Kitchen Side: MMA, Objective Content Quality, Flaws of “Tone of Voice”

Last Updated on February 23, 2024

In this episode of Kitchen Side, Omniscient Digital founders, Allie Decker, Alex Birkett, and David Ly Khim have a behind-the-scenes conversation about marketing strategies and ideas. 

They discuss the importance of focusing on the basics of marketing and the tendency to chase after new and novel ideas. They draw analogies to fitness and discuss the idea of every company being a media company. They also discuss the misconception that companies need to create viral and entertaining content to succeed in marketing, emphasizing the importance of mastering the basics and creating quality content that is relevant and helpful to the target audience.

They also touch on the subjective nature of content quality and the importance of subject matter expertise and tone of voice in content creation. The conversation concludes with a discussion about different types of marketers and their characteristics.

Topics

• The concept of content quality
• The tendency to chase after new ideas in marketing
• The importance of focusing on the basics of marketing
• The responsibility of companies to advocate for starting with the basics
• Defining quality content and having a sense of taste
• Establishing a vision and exclusionary 
• Creating a checklist for quality
• The importance of subject matter expertise in content
• The role of tone and voice in content quality
• Defining objective criteria for quality content
• The importance of defining tone in outsourced content
• Guidelines for tone of voice in content creation
• Differentiating between being kind and being nice
• Demand Generation and Growth Marketers

Show Links

• Connect with David Khim on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Connect with Allie Decker on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter

What is Kitchen Side?

One big benefit of running an agency or working at one is you get to see the “kitchen side” of many different businesses; their revenue, their operations, their automations, and their culture.

You understand how things look from the inside and how that differs from the outside.

You understand how the sausage is made. 

As an agency ourselves, we’re working both on growing our clients’ businesses as well as our own. This podcast is one project, but we also blog, make videos, do sales, and have quite a robust portfolio of automations and hacks to run our business.

We want to take you behind the curtain, to the kitchen side of our business, to witness our brainstorms, discussions, and internal dialogues behind the public works that we ship.

Listen to the podcast:

Key takeaways:

[00:00:00] The concept of content quality 

discussion on what content quality means, objective standards, and the difficulty of nailing down the tone of voice

[00:05:02] The tendency to chase after new ideas in marketing 

exploring the tendency to always seek new and shiny marketing strategies, the importance of mastering the basics, and the challenge of combating this mindset

[00:08:40] The importance of focusing on the basics in marketing 

discussion on the tendency to chase after new and novel ideas instead of mastering the basics in marketing

[00:09:51] The responsibility of companies to advocate for starting with the basics 

exploration of the responsibility of companies that find success with new strategies to not advocate for those strategies as a day-one playbook

[00:15:32] Defining quality content and having a sense of taste 

conversation about the subjective nature of quality content and the importance of having a shared definition and sense of taste within a team

[00:23:03] Establishing a vision and exclusionary criteria 

the idea of having a subjective vision or north star for content quality, as well as creating exclusionary criteria to define what does not meet quality standards

[00:24:31] Creating a checklist for quality 

exploring the possibility of reverse engineering successful internal pieces to create a programmatic guide or checklist for content quality

[00:26:52] The importance of subject matter expertise in content 

discussion on including original quotes from subject matter experts in blog posts to enhance content quality

[00:30:26] The role of tone and voice in content quality 

exploration of the subjective nature of tone and voice in content and its impact on building relationships with readers

[00:34:01] Defining objective criteria for quality content 

the need to start with objective criteria, such as content structure and use of bullet points, before attempting to define subjective elements like tone and voice

[00:37:45] The importance of defining tone in outsourced content 

discussion on the need for companies to define the preferred tone when outsourcing content creation

[00:38:54] Guidelines for tone of voice in content creation 

exploration of the importance of providing explicit guidelines for tone of voice in content creation, with examples of how to avoid being overly cheesy and hyperbolic

[00:41:35] Differentiating between being kind and being nice 

conversation about the distinction between being kind and being nice, with examples of regional differences in behavior and perceptions of kindness and niceness

[00:50:14] Demand Generation and Growth Marketers 

insight into the behavior of demand generation and growth marketers, who are described as not being very nice but potentially kind deep down

---