floss. (There would be 61, but, while English is the national language of United Kingdom law, government, business, and education, it’s never been made official. In fact, English became official in the U.S. just this year!)

Within the United States itself, people in different regions use not only unique pronunciations, but unique vocabulary. In Texas, a laundromat is called a washeteria; in Ohio you’d refer to a vacuum as a sweeper.  In the Northwest, something expensive is “spendy”, Cassie Wright points out in Lingoda.

When it comes to content marketing, keeping it basic means using understandable, clear language. “In order to write an effective sales page, it’s absolutely critical to speak the language of your target market,” Joey van Kuilenburg writes in Linkedin, paying attention to the terminology they use, including phrases and word choices. At Say It For You, our message to the business owner and practitioner clients who hire us is this:

Your business or practice can’t be all things to all people. Everything about your content should be tailor-made for your ideal customer – the words we use, how technical we get, how sophisticated the approach to a subject, the title of each blog entry – all must focus on what together we learn about your target market – their needs, their preferences, their questions.

There are certain “Americanisms”, which are sayings we take for granted, but often don’t realize make no sense to foreigners, even to those who speak English.  That’s because foreigners don’t share our cultural memories and understandings.  As content marketers, we can actually turn that “outsider puzzlement” to our advantage, allowing readers to feel they are in our “inner circle” when we share those language “secrets”, I’ve observed over the years working with Say It For You clients from many different industries and professions.

The guiding principle in creating content is that, if you want them to listen, watch your language!

 

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