Blogging to Inspire

The Ahrefs blog recently inspired me with an article about 'reasons to use content marketing.' They made the insightful comment that content marketing cannot directly drive action. In addition to educating and entertaining, they recommended inspiring the reader. I've never thought about, and now I think maybe that's what I always should have been doing!

Ahrefs: Content Marketing Goals: How Many & Which Ones, 2023-Feb-27 by Mateusz Makosiewicz

Inspiration 

This is content that gives people “the spark” to act and achieve their goals. 

Inspiration is different from education in a way that it doesn’t serve complete solutions. It acts on imagination and emotion to show the possible or states an important question. Plus, it’s typically more influential than educational content. 

Inspiration works for businesses because it: 

• Allows you to reach people before they experience a problem your product solves and when they’re not looking to solve a problem. This allows you to beat the competition to the punch.
• Makes an emotional connection with your audience through excitement and enthusiasm. Emotions make brands unforgettable. 
• Lets inspirational brands really stand out. 
• Has the power to influence. 
• May make people want to come back spontaneously. And that’s important because then the content makes its way to the reader without any competition. 

Contributing as a Team Leader

The primary value of team leaders to an organization is in information gathering and disbursement. Managing your team members is actually about making sure they know what's important, and that information has to be gathered from outside the team because it's constantly changing. Information about what the team is facing and accomplishing needs to be pushed up and throughout the organization. 

Diamond Pencils: As a manager, your team is your peers (not your reports), 2023-Feb-19 by Benyamin Elias

Ok let’s TL;DR this whole thing:

Work with your peers at least as much as you work with your direct reports. This is a simple insight that surprises new managers (it surprised me, although luckily before I made the mistake). Focusing too much time on direct reports is what leads to under-performance and career risk; spending time with your peers leads to growth, results, and getting what you want.