Kristi Waterworth

I was asked recently what my process was for developing content ideas — and I got to thinking that this particularly nosey client might not be the only one wondering how the gears and wires all go together behind the scenes.  After all, we don’t really discuss idea generation much, we just assume it’s a thing that happens without effort.  Ideas magically populate, we send them to our writers to write and BLAM!, we’re done.

Ooohhh!

Oh, Dear Reader, how I wish it were so…. but it’s not.  Generating content ideas takes genuine effort, real dedication and knowledge of your particular subject matter, whether that’s the mating rituals of assorted beavers or performance boating.  Whatever it is, we’re on it — and we’ll never make dumb jokes about the subject matter in hopes of coming up with really killer content ideas.  Never.  That would be totally unprofessional… (snicker, snicker, mating beavers…)

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I’ve had a keen eye for marketing as long as I can remember. As a child, I reached for the Want Ads before the comics and always paid far more attention to commercials than the programming they were embedded in. After three and a half decades of watching, it drives me crazy when I see big name advertisers consistently misusing a marketing form. I’ve found that to be especially true in video content.

Everybody, large and small, has seen the little commercials that YouTube forces you to watch before you can click through to get to your video of dancing cats. They’re the little annoyances that we all wait impatiently through, until the Skip button pops up. Â According to a TubeMogul report in 2013, up to 85 percent of all those ads are skipped with glee.

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