content personalities: working with others without going insane
DESCRIPTION
Content strategists and creators work with a wide variety of personalities and empathy is a big part of doing our job well. This presentation goes over the pros and cons of four distinct content personalities (Artists, Admins, Analysts, and Absentees) and provides suggestions for working with each.TRANSCRIPT
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Content Personalities: Working with Others without Going Insane
Andrea Goulet Ford @andreagoulet
Content strategists and creators work
with a wide variety of
personalities.
Our job is to extract ideas from other
peoples’ brains and make
sense of them.
When we work with people like us, it’s
easy. Fun even.
When we don’t empathize with
our partners, it’s not so fun.
We can improve our
work by understanding other people.
Content Personality #1: The Artist
PROS CONS
Instead of asking what you can do to help, provide options. “ I know there’s a lot going on, and I know x, y, and z are a priority. How about I help you with x by creating an outline, or coming up with a list of blog posts?”
• Produces engaging content
• Has a clear vision
• Inspires others
• Understands content value
• Won’t delegate
• Becomes bottleneck
• Difficult to manage
• Resistant to structure
Content Personality #2: The Admin
PROS CONS
Use constraints to your creative advantage. Instead of open-ended brainstorming, put the right types of rules around your
creative thinking to generate greater results.
• Time management masters
• Detail-oriented
• Provides structure and process
• Organized and punctual
• Potential micromanager
• Difficulty thinking “outside the box”
• Content feels flat and unoriginal
• Sticks to rules even when they no longer serve a purpose
Content Personality #3: The Analyst
PROS CONS
Partner with a non-techie Use a non-technical person to work with The Analyst as a litmus test for how ideas
will be interpreted by a general audience.
• Data wiz
• Understands complex topics
• Often seen as credible
• Gleans insights to producebetter content
• Unable to relate data to others
• May not try new things
• Tries to “game” or “hack”
• Prone to using jargon
Content Personality #4: The Absentee
PROS CONS
Uncover their priority and reframe your arguments. “I know you’re really focused on growing our subscriber base. This content should
help because of x, y, and z.”
• Creative flexibility
• Unhindered by failure
• Able to try new things
• Grow your leadership skills
• Result often doesn’t match vision
• Doesn’t understand effort required
• Lack of support leads to frustration
• Responds too late to be effective
ENJOYED THIS? STAY IN TOUCH!
Andrea Goulet Ford yourbrandvox.com
@andreagoulet !
Oh, hey! I’m also writing a book. This will be in it. So will other good stuff. Follow along at
cultureofcontent.com or @Content_Culture.