Vanilla is a killa
Vanilla ice cream is fine. It’s inoffensive and rather enjoyable. It’s also instantly forgettable and pretty boring.
Can you remember a particular vanilla ice cream you’ve eaten in your life? Can you remember where you were and the taste and smell of it? How did you feel?
Bet you can’t. Because vanilla ice cream is just fine. It isn’t amazing. It’s nobody’s favourite. It doesn’t excite. It’s not something you go away and tell people about. It doesn’t make you feel like you want to go back for more.
Lots of content that gets published is just like vanilla ice cream. People may read/watch it, but it doesn’t make them feel anything - not happy, excited, angry … nothing. And because they don’t feel anything, they don’t do anything about it. No sharing of your content, no clicking on your links, no remembering who you are or what you do.
Vanilla content is the enemy of effective marketing. Not standing out is exactly the same as being invisible - so why bother?
When planning your content this month (and by content I mean everything from Facebook posts to blogs to Instagram Stories), don’t tolerate vanilla. Be ruthless in your pursuit of engaging people and inspiring them to take action. With every piece of content you think about sharing, ask yourself the following:
Why should your target audience care about this? Think about all the choices they have - when they’re scrolling through social media, what will make them stop at your post? When they can watch a series on Netflix, what will compel them to read your latest blog post instead?
What do you want them to do after seeing this? The worst case scenario is a shrug saying “so what?”.
Is this your best work? Consider the quality of the image, the power of the language: can it be better?
Don’t settle for vanilla when you can serve up a super sundae with sprinkles that people can’t wait to tell their friends about and that they come back for again and again!
