Content Creation is an Art
Naturally working at Airbyte, I'm going to look and think of Fivetran in a certain way. They are our direct competitors in terms of ELT tooling so we want to be better. When Benn Stancil, Chief Analytics Officer at Mode wrote his article titled How Fivetran fails, of course I flocked to it immediately.
Ever since reading it back in September, it has stuck in my head for a couple reasons. The first being how the article played out in terms of its organization. First, Benn gave out a brief history about the explosion of ETL startups as databases and cloud data warehousing started improving. That sole premise gave readers more insight as to why ETL startups such as Airbyte and Fivetran came about.
Along with the questions and resources that are well tied in, his hook and the timing of it leading into why Fivetran fails was so well written that I was then inspired to write the same way. Not only for blogs but it's such a great example of hooks for YouTube scripts and how you can keep view retention high. Something I experienced when reading this article.
Another aspect of this article that I truly loved was his ability to still input his personality into his writing. Subtle and sarcastic humor was dribbled here and there in Benn Stancil fashion which makes the text much more enjoyable to read. This isn't just some white paper that I'm reading for boring educational purposes, but rather an article that the writer clearly has passion for and wanted to get his thoughts onto paper.
Benn's ability to draw out the plot, hook and value in this article is again, such a great way to write scripts for compelling Youtube videos. You don't want to hook a viewer in and then immediately give them the intended value 1 minute into watching. You want it drawn out and presented in a way that keeps them for hopefully the full duration of said video. I don't typically read all the way through but this article I read fully due to the way he kept drawing back in.
With all this said, content creation isn't as simple as just hitting record, talking about a topic and publishing. The time and effort you put into writing a script or a blog takes time. It's truly an art form to write a piece of content so compelling that you keep your audience wanting more. That's truly the end goal.
To write valuable content that you will be remembered for and in a way that keeps viewers/readers engaged as close to 100% as you can get for your piece of content.