Welcome, readers, to the very first Above The Fold Show Notes blog! For the uninitiated, Above The Fold is Brafton’s new weekly podcast where our team discusses the latest content marketing topics of the day. Here you can find a quick overview of each episode and what to expect before you dive into the podcast itself.
If you could describe this week’s episode of Above The Fold in one word, it’d be “failure.”
We always try to focus on success stories with the Brafton blog, but let’s be honest: Failure is inevitable in content marketing. Strategies fizzle, typos creep into blogs, social media efforts don’t gain the kind of traction you were expecting and sometimes – sometimes – your AVP of Marketing forgets to press “record” before launching into a half hour podcast.
But, as Jeff and Francis find out firsthand in Episode 5, how you respond to your missteps is just as important as trying to get it right in the first place. Brafton’s resident podcasting duo soldier on and spin their mistake into this week’s theme of failure and what content marketers should do when it rears its ugly head.
Mixed in with the onslaught of “Top Gun” references – Jeff really knows his call signs front and back – are tales of content marketing woe, ranging from newsletter typos to client-facing faux pas. If you’ve ever screwed up your content marketing strategy, no matter how minor of an error it may have been, this is the podcast to commiserate with and help you lick your wounds.
Fran and Jeff – “Freff,” if you will – also touch on the effectiveness of video case studies, excessively sad songs and making a human connection with your content. How do you overcome that nagging feeling readers and viewers sometimes get that content is staged? They cover it all in this one.
Context-free quote of the week:
“Have you seen that scene in ‘Top Gun’ after Goose dies? Maverick is standing in his underwear, staring at the mirror and crying, and Viper has to come in and console him. Yeah, that’s me personified right now. That’s how I feel.”
Runner-up:
“You got me in the red, man, and I’m a racecar.”
