Introduction: Using MAGIC to collaboratively create content that gets results

What is MAGIC??In our context - the exciting world of content marketing - sadly no wizardry or divination is involved, just a little art and a little science.

MAGIC is a five pillar framework for collaborative, action-oriented marketing content creation. Today more than ever, the old rule still applies: content is king. So whether your organization needs to rebuild its website, write whitepapers to establish domain expertise, or build your brand with only the most piquant social media posts, you should ensure they are created with a specific audience in mind, a measurable goal, and a consistent message.

The ancient art of marketing has been going through an incredible transformation over the last decade or so, so that success can now be directly measured. Gone are the days of searching for wiggles or bumps in sales data to indicate impact, or even praying that a total number of eyeballs who’d seen said marketing content was a decent indicator of brand expansion.?

With modern marketing analytics we can track every click, every interaction, every download. We can see who is interacting with our content and what they’re doing just before or just after filling forms and clicking buttons.?

So if we can measure what’s actually driving the actions we need for the business to be successful, then we can determine which content is effective. Thus, we should try to be systematic and intentional about the content we create; in other words, make it purposeful, and make it good.?

I created MAGIC to address two major obstacles I was encountering in my quest for purposeful goodness as a young, dewy-eyed marketer.?

Firstly, too often I found the content I was assigned to create didn’t have a clear focus at the point of assignment. More than once executives exclaimed that we needed more content, and when I asked questions like “why?” or “about what?”, the answer was vague and involved a good deal of hand waving. As I pressed for clarity, it always boiled down to some variation of “that’s your job to figure out.”?

And, frustratingly, they were right.?

Secondly, no content marketer is an island. Successful tweets, blogs, white papers and campaigns come from a team of writers, editors, designers, subject matter experts, bosses, marketing ops people and possibly even interns.?

With all those people pitching in, there are countless opportunities for misunderstandings, ball dropping, good-intentioned water muddying, egocentric “improvements” and multitasking-inspired noncomprehension. Even on the first draft, when writers have the Muse in them and reach flow state, it can be easy to lose one’s way in the midst of a deluge of sheer brilliance.?

I needed something to keep everyone quite literally on the same page: a single source of truth that anyone could quickly reference to understand the essentials of the project and remain aimed in the right direction.?

So at the top of every new document I created, I started to write down the core message the content was meant to convey, the audience for that message, the overall goal of the content, and the CTA I thought would be the most impactful to drive the desired action. It looked something like:?

Message:

Audience:

Goal:

CTA:?

The very first project I used this was a major website redesign, where I had various stakeholders across the organization reviewing copy I’d written. I was working directly with the web design firm, and they also wanted an idea of what the visuals should be on each page - if we couldn’t source them, they would find them for us or make them. It didn’t take long for “Imagery” to be added to my framework, and suddenly a little MAGIC happened.

I quickly found it was just as useful for writing marketing emails, blog posts, videos, even entire multi-channel campaigns - anything with words and images that needed to make an impact on its audience.?

For the last six years, each content project I’ve begun has started with a MAGIC document. It’s caught on everywhere I’ve worked, because it works. We had a template document on our shared drive, waiting to be copied and customized for each new effort with this on the top:?

Message: (What message/value statement are we trying to highlight? What problem are we solving?)

Audience: (As specifically as possible, who is this for? EG: “mid-career technicians/engineers” or “anyone who’s opened an email from us in the last month.”)

Goal: (Why are we sending this? Ticket sales? Email signups? General branding/info?)

Imagery: (What visual language are we using? EG: “Happy people chatting at a conference”, ”images of things that are really fast (cheetahs, race cars, etc.)”, or “May 15 data visualization on traffic patterns”)?

CTA: (What’s the one action we want them to complete after reading this? “Click here”, or “register now”, etc.)

Whether at a group brainstorm, with a team in front of a whiteboard or reviewing the same shared doc via video chat, or as a single contributor trying to get my own thoughts in order, I would work through each of the five pillars of MAGIC to solidify an idea into a plan.?

Ideas are great: they help you get excited and get creative, which is a key first step to anything worthwhile. Plans, however, let you execute and actually make something, and then get results.?

As the content is written, edited, reviewed and disseminated, anyone working on the project can go back to the original MAGIC document and quickly reference why we're creating it, who it's for, what we're trying to say, and how to measure if it's driving the action we want. This streamlines the project and prevents any drift, misunderstanding or scope creep.

Once the content is out in the wild, you measure its impact, learn what you can, and iterate. Then, profit!

Over the next few posts I’ll dive into each of the five pillars of MAGIC, reveal how each one bears its load holding up the overall system, and how together any piece of content or campaign can be built upon this foundation.?

Thanks for reading!