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From my notebook

Content Marketing in a Nutshell

Or, why most of you won’t make it to the end of this post.

This is a page from my notebook. Content marketing, in pen, with a lot of arrows. I’ve written it up properly here, section by section, with a few moving pictures to help.

There are three sections on the page, and one line at the bottom that sums the whole thing up. We’ll get there.

Dale P. Deacon · 30 October 2026

A handwritten notebook page titled Content Marketing, with three bulleted sections (Catchy Headlines, Engagement, Take-aways) and the line Audience, Needs, Visuals, Emotion, Message along the bottom.
The original page.

Catchy headlines

The headline decides whether anyone reads the rest. If it doesn’t get the click, nothing underneath it gets a chance. My notes list three things to work on.

A/B testing and optimisation

Write two headlines for the same piece and show each one to half your audience. Whichever gets more clicks wins. Then write a new challenger and test again. Most email and ad tools can run the split for you.

A Content marketing notes

2.1%

B Why 85% of your readers never finish

5.8% Keep

Click-through rate for two headlines on the same post. An illustration; the numbers are made up.

High-quality shortcuts

A headline is a shortcut to the whole piece. A good one tells the reader what they’ll get, in a few words, and the piece delivers it. Clickbait is a shortcut too, just a bad one. It gets the click, and readers learn not to trust the next one.

Exposure and virality

Reach comes from shares, and people share headlines. Often without reading the article underneath, which is a bit grim, but that’s how it works.

Note: a 2016 study by Columbia University and Inria looked at links shared on Twitter and found that 59% of them were never clicked by anyone. (Gabielkov et al., “Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?”)

Engagement

Getting the click is half of it. The other half is read-through rate: the share of people who start a piece and get to the end.

The figure in my notes is about 15%. Like so.

100 readers open a post. Roughly 15 reach the last line.

If you’ve scrolled this far, check the counter in the corner. It’s doing the same maths on this post. So how do you keep more of them? My notes have three answers.

Know your audience’s tastes

Before you write, know who it’s for. What do they already read? How much time do they have? Are they on a phone on the train, or at a desk? The answers change the length, the tone and the pictures.

Tell compelling and visual stories

This one is underlined twice in my notes. A wall of text loses people fast. Pictures, diagrams and a bit of motion give the eye somewhere to rest, and a story gives the reader a reason to keep scrolling. It’s why this post has moving parts.

Use data to match stories with audiences

Your analytics tell you which pieces people finish, and who those people are. Write more of what gets finished, for the people who finish it.

Take-aways

Forget vanity metrics

Views, impressions and follower counts look great in a report. They don’t tell you whether anyone read the thing. Read-through rate, time on page and replies get much closer.

10,000

views

1,500

read to the end

The same post, measured two ways. An example at the 15% rate.

Quality content takes time

Research, visuals and a few rewrites add up to hours per piece. That’s normal. I’d rather publish one piece people finish than five they skim.

Data is your friend

Check the numbers after every post and let them shape the next one: the headline, the opening, the pictures. It’s the A/B test from section one, run on everything.

The line at the bottom

Right at the bottom of the page, I wrote this.

  1. Audience
  2. Needs
  3. Visuals
  4. Emotion
  5. Message

Start with who you’re talking to. Work out what they need, then show it to them in a way that makes them feel something. Only then do you say your piece.