Humans are curious by nature. Content marketers can capitalize on this by producing articles, videos and infographics that show how things are made or done.

Behind-the-scenes content is an opportunity to invite the audience in for a tour of your operation, meet some of the folks involved in the work, and get to know your organization better. It's highly engaging stuff.

5 tips for behind-the-scenes content

The key is to do it well. Here are some tips:

  1. Solicit questions from your customers to make sure the content really delivers what they want to know. Talk to the sales team, too. Learn how to ask better questions.
  2. Put a strong writer on the project, someone who's curious about the work and who asks excellent questions. This is important for visual content, too, because it still has to have a story arc.
  3. For processes, map out the steps before you start working. Seems obvious, but in my experience, we always forget something obvious until we actually walk through it from start to finish and take notes. We often use the Transition-Action-Details Strategy(c), developed by Steve Peha at Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc.
  4. For video and still photography, your phone photography skills may be strong enough.
  5. Invest in a good microphone because, funnily enough, audio matters in video. We rely on the knowledgeable folks at Sweetwater for our recording gear.

Sample behind-the-scenes content

Here's an example of a behind-the-scenes piece I wrote for the International Cinematographers Guild Magazine on the HBO show Succession (go to page 40):

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