This month in content #4 – January 2025
Tabitha Whiting
Content strategist & writer for B2B tech startups | Content Lead @ Ravio
The best content examples I've stumbled across in January 2025:
Groobarb’s weekly letters on farm life
For the past couple of years I’ve been getting a weekly veg box from Groobarbs Wild Farm – which is local to me in Cheshire, UK.
There are many things I love about getting a veg box (seeing soil on my carrots instead of the weirdly sterile supermarket kind, figuring out meals for the week based on what’s in the box, seasonal eating, supporting local organic and sustainable farming – I could write an essay on it).
But one of the simplest and greatest joys I get from it is the letter that comes inside my veg box.
Each letter is a missive from the head farmer, David Fryer, about what’s on his mind that week.
It’s an insight into a job I have no experience of – the yearly cycle of running a veg farm – and it connects me to the farm where my veg is grown.
It feels personal and raw, with the letter often containing challenges David is facing. Weather causing crop failures, the changing climate impacting seasons, business lessons, and more.
It makes me want David, and Groobarbs, to be successful.
All of which makes it a beautiful example of content marketing done well – probably without even meaning to.
Traffic Scotland’s Gritter Tracker
This is one that comes out of the woodwork each year in the colder months, and it makes me smile each and every time.
It’s a simple webpage containing a map of the UK, which tracks all the gritter vehicles in Scotland.
It has heaps of practical value for travellers keen to understand what the roads will be like in cold weather, especially in the rural areas of Scotland.
But they do practical with humour too.
Each gritter vehicle has a name and they’re all brilliant – from ‘Grit tok’ to ‘Yes sir ice can boogie’ to ‘Ready salted’ to ‘Licence to chhill’, and so many more.
The Climate Reality Check by Good Energy Stories
We all know the Bechdel test – the measure of how women are represented in films through three simple criteria:
Good Energy took that well-known format, and added their unique take.
Their Climate Reality Check campaign is an original research content project, analysing whether climate change is represented in film.
The criteria area even simpler than the Bechdel test
The organisation analysed 250 films published between 2013-2022 and found that only 9.6% of films passed the check. Climate change existed in only 12.8% of films, and was mentioned in just 3.6% of films.
It’s an interesting analysis in and of itself.
It’s also a perfect piece of content to highlight the value of Good Energy as an organisation – they work with TV and film creators to tell entertaining stories that are an honest reflection of today’s world of climate crisis.
领英推荐
One of Those Nights by Toast
Kind of a content play, kind of an advert – either way it’s chef’s kiss.
Toast is point of sale software for restaurants.
This month they released a video titled ‘One of those nights’.
It follows the waiting and kitchen staff at a real restaurant in New York City, who are faced with a set of increasingly challenging customers – placed as actors by Toast, unbeknown to the restaurant team.
From tricky allergies to fussy eaters to ridiculous diets, the team are faced with a lot of changes needed to accommodate each order, but they do so with straight faces and no complaints to serve the customers as best they can.
It’s equal parts hilarious and (somehow) heart-warming, and I imagine the experience resonates heavily with those who work in restaurants.
Animalz’ content marketing experiments – and content cost lead magnet
Content agency Animalz released a blog at the end of 2024 which summarises all the content experiments and projects they undertook throughout the year for the Animalz brand, with insights on what worked and what didn’t.
Content that gives a behind-the-scenes look at how other companies approach things (in this case for content marketing itself) is always a winner in my eyes.
It fulfils a natural curiosity that I think we all have about how others in our industry are determining priorities and making bets.
And it also gives us ideas and inspiration to implement in our own roles.
Another interesting element of this Animalz blog (and many of their other blogs) is their lead magnet CTA.
Animalz works with companies on their content strategy and content production.
I imagine one of the most common questions and blockers they get is price. How much will it cost us per blog? What’s the ROI of that cost?
So they’ve built this into a lead magnet: readers can pop their email in and receive a breakdown of what it costs to produce a blog similar to the one they’re reading – overcoming that question with a real-world example.
Honestly, just a piece of genius.
Struggle Huddle newsletter by StackCat Content
I’m all about editorial newsletters this year, email newsletters that provide value on-page, instead of being a curation of links to content elsewhere.
Em Thomas, MBA at StackCat Content recently launched a newsletter that I just know is going to be one that I actually read each time it hits my inbox.
It’s a simple premise.
Each newsletter contains an interview with a marketing leader about a big problem they’ve experienced in their career and how they handled it – ‘Solve a Struggle’. The first one is great interview with Erica Schneider on surviving launches.
Expert insights, that are relatable, delivered in a storytelling format in language that actually feels like a real person sharing their problems.
Perfection.
To make it even better, the newsletter closes with a section called ‘StackCat Snuggle’ which is a random assortment of “inspo, cat pics, mushy sh*t. It’ll get real random down here.”
True enough, the first edition does indeed end with cat pics – and that’s the way to my heart.
That’s it for this month, see you in February!
?
Leverage your customers' stories to close more deals | Owner of StackCat Content
1 个月Oh my gosh, thank you so much for the sweet review!