Video transcript below.
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us on today’s episode. Today we’re going to talk about how to power up your content marketing in five minutes. So just to intro real quick, modern online marketing is all about content, right? Whether it be social media, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, you name it, if it’s online, it’s about content.
In fact, nothing online exists without content if you really think about it. Because when we talk about content, people think, “oh”, you know, “blogs”, but really like your facebook social status, it would just be empty squares. The pay per click ads would just be empty squares in the page. There’d be nothing without content.
So you’ve really got to think about that – really reshape the way you think about content in order to take your content marketing forward. And thankfully, if you’re, like most companies, you probably get the idea of what content’s about – what content marketing is about.
You kind of understand that you’ve gotta be posting on Facebook. You understand that you should probably be creating blog posts and things to generate traffic towards your site. So thankfully that’s a pretty common thing to understand.
So let’s kind of talk about what content marketing needs to be about real quick. Content marketing needs to be driven by your audience’s needs. So before we talk about powering it up let’s kind of talk about that foundation there, right?
So, your target audience has got some kind of a problem they need solved, whether it be, you know, the problem that your product solves specifically or, you know, maybe a problem they don’t even know exists. But the point is they’re online looking for information because they have a problem that needs solved.
Your content needs to be answering their questions and you’d be solving those problems. So maybe that’s just it, maybe they’ve just got a question that they need answered, right? Maybe it’s more than that, maybe, you know, you’re a plumber, the house flooded, so you need to, you need to fix it, right? But the point is your content should be answering whatever questions that they have, especially the ones that might eventually lead them to become your client.
So the key is to write about what they need, right? Especially when we’re talking about blogging, right, about what they need, not about what you want, right? Because it’s really, really commented to head down that path and talking about what you want instead of taking care of those client needs.
So, um, I think that kind of covers the foundation of content marketing. But let’s talk about now before we get into this tip to power it up, right? Let’s talk about we already need to have in place because you’ve got already have the early work done, right?
Um, so in giving this advice, I’m going to assume that you’ve already done your research, right? You’ve already spent the hours to understand what your content marketing should look like. You already know your keywords. You’ve already gone through the Google Keyword search and pick them out and you know what you’re trying to rank for. You already have built your customer profiles – your ideal client profiles; the rundown of each ideal client in your target market. And you’ve already taken a look around and see what your competition is doing. You’re very familiar with the landscape.
The real key to power up that content marketing is you’ve got to understand if you’ve got a plan, right, your content marketing to run smoothly. So, um, you know, I understand that content can be tricky to produce, right? Uh, you kinda get stumped sometimes. Not sure what to do next.
Um, so having a plan sort of eases that process, and that’s really the power up right is to have a plan. So I’m gonna explain how to create a plan and what to do here.
Um, but understand that, like I said, it’s time investment to create a plan a, but it’s worth that time investment. But remember, it’s only a five minute time investment. That’s the great part. If you understand what I’m about to share with you, understand the steps I’m about to share with you. It only takes about five minutes to create a good content plan.
Um, so the first thing they’ll say, step one to your content plan, the first thing you need to do: lay out your target keywords and your topics, right? So number one is you’ve already looked at all the different keywords you want to rank for putting down on paper, put them down in order, right?
Put them out in a planned structure, right? You know, so you’re going to have repetition there. Um, and then take this list of how ever many keywords you’ve got, mixed them up, right? Sort them up. Make sure you don’t do the same thing back to back.
And don’t forget to include your keyword alternates, right? Like for example, if you’re an events venue, right, let’s say you’re focusing on wedding events. You also want to think about like wedding receptions, right? Or bridal parties like other, other sort of key words that go around the same, uh, same idea as your core keyword.
Next step is to plan your content frequency, right? How often are you going to produce content for your audience? So first off you’ve got to determine how frequently you think is going to best benefit you. Understand that I personally don’t recommend any less than once a week. If you blog less than once a week you actually start hurting your online results more than helping them.
Um, companies that produce more content tend to get more visitors and more leads as much as 16 times a month. Um, you know, you start seeing, seeing massive improvements in your site traffic and massive improvements, uh, in the leads you capture.
But whatever you do, don’t plan for more than you can handle, right? If all you can handle is four times a month, then just stay there. Do that because the last thing you want to do is you want… The last thing you want to do is break consistency, right? Because consistency matters. If you start producing content on a regular basis and then a stop because it’s more than you can handle, slow down, shift your schedule, it’s going to hurt your traffic numbers
Next is to decide each piece of content’s format. So, right, so you got your keywords you want to write for, you’ve got the titles to those topics you want to write. What is it going to be, right?
When you’re producing content, especially through your blog or your website, um, different types of content, different formats are better, right? So first and foremost, you gotta decide what you can handle and then decide what each piece of content is going to be. So when I talk about different types of content I’m talking about, like, blogs for example, again, the articles you read here on this site. Vlogs just like this, right? Me talking to the camera. In this case it will be you talking to the camera instead of writing it down. Podcasts, right? Hopefully you’re following the Visceral Podcast, hopefully you are familiar with the idea of what a podcast is. Infographics! Infographics, you see him all over the web, they’re super, super shared. Um, you know, it’s all the data on a particular topic put into, like, sort of little bite-size pieces and nice cartoon and graphic images.
Um, and then case studies, right? The best thing you can do your content – and you can’t do it all the time, but whenever you can, it’s a great thing – is a case study. Take a look at one of your clients that has benefited from the services that you’re providing that you’re talking about today.
The last thing you want to do is schedule your due dates for each piece of content. Now that’s, I think, the thing that most people forget and it’s the thing that kind of winds up screwing things up. If you set deadlines on a regular basis, that’s going to force you to work – as long as you’re focused on what matters, right? Deadline oriented – setting a deadline is going to force you to get the work done and it’s going to force you to get it done on time, which just going to keep you consistent. Right?
It also helps you stay focused on what you’re doing next. Right? So I know that every, you know, x day my content has to be prepared to go out into the editing process or out for review for my clients. Having that schedule keeps me focused and it’ll do the same for pretty much anybody that kind of understands how schedule works and kind of works well within that.
By planning out your posts, by planning out that schedule, having a deadline, you’re going to be able to say consistent. Like I said, consistency counts, as I said before.
I mean, that’s it. That’s the four steps. All you have to do is start implementing those four steps. You do it once a month if you want.
We sat down. Look, when I, when I planned my content for this year, I sat down and took one time to me, five minutes.
Um, and, and that’s why I tell you this is only going to take five minutes and it’s going to boost your content marketing capabilities because you’re going to understand that a lot better what you’re up against. You’re going to be able to dig more into good quality content as opposed to spending all that time trying to figure out what, where, and when.
So remember, like I said, it only takes five minutes, but you’re going to save hours in the future, by knowing ahead of time what you have to write, getting on it ahead of time and being prepared.
Guys, thank you for joining us today. I really, really hope this information has provided value to you. I hope you can put it to work and, uh, and you know, and, and really see the results out of it. Thank you again. Thank you for joining us and we’ll see you next month.
