Recap: 18 fun content ideas from “boring” industriesBy Helena

Create a content series

You pick a fun, repeatable idea (preferably one that doesn’t require too much heavy lifting) and you make 4-8 episodes. Your other content can stay the same. You don’t have to completely rebrand your business as “the fun one in your industry”—you only publish this one series. From there, you can decide if it works for your business. If it does, introduce more fun content to your social strategy. And if doesn’t, it was a fun campaign you tried that time.

18 fun content series examples from “boring” industries

• SAAS platform, Monday.com, gets work bffs to interview each other
• Monday.com also highlights workplace heroes with their “good morning to the person who____” series
• Everyone’s favourite pool guy on TikTok made an ASMR playlist
• Blendtec’s “Will it blend” series increased their sales by 700%
• This channel is built on one content idea: putting everyday objects in a hydraulic press
• Nude take to the streets to show first-time buyers how much sooner they could buy a home with a Lifetime ISA
• Juno comments on trending articles around the topic of women’s wealth
• Starling Bank partnered with creator couples to talk about joint accounts
• This law firm translates legal jargon with their “legalese” series
• When did your favourite movie characters break the law?
• Step Bank puts money into context with their food-themed educATE serie
• Octopus Energy react to mean green tweets
• General Electric shine a spotlight on their people with this “Employee Takeover” serie
• WIRED Magazine’s “Ask a mortician” mini-series blew up
• This team ask their boss hypothetical questions``
• Figma worked with bride-to-be Lauren to plan her wedding with their product (proving that it’s not just B2B
• Tracey’s son asks her legal FAQs at home
• Later Media build a community by seeking answers from social media managers (their target audience)

Dive deeper 🤿

꩜ How to create a social media content series

꩜ How to use TikTok for B2B marketing

꩜ This book explains why community is your currency

꩜ Who won “best social content series” at the Webbys?

꩜ 103 ways to find new content ideas

Insight from the team

Watch the video : 5 content series ideas for brands in “boring” industries

In the pool with…George Wright from “Will It Blend?”

Remember the “Will It Blend?” series we spoke about in the last episode? The one that gained billions of views and skyrocketed Blendtec’s sales by 700%. Well, George came up with it. Here, he shares his knowledge on what it takes to build a content series that gets results.

👉 Find George on LinkedIn

How did you come up with the idea for “Will It Blend?”

Our engineers did product testing with all kinds of things. I saw them shoving wooden planks into blenders to try and break the motors. But of course, the motors didn’t break—the opposite happened. And I thought…this is amazing to see.

Why do you think “Will It Blend?” was so successful?

Because we did the hard work of marketing up front, before deciding on a tactic and a message. I had a clear picture of our audience and our objectives before we ever got to the idea itself.

We built our strategy around two, very distinct, audiences.

Audience 1: My employees. We had, at the time, around 200 people who worked at Blendtec. Every one of them knew they made an amazing product, but when they’d go home at night, they’d struggle to explain why their blender was so much better than the $30 blender you could buy at Walmart. They didn’t have a simple way to explain that to their family. I knew if I made something compelling for my employees, then they’d share it. And that was my objective: to give them an easy way to explain what made their job so cool.

Audience 2: People who had previously bought our product. They got it a while ago, but after some time, it ended up in the kitchen cupboard along with all the other forgotten kitchen gadgets. I wanted to show them the possibilities of the product, to compel them to put it back on the worktop. My hope was that they’d do in-house product demonstrations for their family, friends and neighbours.

So we took this strategy and made a website. It was split into two sections: “Try this at home” (e.g. how to make snow from ice cubes with your Blendtec blender) and “Don’t try this at home” (e.g. the more extreme stuff, like blending marbles and iPads). “Try this at home” was made to demonstrate to everyone that owned a blender (employee and customers) that they can do remarkable things at home with their blender that they may not be aware of.  Helping confirm they made a great purchasing decision. “Don’t try this at home” was simply a demonstration that this is a high performance piece of equipment that is worth the price, and even though you would not blend a rake or iPhone in your kitchen, you certainly could.

We launched the series in an email to each of those audiences and that was it. We never intended for “Will It Blend?” to be seen by millions of people.

What do you think brands often get wrong with content marketing?

• Setting out to go viral. That’s not an objective.
• Focussing on metrics that don’t matter. Marketing success = does your audience do what you want them to do after they see your content? (E.g. buy your product). The rest is meaningless.
• Overcomplicating the idea. “Will It Blend?” is, at the end of the day, a product demonstration.

What’s one valuable lesson marketing teams could take away from the “Will It Blend?” series?

Viral is a benefit you get from doing your strategy work well.

Content idea of the week 💡

Ask your audience’s opinion on a topic related to your industry using LinkedIn polls.