Content of the Week #8: Scotch Mist

How do you make someone actually want to go somewhere?

A lot of the content I’ve been featuring recently has made me laugh and sometimes taught me something, but it’s rare that I see something and think ‘I would like to go there.’

AND YET, this is what Chris Lawlor achieved this morning as I browsed Tiktok, while my partner drives us down to Weymouth and I try to write a blog with patchy Dorset internet connection.

So this week’s Content of the Week is a TikTok about Goblin Ha’ (Yester Castle) in East Lothian, Scotland.

I’ve trained my algorithm to serve me nothing but videos about heritage, art and Alan Partridge.

So, what made me pay attention to this video? I’d already swiped past a ‘Did you know’ TikTok already because, frankly, I didn’t give a shit about it.

What made this one different was:

• It looks good. You can do a lot with just your smartphone, but the problem is: everyone has a smartphone. Mixing in a bit of 180°/360° video just jazzes it up a bit – and then of course it followed the No Scene Can Last Longer Than 3 Seconds Rule.
• The storytelling. This video wasn’t scripted like a tourist brochure. Instead, there are adjectives. The castle is unique, it’s hidden in woods, there’s a dark staircase tunnel and a spooky past. It’s GCSE-level writing but the simplicity works – it creates an atmosphere and sets up a mystery for the video to solve.
• The Scottish effect. There’s just something about Scotland in autumn. Throw a castle into the mix and you’ll have Americans frothing at the mouth. You can’t go wrong.

So, what can you take away from this?

Partly it’s about visualising the journey people take to your site. People don’t just appear by magic – they usually have to drive, get the train, walk or a combination of the three. How can you package the journey that makes it more appealing than ‘walk down the high street and we’re next to Boots’?

You may not be lucky enough to be in some Scottish forest, but the formula is simple enough. What is the hook about your site/location – the answer to the ‘Did you know’ question? What journey do people take to your site, and what’s the vibe and points of interest?

When you think about it, there are probably more stories than you can tell in 60 seconds.

Even in Reading, where I live, you could talk about Henry I dying of a surfeit of lampreys, Victorians killed by freak tornadoes and Oscar Wilde’s incarceration all before you even make it to the Abbey Ruins.

The trick is making everything look and sound much more romantic than it actually is – so don’t include the O’Neills and vape shops, otherwise the Americans might not add you to the bucket list.