Designing a winning content marketing system
“Demonstrate your authority and expertise by creating content that answers the questions your ideal client is asking. Help them make decisions and solve their problems by being of service.”
What is Content Marketing?
Generally speaking, content marketing is the process where you, the solopreneur business owner (not an outsourced writer), publish content that creates awareness of the problem you solve and who you solve it for. Content marketing is considered a “top of the funnel” marketing activity, and has a return on investment that can be challenging to measure.
The most important part of content marketing is not the content—it’s the list-building value of the content. This is why you should always have some sort of call-to-action that captures the user’s email address. Your email list is one of the most important assets of your solopreneur business. And, creating a list allows you to share specific content or new content with your subscribers first. There is more on this in the Email Marketing section of the Marketing Resource Locker.
I strongly recommend you read Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask, You Answer, a great book on content marketing. Although he speaks to larger businesses, not necessarily solopreneurs, you can get a ton of value from what he’s created and the examples he provides. He followed that book with The Visual Sale, co-written with Tyler Lessard. Both are great resources.
The content you publish can be in multiple formats and exist on any channel, however, your content should live on your website to create good SEO and so you have complete control of the context. As in the image at the top of this workshop, content marketing can be video, text, audio or images or a combination of these mediums. For example, you can write a blog post, add a video in the middle and maybe a downloadable cheat sheet.
Publish authentic, value-based content that adds value
Over the years, there have been many hacks used to improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) results by having keywords and key phrases and other elements embedded in content to improve organic search results. However, Google and other leading search engines have figured this out years ago, and current algorithms are super sophisticated and discern sites that use “black hat” tactics to boost SEO. Your best results will come from content you publish that’s from the heart, honest, transparent, fair and answers the questions your prospects are asking.
Don’t be afraid to publish content that turns people away from doing business with you. You want to work with people who are a “hell yes!” to working with you, right? Not the ones you feel that you have to nudge, cajole or convince that you are the right person to help them.
Design your system
Here is a step-by-step process to design your content marketing system so you stick to your content creation, curation (where you leverage other people’s content) and publishing:
STRATEGY: Create a strategy for content marketing that focuses on your target market and positions you as the go-to resource.
BRAINSTORM: Using Marcus’s approach of “They Ask, You Answer,” brainstorm a BIG list of every question you’ve ever gotten from a client, prospect, curious colleague or even yourself. Take those questions, categorize them (for tagging and organizing your content in your website’s blog) and remember to always keep your prospect in mind. They’re researching the web for answers. Give them the answers they need, help them come to a decision, even if it’s not you.
EDITORIAL CALENDAR: Create your editorial calendar that includes the topic, format (video, article, etc.) and call to action. Spreadsheets are good for this, and there are many samples online you can grab.
CTAs: Design your calls to action so they promote the next logical step for your prospect in the early stages of working with you. That could be anything from a consult call with you to a free download of a tool or assessment to help them make a good decision in their research process.
PUBLISHING CALENDAR: Create your publishing calendar for promoting your content. Content marketing should be 20% creation of the content and 80% promotion of that content. You can schedule your content promotion with tools such as Buffer, AgoraPulse, Loomly or Later. There are many that can save you time and keep your posts organized and somewhat automated, even evergreen posts you can repost again and again.
GET IN ACTION: Batch your content creation. For example, when I shoot my videos, I often shoot more than one at a time. I keep a list of content topics I want to cover and sit down and bang a bunch out. I find it much easier to get into the groove of video when I’m shooting more than one or two videos.
ENGAGE AND TRACK: The most effective content marketing system that you can measure results is one that has good engagement (you get comments on the posts you’re promoting, videos, etc. as well as your blog comments). The more people see that you’re there to answer questions and help them, the more apt they’ll be to turn to you. Track your results from the calls-to-action you have in your content. You should be able to connect your content to a new client and assign a dollar amount to your content marketing efforts.
There is a LOT more about content marketing that you can learn here inside PappyClub, and see some great examples that will give you some great ideas. A great course, if you’re into courses, is Amy Porterfield’s List Builder’s Society. I’ve purchased it and Amy takes you through, step-by-step, how to use content marketing and social media to build your email list. Her training is very basic, beginner-level and not as deep as I would have liked, but can still be a great overview and checklist of what you need to do to get your leads going with lead magnets.🍀
