Paint yourself into a corner — Kelford Labs Daily

“[Regarding his strict process for collecting notes and outlining stories]

It painted me into a corner, yes, but in doing so it freed me to write.”

— John McPhee, Draft No. 4

Strategy is merely the structure to work efficiently to get what you want.

Content strategy, then, is the structure you need to efficiently produce content that gets you the results you want.

Which means you’ve got to paint yourself into the corner sometimes.

Having a structure for your content—a set of constraints—keeps you from staring at a blank page.

As one of my clients once told me, the structure we provided to him turned that blank page staring contest into more of a “fill in the blanks exercise.”

And isn’t that the dream? That when it’s time to make your marketing content it’s easy, obvious, and clear what you need to create?

That’s what structure provides. Yes, it’s constraining—but that’s the whole point.

So, what do I mean? Well, instead of staring at the text box at the top of your LinkedIn feed wondering what the heck you’re supposed to write, give yourself a constraint.

Maybe, for this week, you can only write about your process and how you do what you do. In fact, make it so you have to write about your process.

Explain to your ideal prospects and customers why you work the way you do, and how it provides extraordinary value to your best customers because of the unique tradeoffs you’ve made.

Talk about what you don’t do, so you can focus on what you do best—for the people who value it most.

Take that constraint and run with it for the rest of this week. Focus on your process—which is your position—and get super specific in your content about what makes it unique and why you’ve chosen to do things your way.

You’ll find that with a clear constraint like that, you’re less likely to stare at the blank page.

Because you’ve painted yourself into a corner, you’re free to write.

Kelford Inc. helps hands-on entrepreneurs and founders with complex marketing challenges define and articulate their unique value to their very best customers.

We’ll show you the way to always knowing what to say.