Adam Moody

Title: Doing Content Right

Author: Steph Smith

Doing Content Right is a guide for writers wanting to be successful writing to an online readership. Both new and experienced writers can take something away from the book as it covers all areas needed to be successful, and as the author notes, this isn’t always just about writing.

Here’s a breakdown from the author: The Internet has created an age of infinite leverage. But with easy access comes competition. So how do you build a successful blog in a world where millions of other people are trying to do the same thing? This resource has the answers.

• 270 page book that comes in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI (Kindle) formats
• Recorded lessons to digest your knowledge
• 22 printable exercises to cement your knowledge
• A community of 500 creators to help you execute
• 25-question quiz to test your knowledge
• A bonus audio section

I really liked how Steph talked about the importance of balancing creation with promotion. As she says, “People think that if it’s good, “they” will come. Quite the opposite—without intentional distribution, the content ends up sitting there, just taking up memory online.”

Another area that is important, especially to newer content creators is to differentiate yourself. It’s easy to create online these days which is great, but that’s means there’s more people than ever doing it…you have to stand out and not only rise above the noise, but aim for the very top:

…you need to be in the top 5%. – If you’re below this threshold, you no longer get the benefit of the Internet’s infinite leverage, because even 0 x14B eyeballs is still 0. Once you have earned the right for people to care about you, you have outsized gains because that right extends to people all over the globe. It’s like having the superpower.

Steph also emphasized quality over quantity while aiming for consistency and gives some direction on how to do this – I think it’s important to be consistent while realizing every piece you publish isn’t going to be a smash hit, especially if you’re newer to it or new to the area you’re writing about…but you need to publish in order to find your voice and audience!

As I just mentioned above, there’s directions on how to take action in each area. Steph includes exercises at the end of each section to help work through the book and come up with implementable take aways. I skipped around and did the ones that I thought would be useful and found them to be very helpful.

One note about these – I was reading on my Kindle and had to switch to my computer to grab some exercises, it might be better to read through the book on an iPad or laptop if you’re going to be doing a lot of these exercises.

Steph goes into detail on SEO basics for a writer, and as anyone familiar with SEO knows it’s tough for recommendations and content to stay up to date after more than a couple of years. I would urge anyone new to publishing online to certainly read through the SEO sections but to then seek out a recent guide from content-centric SEO for more up to date tool recommendations and best practices. I don’t have any big issues with this section, it’s just tough to be totally current when the book was published about 4 years ago.

I’m glad I took the time to read through Steph’s book and had many takeaways that I think will help me improve not only my writing, but my processes and outlook.

I would recommend Doing Content Right to anyone who is regularly writing online and wants to see an improvement in results in terms of readership, engagement, and conversions. Also, anyone new to publishing online will find this to be a goldmine of information, especially with the exercises included.

I just wrapped up reading Exactly What To Say by Phil M Jones – this was a great short read that gave me some wonderful ideas on how to better use concise language to get better results more quickly.

Which means what exactly?

Well, the book is laid out into short chapters focusing on the “magic words” that you can use to get the outcome you’re looking for more quickly.

For example, future pacing is addressed where you ask the question, “how would you feel if…” and fill in the blanks with whatever fits for your discussion. For this example, maybe it would be “how would you feel if you had a short, to the point, phrase for every conversation in your life that helped you reach decisions with others more quickly?”

Well, now you’re thinking about it and creating a better mental image or feeling that is more “customized” to you than anything I could every guess at!

Each chapter has the reasoning behind using the phrase and then goes into actual examples so that you can see how (and sometimes when) to use it in case you aren’t familiar or certain.

This was a great short read that should provide both short term and long term ROI. Helping people make decisions and move conversations forward is a powerful tool.

If you’re interested in reading the book, check it out here.

You can find the audiobook here.

Win Bigly, by Scott Adams, was an interesting read from my POV – it sets a lot of powerful persuasion techniques forward in the context of the 2016 US Presidential campaigns.

Regardless of whether you want to know more about the campaigns or are tired of thinking about it (or living the results) there’s something for both sides. The campaign and election is used as the background of Win Bigly to weave the story and deliver some great details and higher level concepts dealing with persuasion, how to use it, how to “detect” it, and specific ways you can use these same ideas.

I’ll admit it – this is a book that I will need to reread a time or two so that I can really soak in all of the lessons. Luckily, Scott Adams made it fairly easy to grab the details by very logically organizing the book while still using powerful storytelling. He lays out the terms and ideas needed at the beginning in an easy to read manner and gets going quickly from there.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for insights into the election or how to use high grade persuasion techniques in their personal or professional life – check out the video for more details and use that to decide if this book is the right one for you.

Grab Win Bigly on Amazon Here

Get Win Bigly on Audible (audiobook) Here

On the recommendation of a copywriter friend (Adam Bensman at Brain Hickey – check him out!) I read Building A Story Brand while on the road a few weeks ago.

The book is an easy to read framework for realizing how to position your business or brand as a story that your customers want to be a part of. This is different than telling your customers a story about yourself or just making something up – you’re given the framework to tell the story (on your website, in your copy) about why your customers need your business.

The step by step layout is great and goes through the arc of a story that you need to then insert yourself and your customers into in order to create this story that builds brands and loyal customers that are drawn to you.

It reminded me of Russell Brunson and all of the stories he tells. Do you know why he tells so many stories to get his points across? It’s because we as humans are wired to be more receptive to stories and find them much more interesting than logic, even when the same ideas are being communicated…and they can be highly persuasive.

But, back to the book.

It’s a great read that is very actionable and gives you the framework to start defining your brand in a manner that will ultimately help draw the customers you want closer. Definitely worth the few hours to read it.

And there’s an added bonus – the last section deals with putting the story into practice on your website and in your company culture. Good stuff!

You can grab your copy of the book here: https://adammoody.org/storybrand

Or get the Audible version here: https://adammoody.org/storybrand-audible

The good news – this is a really easy recommendation. If you know you need or want to create more content, with higher quality, and better processes, stop what you’re doing and grab this book. It will help you – that’s the bottom line!

Of course, if you’re like me you might want to find out more – in that case, just watch the video above for the full Story Engine book review.

It’s a great short and to the point read that you can easily get through in less than a week (and I’m sure many people could tackle it in 1 or 2 readings). That isn’t a bad thing, it’s got a lot of value and not a ton of fluff.

If you’re ready to grab your copy, you can get it at Amazon via this link: https://adammoody.org/thestoryengine

As mentioned, there’s a lot of resources available for free with this book – you can get your hands on the PDF’s, spreadsheets, and more to take your content marketing game up a few notches.

The only people that I would not recommend this book to are the ones who are VERY new to content marketing or just getting started with writing online.

This book assumes some knowledge of the area and is really meant for the business or blog owner that wants to create and utilize better processes for some real world content marketing results.

If you liked The Story Engine book review leave me a comment or click on the YouTube embed and leave a comment there.