Doodles Take Their Seat at the Content Marketing Table

Any one who has been in a meeting with me or follows me on social media knows I like to doodle. But more than just being a fun pastime for me (though they are that also) these doodles are a core tool in my business toolbox.

I have always been a fan of what is now being labelled visual thinking but had mainly used it as a problem solving tool that started with Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas and grew from there.

Ever since I have been creating content I have always started out any piece of work no matter how large or small with a drawing, whether a quick doodle or an elaborate sketch. However, that is where their part in the process stopped.

I always kept these to myself and used them simply as the starting point for writing content.

The interesting thing is that as I started to share the doodles with people to explain complex ideas in a simple manner I started to realise that a lot of people were very interested in them (often more so than the finished written piece). That is when I started to shift my focus to using doodles to communicate. As I shared these doodles on social media they received way more engagement than anything I write.

In fact the first time I shared a doodle on a blog it received 3 times as many readers as the text version.

Why is this?

In my experience there are two reasons for this:

While we all have preferences on how we consume and learn information we are all visual animals. Some people may prefer visuals more than others we can all instantaneously understand and comprehend them naturally unlike reading.

Secondly, in a world with an increasing deluge of information streaming through our lives and wide spread attention deficit disorder…a visual really stands out and grabs our attention. Let’s face it they are just more fun and interesting.

It seems obvious now but I had never thought of doodles as a viable business communication tool. For sitting round a table with a colleague and problem solving or gathering a team round a white board for strategic planning, Yes. But as a marketing tool….

People like Dan Roam, Mike Rohde and Sunni Brown have done a lot to validate the use of visuals in the business world but it isn’t really until you do it for yourself that it really starts to make sense.

Why aren’t there more doodles out there?

The number one reason has been stated many times before by people more knowledgeable than myself— people don’t think they can draw. This is still a pervasive problem in society.

The second, more related to business and marketing is that too often people hold a narrow conception of content marketing that is often restricted to the written word in a traditional blog post.

As Sunni Brown says:

“There is a powerful cultural norm against doodling in settings in which we are supposed to learn.”

Well no more!

It is time to take a stand! While the doodles tend to play second fiddle to the words they are now rising in importance and taking their rightful place at the content marketing table, well at least at my table.