Top 3 Reasons You Should Read This Post

Alternate Title: Why should you look to Glamour Magazine for B2B Content Marketing Inspiration?

Reason 3: To understand what the real playbook is for B2B Content Marketing
Reason 2: To challenge all of us to think differently
Reason 1: The title includes "Top 3 Reasons"

If you've gotten this far, you can probably see where this is going. I've seen one to many blog posts with titles "Ripped from the Headlines" of Glamour Magazine and Men's Health.

Reason 3: Women's and Men's Magazines are the inspiration for B2B Content Marketing
I read a long time ago that those numbers we see on the covers of Glamour, Men's Health, et. al. sell magazines. Magazines have tested this on a weekly basis, and content marketers have tested this too -- numbers in headlines and titles "sell." And in my 5 minutes of research, the following Titles appeared in my Social Media feeds:

• "8 Great Reasons to Run Your Business from Your Phone"
• "5 Important Growth Hacking Lessons from the Man Who Coined the Term"
• "Is grit more important than smarts, skills, luck? 4 ways to boost your grit."

... And my favorite: "3 Key Behaviors all successful leaders exhibit." That's right, according to the heading, ALL successful leaders exhibit ALL THREE key behaviors. Taking the whole numbers game a bit too far I think.

Reason 2: To challenge all of us to think differently
On the one hand, maybe we should all take a break, read Men's Health or Cosmopolitan, and consider what they are selling via their articles (ad space, product placements), how they are doing it, and learn what we can. Yes, we can learn a thing or two.

My challenge to myself? To see if I can (after this post), take the high ground and avoid manipulating people into reading my content. Let's face it, these numbers in titles are very arbitrary, and unconsciously make us think that the "lists" in the articles are all inclusive. Or objectively ranked. They're not, and they're not.

How can we take the high ground? Make our findings and insights so compelling that readers will be interested without amping up our titles with numbers.

Reason 1: The title includes "Top 3 Reasons"