This text is the third in a three-part collection on creating distinctive advertising and marketing content material by expressing your self with creativity and shade.

The primary piece talked about three methods for infusing your advertising and marketing content material with refined humor.

The second piece lined 3 ways to say goodbye to blah content material through the use of recent, detailed language.

On this piece, we’ll have a look at 3 ways to distinguish your advertising and marketing by infusing your content material with one of the best of your self and your model.

Whenever you look carefully, you’ll see that your life, passions, and hobbies—and the lives, passions, and hobbies of your organization’s leaders—are overflowing gardens the place you’ll discover many alternatives for colourful expression.

Particularly, we’ll speak about dipping into these gardens to:

1. Discover and personal your language.
2. Weave in particulars about your passions and hobbies.
3. Use unconventional parts like poems and private paintings.

First up—discover and personal your language.

1. Make your advertising and marketing content material stand out by discovering and proudly owning your language

The primary place to look within the backyard of shade is at your self.

Every of us has a distinct approach of talking. We’ve all developed catchphrases that the individuals round us think about a part of us as a result of we repeat them so typically.

Do you acknowledge any of those catchphrases? (Solutions on the finish.)

1. Make it work.
2. Simply hold swimming.
3. Work laborious, play laborious.
4. Ew, David!
5. Yada yada yada.

What phrases or phrases do you repeat typically?

If you happen to need assistance figuring out your catchphrases, ask your loved ones. Or e-mail 5 individuals who know you effectively and ask them what phrases or phrases they affiliate with you or that you simply are inclined to repeat.

If you happen to’re snug with these phrases and phrases, search for methods to combine them into your advertising and marketing content material.

Listed here are a couple of of my catchphrases:

• Hey, man.
• You guys…
• Chump!
• One thing fierce.

I not often use these catchphrases in formal advertising and marketing items, like one-pagers, net content material, and social media profiles. However I incorporate them in my more-conversational content material, like social media posts, weblog posts, and emails.

For my formal advertising and marketing, I favor the phrases “past copy”—as a result of nice content material incorporates a lot extra than simply “copy”—and “the content material expertise,” which I outline as how content material seems to be, sounds, feels, and features, all from the reader’s perspective.

Catchphrases versus slogans: What’s the distinction

Whereas catchphrases are related with people and characters, slogans are related to manufacturers.

• Simply do it—Nike.
• I’m lovin’ it—McDonald’s.
• Construct what’s subsequent—Google Cloud.
• The place work occurs—Slack.

If you happen to’d wish to develop a catchphrase or slogan, hold the next in thoughts:

1. Place your viewers on the forefront.

Know your viewers’s preferences, pursuits, aspirations, and values so you’ll be able to tailor your catchphrase or slogan to resonate. As an illustration, if you happen to run an environmental consultancy and search authorities contracts, you probably gained’t need a catchphrase like Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!” As a substitute, you may want phrases like greening authorities, environmental excellence, or a greener authorities panorama, all of which might change into slogans, too.

2. Make it memorable, emotional—you.

Select phrases which can be straightforward to say, spell, and keep in mind. Use quick, highly effective language that sticks in individuals’s minds and faucets their feelings. Whether or not you employ humor, inspiration, or empathy, goal to evoke emotions that match your model or private picture. Additionally, goal for a catchphrase or slogan that displays your values, persona, and what units you aside, the best way my “content material expertise” units me aside from different writers.

3. Keep away from infringing on mental property rights.

Examine for doable infringement earlier than you progress ahead with any phrase or phrase by looking TESS, the USA Patent and Trademark Workplace’s (USPTO) digital search system. The very last thing you need is to start to make use of a phrase or phrase that another person has already trademarked.

4. Think about defending your catchphrase or slogan.

If the phrase or phrase you need to use is out there, think about defending it. The USPTO affords many free assets and companies that can assist you with the method.

5. Examine if the area title is out there.

Examine if the area title is out there, too. You by no means know if you would possibly need to arrange a brand new web site or touchdown web page utilizing your catchphrase or slogan.

2. Make your advertising and marketing content material distinctive by weaving in your passions and hobbies

One other technique to convey your self and your model into your content material is to weave in your hobbies and passions when writing content material.

Listed here are a couple of examples from my life:

• I appeared on the postcard from Paris and considered how altering your surroundings is sweet for creativity.
• This morning, whereas journaling in my beloved Monolith pocket book, content material inspiration struck once more.
• Once I thought-about how many individuals have been busy dwelling their lives inside the scope of my view over Atlanta, I spotted how straightforward it’s to overlook the people who make up your viewers when creating content material.

How about you?

Are you into cooking? Maybe you might translate your culinary experience into “recipe” content material associated to what you are promoting.

Do you will have a pet snake? Maybe the best way its pores and skin sheds reminds you of the transformation what you are promoting takes individuals via.

Or, maybe your loved ones is your burning ardour. When you’re spending time with them, feeling an open, expansive love, take into consideration what you are promoting and clients. How do the emotions relate? How would possibly you weave these emotions and experiences with your loved ones into your content material?

Weaving in particulars out of your life makes for fabulous content material, whether or not in your weblog, in your emails, or in your social media channels.

And a bonus—by weaving your self into your content material, you create distinctive materials nobody else on the web can replicate.

That’s simply the sort of content material individuals—to not point out engines like google—crave.

3. Differentiate your advertising and marketing content material by expressing your self in unconventional methods

Suppose typical advertising and marketing content material is “enterprise individuals chatting with individuals,” together with inventory imagery and charts and tables on a web page. What would you make of selling content material that included an authentic poem, youngsters’s paintings, or a you-branded model of a much-loved piece?

I envision unconventional content material like that for mom-and-pop outlets, small companies, and even a weblog submit by a McKinsey writer. And since most advertising and marketing content material doesn’t embody such parts, content material that does stands out.

Let’s stroll via a couple of examples.

Unique—and even AI-generated—poetry

Haiku is certainly one of my favourite types of artistic expression.

Right here’s a haiku I wrote to thank my social media viewers once I ran an occasion a couple of years in the past:

If you happen to just like the poem thought however don’t fancy your self a poet, do this enjoyable Poem Generator. You may rapidly create haikus, couplets, sonnets, and extra.

Or, ask ChatGPT or one other generative AI system to jot down a poem for you. I defined to ChatGPT about this piece you’re now studying and requested it to generate a haiku for you.

Right here’s the end result I appreciated finest:

Cool, and maybe even a bit of spooky.

A borrowed piece of widespread literature within the public area

Gabe Howden, director of enterprise improvement at Tribyl.com, likes to ship unconventional content material to his prospects in the course of the holidays. Just lately, he despatched a model of “The Night time Earlier than Christmas,” tweaked for Tribyl’s viewers of product advertising and marketing managers—PMMs.

Warning: If you happen to use this system, make certain you’re utilizing a piece that’s within the public area, which means that it now not has copyright safety and is free to make use of. “The Night time Earlier than Christmas” was first revealed in 1823, so it’s within the public area.

Private, significant paintings

My husband, who owns a pest management firm, used the unconventional content material method, too, by sending his clients postcards with paintings and textual content by our kids.

A lot of his clients commented on the deal with when he confirmed up for service even many months later. A number of clients even make a degree of contacting him simply to say they appreciated the cardboard.

He additionally used the method to nice impact on unsolicited mail postcards.

Now it’s your flip: Go forth, create, differentiate

On this three-part collection, we lined 9 methods you’ll be able to add to your toolkit. Use them as you create new content material. Additionally think about auditing your present content material to see which items want a little bit of tender, artistic, loving care.

——

Solutions: 1 – Make it work; Tim Gunn, Undertaking Runway. 2 – Simply hold swimming; Dory, Discovering Nemo. 3 – Work laborious, play laborious; Elon Musk. 4 – Ew, David; Alexis Rose, Schitt’s Creek; 5 – Yada yada yada; Elaine Benes, Seinfeld