So, what drives a guy in his late-20s to say goodbye to a long-term, secure job for the uncertainty of self-employment in content marketing?

Ambition? Desire? Maybe madness?

In reality, it’s none of the above.

You see, I love helping people tell their stories and honestly, I think there are so many great tales to tell.

When it comes to business, great stories are the backbone of great marketing, but we can’t just tell stories for the sake of spinning a yarn.

I believe content marketing is about telling stories with purpose.

In business, our stories need to mean something. They need to elicit a response, demonstrate our expertise and flaunt our value proposition.

For some, finding the storytelling opportunities within their business is hard.

Usually, it’s because they are looking in the wrong place.

Digging Deeper

Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be a sports journalist. As a teenager, I couldn’t think of anything better than getting paid to go and watch sport and write about it.

But as I made my first tentative steps in the trade, I learned something.

Watching and writing about games is the boring part.

Learning about the people who played in the games or were part of the games was the exciting part.

Whether I was talking to the lawn bowls player who had just turned 100, the rower who threw away an Olympic dream to flee the soviet union or established international sports stars like former Socceroo Harry Kewell or three-time Olympian Madonna Blyth, the best parts weren’t necessarily about their last or their next game. 

It was the parts that got them to their next game. The stories about why they played, insights into how they played or where they saw the game going next.

That curiosity has burned within me ever since.

It is a curiosity I applied when I jumped the media fence and moved into the marketing and communications space.

I found myself constantly being asked to help tell the story of someone’s business.

But what is a business?

Is it a list of services? A bunch of things the business can do?

Is it how long the business has been operating? How many clients it services? How much money it has made?

Is it the product it sells?

Much like watching a game and writing a report – trying to write about a business’ services is boring.

It’s boring to write about and it’s boring to read about.

The fascinating part about writing for or about a business is understanding the people behind it.

The real story is in the people who built the business, work in the business and the customers who have benefited from the business.

That’s why a book like Shoe Dog by Phil Knight is a best-seller.

It’s not a story about Nike shoes, but instead a story about overcoming adversity. It’s a story about triumph.

It’s bloody good content.

Connect the dots

The key to telling a good business story is connecting the human element with the technical bits and pieces.

I started Content Hype to do just that.

I wanted to bring together everything I loved about journalism and marry it with my marketing and communications experience.

In doing so, I want to help businesses understand where their story-telling opportunities are and leverage those to create great pieces of content. To then take that great content and use all the tools modern technology offers us to share that story.

Content Hype is where story-telling and marketing converge into consistent communication.

Over the journey, I’ll be using this blog to share bits and pieces of my own story, show off some of the projects I’m lucky to be working on and share marketing tips, tricks and insights.

You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter, ‘Good Content’, using the form below to join Content Hype and our growing community of people and businesses on the journey to finding better stories, more often.