Understanding the Importance of Choosing the Right Topic, Story, or Angle to Create Engaging Content.
By Eagranie Yuh (Guest Post)
When I was a journalist, one of the most valuable things I learned was the difference between a topic, a story and an angle.
Do you know the difference?
These are topics:
• Potatoes
• Unicorns
• Accounting software
Topics are blobby, unformed. They’re helpful as umbrella topics but on their own, they’re not useful.
These are stories:
• How to grow potatoes
• Did you know? Different kinds of unicorns shed glitter at different times of the year
• What to look for in accounting software
Stories are more specific than topics, and they add a layer of helpfulness: how, why, when, for example. But why this story? Why now?
These are angles:
• Meet this lawyer-turned-potato farmer who grows ten kinds of heirloom potatoes
• Why glitter-vacuum companies need to make shedding season part of their sales strategy
• Five mistakes small business owners make when choosing accounting software
Angles are the stories that only you can write, because you have a unique take on things.
And often they’re timely: this is a story that needs to be told now. (Which doesn’t always conflict with a desire to create evergreen content. While this specific story needs to be told now, the lesson at its core can be timeless.)
When I was a journalist, finding the angle meant the difference between an assignment–and no assignment.
Now, as a marketer, it’s the difference between making content that resonates with the target audience–and content that falls flat.
Key point: Are you creating a topic, a story or an angle?
Previously, Eagranie was a producer with the JAR team. Now she runs a marketing consultancy. She helps enterprise B2B marketers create high-impact white papers–the kind that connect with readers and make them actually want to engage. Put another way, she writes reports that could be boring…and makes them not boring. To learn more, visit www.eagranie.com.
Thanks Eagranie!
