Remarkable Content Strategy
Be world-class for a narrow market or cross boundaries to create a new category
Most content is mediocre because it is designed to be inoffensive and broadly appealing. Remarkable content — content worth remarking about — requires a deliberate choice to be exceptional for a specific audience or to cross category boundaries to create something new. The authors present two valid paths to remarkability.
Path one is depth within a niche: become so useful and authoritative to a narrow audience that you own that segment completely. The 'left-handed monkey wrench shop' example illustrates this — you won't be the biggest tool retailer, but you will be unchallenged in your niche, and niche dominance is a more defensible position than trying to compete broadly.
Path two is category crossing: combine ideas from adjacent or distant fields to create content or a product that feels genuinely new. The iPod didn't invent the MP3 player but crossed consumer electronics with elegant design and a commerce layer. Remarkable strategy asks which of these paths you will commit to — trying to be remarkable to everyone produces content that is remarkable to no one.
- Average content earns average attention; only remarkable content earns the sharing and linking that drives inbound growth.
- You cannot be remarkable to everyone — pick a narrow audience and be exceptional for them.
- Depth beats breadth: a definitive guide to one narrow topic outperforms ten shallow overviews.
- Category-crossing creates the perception of novelty without requiring invention from scratch.
- Remarkability is defined by the audience, not by the creator — test whether they actually share it.
- Identify your minimum viable nicheDefine the smallest audience segment you could dominate. Not 'small businesses' but 'independent financial advisors in the UK with under 10 clients.' The narrower the definition, the easier it is to be remarkable within it.Pro tipIf your defined niche feels uncomfortably small, it is probably about right. Most teams default to audiences that are too broad to serve remarkably.
- Map what already exists in the nicheResearch the 10–20 most-linked and most-shared pieces of content in your niche. Identify the gaps: what question hasn't been answered? What format hasn't been tried? What depth hasn't been reached? Your content target is the obvious gap.WarningIf you can't find a gap in the existing content landscape, either the niche is wrong or you haven't looked carefully enough. There is always a gap.
- Choose the path: depth or category crossingDecide which path to remarkability fits your capabilities. Depth requires subject matter expertise and time. Category crossing requires creative synthesis and willingness to break conventions. Both work; neither works halfway.Pro tipMost B2B companies are better positioned for depth. Category crossing is harder to execute and easier to misfire.
- Create one flagship content assetBuild one piece of content that is clearly the best thing that exists on your chosen topic — the most comprehensive guide, the most useful tool, the most creative treatment. This flagship becomes your proof of concept for remarkability and the anchor for your inbound link strategy.WarningDon't create the flagship and then stop. Remarkable content needs to be the standard, not the exception.
- Measure remarking, not just consumptionTrack how often your content is shared, linked to, and cited — not just how many people viewed it. Content that gets views but no shares isn't remarkable; it's mildly interesting. Adjust your content strategy based on what earns external endorsement.Pro tipA Moz toolbar or Ahrefs will show inbound links as they accumulate. This is the best long-run measure of whether content is genuinely remarkable.
The authors describe a hypothetical tool retailer who stops trying to compete with Home Depot on price and selection, and instead becomes the world's best source for left-handed tools. The narrowness of the niche seems like a weakness — but within that niche, there is no competition, the audience is intensely loyal, and word-of-mouth is automatic.
Apple didn't invent the MP3 player — dozens existed before iPod. Apple crossed consumer electronics (music playback device) with elegant industrial design, a dead-simple user interface, and the iTunes commerce layer. This synthesis created a product that felt categorically new even though each component existed elsewhere.
The remarkable content concept builds directly on Seth Godin's 'Purple Cow' framework — the idea that, in a world of options, only something worth talking about earns organic word-of-mouth. Halligan and Shah applied this to content creation specifically, observing that the most linked-to and shared content in any niche was either the deepest and most authoritative treatment of a topic or the most creative reframing of a conventional subject. They codified the two-path model from their pattern recognition across hundreds of companies they'd studied.