How to Create Content that Stands Out in a World of Sameness: The Zone of Intrigue

Introducing my content marketing strategy model

As a new content marketer, I’ve been thinking about how to stand out in a social landscape with millions of people clamoring for attention. It is both daunting and frustrating thinking about injecting my content into the social media ecosystem. It’s like throwing a drop of water into the ocean.

So I analyzed content creators that I like, tried to understand why I like them, then built an executable strategy for myself, that will serve as a content North Star, so I’m not floundering around trying to come up with content ideas all the time.

There is a lot of advice online on where to find content marketing ideas, for example, see what’s trending on Reddit. But the problem with most of this advice is that you are still fishing in the same pond as thousands of other people, scrounging around for scraps, and what you find might not have anything to do with you as a person.

If the goal is to differentiate yourself, you have to do something different than everyone else, and regurgitating the same content as everyone else won’t cut it.

So today I introduce my content idea model:

It has 5 components:

• COMMON KNOWLEDGE is the plentiful information already widely available. You can think of this as anything that’s easily found via Google.

• EXPERT KNOWLEDGE is the generally accessible information put out by someone who has training or special expertise in a given topic area.

• PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE is what you personally know from your life experience, either through intentional learning or hard knocks.

• THE UNKNOWN is knowledge not yet characterized in the public square; this is information yet to be discovered.

• ZONE OF INTRIGUE is the intersection between what you personally know and what the public does not yet know.

As a content marketer, it is your job to attract attention to yourself, and hopefully deliver some golden nugget of interesting advice or knowledge that makes someone want to like and follow you. If you create content that is COMMON KNOWLEDGE, you will not be seen as any kind of interesting person, because you are sharing what everyone already knows.

Now if you have some expertise in something, things get a little more interesting, because you know more than the average Joe. You are seen as an “EXPERT” on a given subject. This expert universe is slightly smaller because not everyone becomes an expert, and established expert knowledge is shared widely, becoming broadly available.

PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE is narrower still, because only you can be you. My life experiences are unique to me, no one can easily replicate my knowledge since they have not lived my life.

Lastly, THE UNKNOWN is narrower still because what you don’t know is different from what I don’t know, so our UNKNOWNS are unique to us. One could argue that this should be the largest bubble of all, as humans probably know less than all that can theoretically be known, but this is not a metaphysical philosophical model, so for our purposes let’s just say this a subset of all the unknowns that you uniquely might be able to access.

Why am I highlighting the “ZONE OF INTRIGUE”? I think this is where the most interesting content online comes from. No one can replicate your personal life experience, and no one has the exact container of knowledge that you have. Because of your unique position in the knowledge universe, you may have insight into something UNKNOWN that no one else has yet seen.

In this ZONE OF INTRIGUE is where you can find SCARCE content ideas that are uniquely yours, that are DIFFERENTIATED from everyone else’s content, and that would thus be INTERESTING to others.

Let’s take an example. Do you know who

Paul Millerd

is? He wrote a book called the Pathless Path (which I would highly recommend). He was a consultant that became increasingly dissatisfied with his occupation for a variety of reasons. He chose to exit that hamster wheel and start on a journey to find a better life, and in the process essentially became a content creator.

Paul’s ZONE OF INTRIGUE is leaving the traditional expected route of being an employee. His PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE about consulting intersected with the UNKNOWN of what a life off the hamster wheel could look like. He literally lived in this intersection while on his journey to find a new life. In this intersection his book was born, and soon after, the business he has today.

Staying on the subject of careers, COMMON KNOWLEDGE would be everything you read online about finding a job, climbing the ladder, etc. The EXPERT KNOWLEDGE might be more detailed advice given by career coaches on how to write your resume, setup your Linkedin, ask for a raise, etc, but that advice is still in the arena of generally available knowledge. While helpful in a moment of need, it’s not particularly interesting content.

What’s interesting is Paul’s PERSONAL journey off the hamster wheel, and he is now sharing what was previously UNKNOWN to the public, that there is a viable “pathless path” you can take as an alternative to the default career path.

Someday he may be seen as an EXPERT in getting on the pathless path, and if that spreads widely enough, it may eventually become COMMON KNOWLEDGE, where the “alternative career” becomes the default.

So to follow my model, you should start in your ZONE OF INTRIGUE, then as you share more and more of what you discover there, over time there is a cascading effect, where you then become an EXPERT, then your information may become COMMON KNOWLEDGE.

Try this exercise with your favorite content creator. James Clear. Ali Abdaal. They found a ZONE OF INTRIGUE (in this case habits and productivity), and started making highly personal content around that, exposing what was previously UNKNOWN to the masses — their UNIQUE take on those subjects. Note they did not bring already widely accepted COMMON knowledge about habits and productivity, of which there is abundance, but their PERSONAL take on those subjects. In other words, knowledge from their ZONE OF INTRIGUE. Over time they are becoming EXPERTS on those subjects, and I would suggest Atomic Habits for example, are now entering COMMON KNOWLEDGE, as the average person interested in habits now knows an atomic habit or two.

If you are a new content creator like me, who is not yet known for anything, who is not yet famous, who does not yet have a huge following, you might ponder what your unique ZONE OF INTRIGUE might be. It can get your journey started on the right foot of differentiated, unique, scarce content that only you can create.

What do you know that no one else knows? What is unique about your PERSONAL life experience that gives you access to your corner of THE UNKNOWN universe? What nuggets might you bring back from THE UNKNOWN to share?

As more information becomes commoditized, widely available, and commonly understood by the general public, it also becomes less interesting. Soon AI will be dishing out the 1 best answer to every common question, so regurgitating this information as a content creator is already becoming non-differentiated and boring.

The only thing that will remain is the uniqueness found in your ZONE OF INTRIGUE.

We’ll see if this strategy works for me, and I’m not saying it will be easy. This isn’t a 1-2-3 step formula, but I hope it helps you hone in on your unique ZONE OF INTRIGUE, where no one can copy you, and only you can bring specialized knowledge from the mysterious UNKNOWN, to help other people in some way make sense of their own lives.

Until next time!