"Bits of business"

👉 and why they help your emails

When it comes to email and content marketing, us "experts" tend to nag a lot about making sure you add value.

But we often overlook an equally important side to your content: entertainment: actually making your content interesting.

Or at least not quite so deathly dull.

Because even your most dedicated fans won't cling on to your every word if it feels like hard work.

Unfortunately, not many of us can write naturally like Wilde or Hemingway. But we can make our stuff more interesting with "bits of business".

In the entertainment world "bits of business" is stuff you do in your act that gets a bit of a laugh or otherwise keeps the momentum going between the main presentations.

It's a magician wiggling a card and making it impossible to select for a spectator for a few seconds before getting on with the trick. It's a singer sharing anecdotes between numbers. It's Eric Morecambe...well..it's pretty much anything Eric does in the background when Ernie is centre stage.

When you're creating content, you can add "bits of business" to make it just that bit more interesting.

You can introduce your idea with a story based on one of your hobbies. Or link the content to something unusual (like linking email and content marketing to light entertainment).

I like to include the odd funny gif in my emails that vaguely relates to the topic I'm writing about.

You can use an interesting quote as a launchpad for your idea. Or even sneak a little joke you heard recently into the content.

It's all good.

I do feel that sometimes the pressure to make your content valuable makes us treat it way too seriously. But people's ability to keep focused on all-serious content is not great.

Malcolm Gladwell sells way more books than the scientists whose work he reports on. Way more people watch Mythbusters than "proper" documentaries. TED Talks are way more popular than "real" lectures.

Mary Poppins perhaps put it best. "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down".

And it's more fun to write than deadly serious stuff too. 

- Ian