Book review: Kyle Gray,The Story Engine: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Content Strategy and Brand Storytelling without Spending All Day Writing

The catchy glossy cover with the enticing foreword by Tom Morkes—‘An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Content Strategy and Brand Storytelling without Spending All Day Writing’—is what caught my eye at the first glance. This is a pleasurable thought for someone who is passionate about entrepreneurship and is looking to create the perfect content for his business, but great content creation definitely requires time and virtually takes up a major chunk of one’s workday. The author, Kyle Gray, is a maestro with WordPress, who started out with content marketing with WP Curve (now a GoDaddy company) and moved to Conversion Cake fame. The book gives access to some very exciting templates and video tutorials which catch the eye of young readers like me who are more swayed by anything digital. Kindle version of the book is also available for the tech-savvy readers. This book is especially relevant for the millennial entrepreneurs and blog-based content start-ups which have swayed Instagram to its popular user base for businesses. No longer can creating a Facebook page or few Google ads be the gist of your new start-up. Content strategy is an integral part of modern marketing. The book is young and refreshing, and it gives a perspective of someone who understands and simply loves what he does.

The beauty of the book lies in the fact that it focuses on the content quality rather than conversion rates and clicks which most other books of this genre are honed upon. Right in the beginning of the book, the author aptly points out how content marketing has remained the underdog in traditional marketing toolset for the longest time now. Nevertheless, perhaps in the last four years with the social media strategy game on, content has jumped to that ‘quarterback’ position which can make or break your game. Creating content and making it compelling enough for the short-spanned millennial user base that refuses to give you more than 3 seconds to decide whether to stay or leave your page is perhaps a challenge in itself. Even the top influencers in the Forbes list for the year have been driven by compelling and captivating content with visuals—vlogs and storylines—that catch your eyes. So yes, content simply jumped from a no-go in the last decade to a game-changer in this millennial generation dominated by social media. And that is why I enjoyed reading this young and vibrant book and recommend the contributions of the author for all content-rich start-ups today.

Different parts of the book cater to different audience, and there is something for everyone in it who is even slightly interested or associated with content creation, whether a beginner or someone who has already taken a leap and knows the basics but is trying to figure the way ahead. As each section of the book is like a diving board for a separate audience segment, I am going to take you through the broad parameters suggested by Kyle Gray for compelling content creation.

The book has four parts spread across 23 chapters. Just as the name suggests, it starts with a story by Kyle where he speaks about his start-up, WP Curve, which started as a small WordPress-based team and grew into a thriving company, and that’s when the Cofounder Dan released his bestseller The 7 Day Startup and the reins of WP Curve came into Kyle’s hands where he had to monitor the blog-based content creation on a regular basis (pp. 8–9). That’s how the book takes off, and, from then on, there is learning in each chapter from Kyle Gray’s personal experiences—pitfalls and successes along the content road. The book in hand stresses right in the beginning how 7 Day Startup by Dan Norris (2014) of WP Curve fame speaks of humble beginnings and partnerships which are important aspects of any budding start-up partnership team. Relationships, whether with partners and co-founders/co-promoters or with affiliates, contributors and writers, have been stressed in nearly every part of this particular book.

The first part of the book introduces what content marketing is and what type of businesses should invest in content creation. It talks about value of content and volume of content. To create the kind of volume that would pick you from millions of others on the web, it is important to put together a team of guest/ghost writers/contributors which most start-ups today are definitely doing. The millennials are getting everything, from their news to entertainment to humour, from their social media accounts, and this has given an opportunity to small-time fashionistas, budding travel experts and entrepreneurs looking to reach a younger crowd. So everyone who is looking to create a space over the myriad network on the web needs to focus on content strategy and execution, and the book definitely acts as a guide to help create some compelling content.

The book picks up momentum in the second part which has Kyle Gray’s hallmark ‘style guide’ for content creation. Every creation undergoes multiple amendments before you reach that quality standard which you know will catch the eye of your audience. The author recommends that each amendment and change in the beginning should be noted down in a document, and, over a period of time, these notes actually become a ‘style guide’ for your writers. When volumes increase and you bring in more writers to create content, this style guide helps them understand the personalized effect that you intend to create for your audience once volumes increase to a point where personalized attention to each detail is next to impossible (pp. 91–98). For writers to perform the way you are expecting, they must understand your expectations and ideology. Kyle has explained the importance of this concept beautifully. This style guide is the highlighting feature of the book and, according to the author, helps to leverage more from a writer when he has clarity of the expectations of the business. If you are already in the business and looking to grow, this book is perfect for understanding how to grow your content team and create customer-friendly and attractive content. I would strongly recommend developing your own style guide as you progress along in your organization because most entrepreneurs always face a problem on how to continue paying personal attention to each detail of the business when the volume grows beyond managing prowess of a single hand. Quality and volume of content are very important, and each business that is in the field today understands this, but generally it’s all too scattered. Flawless presentation of this is what drives a successful start-up.

The third part of the book deals with ‘ideation’ and calendar days which focus on number of days needed for draft creation and then further approval and subsequent number of days for completion of the article (pp. 111–115). The author focuses on all miniscule but very relevant details here, such as submission fonts and sentence case or the importance of image submissions and the image pixels. The author says that to guide your team, you need to go into a clear exhaustive instructional guideline that leaves no scope for error and requires only minimal correctional reading. Although I like the idea and agree that some protocol must be put into place but my only concern here was that over scrutinizing or sticking too strongly to SOPs will affect the innovative quality of the content and then your webpage may look like a standardized website throwing out similar-fashioned compositions that the average millennial will soon get bored of and move on. In my opinion, this can be challenging, and establishing a balance here is the best judge of managerial skills of an entrepreneur.

Collaboration with contributors is important and sometimes featuring them or letting them share space for their work instils more confidence and the contributor starts giving more to your brand, that is when creativity sprouts and a business draws the best from its contributors. The author talks about affiliate marketing, creating relationships and how that can be a driving factor for the business. He highlights the importance of making people featured in your blogs look like a rockstar and that’s when it starts reverberating with the audience. This is something that we are seeing in all the latest blog-based crowdsourced content out there on the web, and I especially liked the idea of giving people a ‘rockstar’ feel because that stimulates more demand and growth for a blog. Like I already mentioned, the book has small wisdoms for everyone who is already there in the vast ocean on the web or is looking to jump in.

Every blog-based content has quality and a certain personality that its audience relates to, and matching up to that while consistently bringing variations is an absolute must. Kyle Gray had definitely mastered this art and presented it succinctly for the readers. For a prolific creator, it is a must that you gel well with your audience and understand the problem that your business is going to solve for them. The author suggests about 6–12 months of work put in, and, over a period of time, the business consistently starts addressing that problem. The author correctly points out that gradually you create a snowball effect which only grows bigger and bigger because humans have a thirst for knowledge, an insatiable thirst for information.

The fourth and final part of the book deals with how one should support and scale the content marketing game. Keyword search, search engine optimization (SEO) and category importance are highlighted. Stimulating creativity while also looking out for the keywords in trend is critical to the success of content strategy. The choice of tone and keywords should have some parameters so that a story starts developing around your writing on a consistent basis and the audience starts listening to and watching out for it because they associate you with a certain genre. The author highlights that it is important to maintain a strong back end and background picture if you really want to achieve volumes in your content creation and, at the same time, maintain that brand personality of your blog pages and articles. In the latter half of this part, the author speaks of inspired writing and how it is mistaken with content marketing. Now this, I strongly emphasize, is something that every entrepreneur must focus upon. As the book points out, inspired writing is good because generally the writer is passionate about what he is writing, but it alone cannot by any means propel your business to grow. While one set of people confuse content simply with inspired and passionate writing alone, at the other extreme are those that view content strategy simply as a digital creation like a Facebook ad. The fact is that this creative, inspired and passionate writing has to be coupled with the perfect mix of digital platforms and SEO scorings to bring a solid mix of content strategy that does not make your page look like an outright sales pitch, but it still portrays to your readers a certain brand persona that they start associating with you, and that gradually snowballs and grows with stronger affiliations. Kyle Gray has correctly recommended that finding the middle ground here is important.

Transparency and authenticity have strongly been emphasized. The author refers to Peter Theil’s (2014) book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Speaking your mind truly and creating an emotional connect is integral. A blog post should not look like a landing page; I agree with the author on this, but what I found missing or less emphasized is the linking of this content with other relevant content and how that creates more intangible invisible value for your own content. Data analytics have a passing mention in the book. Yes, over analytical and critical data inferences can kill your individuality and persona of your blogs, but, having said that, data inferences also provide valid insights that are crucial for your expansion. A thoughtful research needs to be done on finding that balance on a weighing scale where you do not trip the needle overtly to one side. Furthermore, social media integration, content sharing for creating volumes and viral content with its pros and cons should be discussed, but these are missing from this read.

And of course the last few pages mention recruiting writers and content managers and how content marketing is a team sport. Building relationships with influencers in your industry is important. Another important thing that most people miss about content is that it is an important means of not just attracting a customer base but also for gaining and attracting team members, affiliates and most importantly investors to your venture.

In conclusion, this is not a book if you are exclusively looking to hone your SEO and curation skills, instead a perfect book for balancing SEO and digital presence with the intangible elements of content strategy, managing content teams and creating content-based brand personas. It is a perfect read for business studies students as well as entrepreneurs looking to take a leap into the present day dynamic entrepreneurial world.