The National Teaching Awards were on TV here in the UK recently and it got me thinking about what makes some teachers better than others – and how that relates to delivering engaging, informative content.
Great content marketers are by and large great teachers – educating and engaging their audiences. Teachers, of course, should know what they’re talking about and be willing to engage with their students. Both equally applicable to content marketing.
Infectious Enthusiasm
To my mind though, what really sets the great teachers apart from the rest is their infectious enthusiasm for the subject at hand – and their ability to spread that enthusiasm to those they teach.
I remember a High School science teacher who had made up silly songs about planets and chemicals.
He strummed away on his guitar as the class sang the inane lyrics – and I still remember them to this day. Although admittedly the fact that ‘the sun is a mass of incandescent gas’ plays little part in my daily life.
Were those songs part of the officially approved curriculum? Doubtful. Did they teach important topics? Perhaps. Did they make you want to listen to the serious stuff a little more attentively? Certainly.
That’s the point really. Teachers who are genuinely excited about what they teach are the ones that make you sit up and take notice.
So what can we learn from that?
Being a good teacher
- Show your enthusiasm
- Write from the heart – talk about personal experience
- Mix your media – non-written content can often convey passion more easily
- Be prepared to engage
- Give it some thought – don’t just shove a bunch of keywords in and be done
- Make it relevant – show your readers how they can use the information you give
- Get excited – about your industry, about big client wins, about new services, about customer stories
Online or off there is an awful lot of content out there. The enthusiasm that you bring to your content – written, recorded or live – will help get your audience sitting up straight in their chairs and singing along with you.
Did you have any memorable teachers? What was it about them that inspired you?
