Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this B2B content marketing strategy guide, you're going to get a complete done
for you template for developing your own content marketing strategy and creating content specifically
that actually converts into paying customers down the road.
Because not all content is created equal.
So timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful videos in putting
together the rest of your content marketing process.
Now, as we dive into these five simple steps, there are three keys to success when it comes
to putting together your content and we'll rapid fire through them.
And then just dive right in.
So the very first key to success is making sure that you follow the mantra I’ve done
is better than perfect.
Your piece of content, no matter, or what type of content you're making can always be
better.
But you know, what's worse than a bad piece of content?
no piece of content at all.
So definitely perfection is the enemy when it comes to getting started with your content
creation.
And of course this ties into key to success.
Number two, and that is to not compare your content to other creators, other influencers
or other businesses in your space.
Because they've probably been doing it for a while, and it's not reasonable to think
that your content is going to be at the level that you want or at their level right out
of the gate.
You have to remember that everyone starts off at zero and the more you post, the more
you create, the easier it's going to be to make content that you can be more and more
proud of as you go on down the road.
Now the final one, number three comes to making sure no matter what platform you decide to
use, we'll choose that number three, step number three here is you actually engage.
It's crazy how many blogs I go to or YouTube channels I watch.
That the creator or the business owner never responds to anyone who comments.
And comments are where you're going to get the best insights, as to how your content
is performing.
And more importantly, where your content is falling short.
So, you know how to create better content in the future.
That's going to attract the right type of ideal customers.
So with that, let's go ahead and jump right in the very first step is of course, making
sure you have a firm understanding of your ideal customers.
Now link up in the description to a deep dive video data-driven method for putting together
your ideal customer avatar.
But here we're just going to go through a brief, brief summary of it and answer three
big questions.
So the first one, what are they doing instead?
Who is your customer avatar?
And then what do they care about?
And this is going to help us create our content marketing strategy.
So for the first question, what are they doing?
Instead, you want to go look at where your ideal customers are already consuming information,
who do they already trust?
Who are they already going to for advice?
And so you want at least five media properties.
So when I say media properties, I mean magazines, YouTube channels, Facebook pages, Instagram
accounts that they're actively engaging with, or that they would go to.
If they had a question around your particular product service or business.
And this information will actually help you with the next step, which is figuring out
specifically who your ideal customer is.
And so there's two ways you can go about doing this.
The first way is if you have a website and you already have Google analytics installed,
if you don't, don't worry because the list that you just came up with will help you with
the Facebook audience insights tool.
But if you have your website set up with analytics already, there are three simple reports that
are going to give you really great information specifically about where your ideal customers
are, their basic age, and gender information and some basics on what they're interested
in.
Again, link in the description to a video that takes a much deeper dive into how to
use Google analytics to do this.
If you don't already have a website with some traffic data that you can use, then you can
take the list that you created with the first question and go over to Facebook audience
insights.
You do have to create an ad account, but you don't actually, you have to pay for ads in
order to use the tool and you'll simply type them in and the audience insights tool will
give you a tremendous amount of information as to what your competitors or other media
properties, followers look like.
And so it's a great way to get an understanding of who your ideal customer is.
And at the end of all this, before we get to the third question, you just want to have
a really clear picture of who they are and where they are in their journey.
Because as you go through creating your content, you want to keep in mind whether or not you
want to talk to beginners, intermediate, or advanced in whatever type of how to tutorials,
you're going to be putting together as part of your content strategy.
And with that, you're ready for the final question, which is actually going to drive
the rest of your content production process.
And that is what do they care about?
So we can actually break this down into two specific questions as it relates to your business.
And this is going to help you create your content pillars.
This is all going to build up to you, actually making content in step number five.
So what we want to do here is answer two important questions.
Number one, what are their results?
What are they ultimately after?
And then number two, what do they think is getting the way?
not do what we think is getting in the way, because you're the expert, you're the service
provider, you're the product person.
So you know how to solve the problem, but they might not understand your specific solution.
So we always want to come from the ideal customer's perspective first, and then through our content,
move them to whatever our worldview is on the product or service that these should be
using.
And so let's go ahead and use a concrete example of someone who wants to grow a YouTube channel,
to illustrate how this plays out.
For results we have, they probably want to be full time and they probably want to leave
whatever their current job is so they can pursue YouTube and their passion full time.
Okay, great.
That sounds like a pretty good result.
Now, what do they think is getting in the way? we'll probably not enough views, not
enough subscribers, not making enough monetization on their channel and maybe they think their
video quality needs to be improved, have solve some of those problems, or they're not happy
with how their videos are ranking organically on YouTube.
Those are all things that they could be struggling with.
And you want to go through this exercise with your own ideal customer.
This should probably take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to get a really big list.
And then once you have this list, you're going to want to look at all of it and try, and
I know this is going to be hard, but try and categorize everything into three to five big
categories.
And these three to five big categories that you come up with are going to represent your
content pillars and what your content pillars are going to allow you to do is to easily
make sure that you don't create the same type of content over and over again.
And it's actually going to help you with your content calendar.
So you want a minimum of three because you should be posting three times a week.
We'll get to more onto that in the next step, but you can have up to five.
If you're going to be really audacious posting five a week, or you just going to rotate through
these.
But what's really important to hear is we use those two questions and then we organize
everything.
And then we decide what our content pillars are going to be, which really makes sure that
all of the content you make moving forward is directly tied to results that your ideal
customer wants and roadblocks that they need to overcome.
So make sure you're always making relevant content.
So for our example here, our pillars could be channel growth, video production and monetization
tactics.
And once you have your content pillars, you're ready for it.
The next step, which is deciding your content medium.
So there are three main content mediums.
You have written, you have audio and then you have video, like this one.
And so which one should you choose?
Obviously I'm a little biased.
I think video is the way to go, but video does take a tremendous amount more time compared
to the other two.
The advantage of video though, is because the barrier to entry is high.
A lot less other businesses are actually taking the time to invest in video.
So you're going to see a much larger return in the long run because you're going to be
ahead of the curve.
Now, when it comes to written, it's very easy to even hire someone to do writing for you.
I'll link up in the description to a video that walks you through how to delegate a lot
of what we're talking about here.
And then of course, audio is kind of a happy medium in between the two where you don't
have to jump on camera, but you don't necessarily have to spend hours typing up really well
written blog posts, which most people don't actually enjoy.
And so which one should you choose?
Well, that will be dependent upon two things.
Number one, if you're the one who's going to be producing the content, then it has to
be something that you think you're actually going to enjoy, or you actually want to get
good at.
Because trust me, nobody is good when they first start writing on about their particular
topics.
No, one's great when they start their podcast.
No, one's awesome when they just jump on video.
So it's not like you're going to feel like an expert out of the gate, but you do want
to choose a medium that you feel comfortable with.
And or you want to be comfortable with.
And then a number two is if you're not going to be producing the content, then just think
about your budget.
Because video then audio then text is the order of expensive.
With video being the most expensive.
So if you're going to delegate it, it might make more sense to do text.
And then later on you can turn it into audio or video, when you have more time or a larger
budget.
So whatever content medium you choose.
If you go ahead and go with video, it's going to be YouTube.
If you go with audio, then you're going to be doing podcasting.
And if you go with written, then you're going to be creating a WordPress blog.
Now, whatever medium you choose, it's now time to decide what day of the week you're
actually going to post.
And this is going to be dependent upon how much you can put into your content strategy.
And so even if you see other people remember number two, key to success, number two, don't
compare yourself.
You can see other people or see other companies.
And they seem to just blast out content left and right, if you only have time to commit
to one a week or one every other week then commit to it.
Because what's the most important part of this whole content process is that you settle
in into that marathon pace and you consistently produce week over week, month over month.
So a recipe for disaster is trying to do 10 posts out of the gate and then not do anything
for three months.
You really want to get this into a pot as a part of your routine.
And so, as you can see here, the content pillars actually allow you to easily decide what day
of the week is going to be about what now, obviously if you're doing three days and you
have five content pillars, it's up to you to kind of figure out how you're going to
rotate through your topics.
But once you know where your main platform is, then you can decide where when and what
you're going to post on all your other social media channels.
I'll actually link up in the description, how you can take your main post, whatever
medium it is, and easily syndicated across all the other social media channels.
Now, at this point, you may be wondering, okay, this is all great, but what about the
actual content?
And that's what step number four is all about.
Now, when it comes to the actual topics of your content, step number five, we'll go through
what to do before you start writing, recording, or editing, whatever medium you're doing.
Here, you want to figure out what you should actually be talking about.
Because we have kind of the 30,000 foot view right now.
We know these are the general topics people care about and want to learn about.
Okay, great.
But what specifically though?
And so there's a couple of places you can figure out what your content should be about.
One of the best resources, no matter what medium you use is something called answer
the public.
And all you want to do is look at your ideal customer profile, go to answer the public.com
and then just start typing in how to XYZ or what is ABC.
And they'll actually give you a list of questions that are very similar to what you just asked.
So it's a very fast way to start coming up with actual content ideas from questions,
because as you'll see in step number five, every piece of content should start by seeking
to answer a question.
Some other good ones are BuzzSumo and semrush.
BuzzSumo does a really good job of showing you popular blog posts across your specific
niche or industry.
And then semrush can also be really helpful if you're going to be doing keyword research
for a blog.
Now, personally, I do a lot of YouTube content.
So actually just go over to YouTube and I treat it like answer the public where I start
typing in key words or questions.
And I use those auto suggestions as a way to guide me to topic ideas for videos.
This is definitely not something that you should skimp on, because if you're going to
put in all that time and energy into making a blog post, producing a video, you want to
make sure that it's on the right topic.
And so finally, step number five, it's time to actually create the piece of content.
And there's a simple process you can go through before you make any piece of content, to ensure
that it's actually going to be valuable to your ideal customer.
And this is using something called a content frame.
And it's three simple questions you want to ask before you dive into writing, recording,
editing.
The big question, desired result, and perceived roadblock.
These three are going to help you fill something called an information gap.
Because your ideal prospect or customer doesn't know something or wants to be able to do something.
And your piece of content is going to take them from “I'm unhappy and I want to know”,
or “be able to do something” to “I know how to do it”, or “I have enough information
to go figure out how to do it myself”.
And so this gap is what's your content is going to be filling.
So the very first question you want to ask is, what is the question my ideal customer
is actually asking?
So, this is really helpful if you have a list of keywords.
Like for example, if you're looking at a list and it says how to lose weight, or if it says
kale salad, well, okay.
Do they want to know how to actually make a kale salad?
Are they searching kale salad because they want to know something else about how it should
go with the rest of their diet?
There's a lot of different things that just the word kale salad could mean.
And so what you want to do is go to BuzzSumo, search on YouTube and see the type of content
that pops up.
So you can kind of turn every keyword into actual question.
So once you have a question, then you can go ahead and go to the second part, which
is identifying the desired result.
So what do they want to know or be able to do as a result, so the consuming the content?
So this is where that content gap really comes in.
And then finally, what's going to be your unique twist or your unique way of communicating
that, “Hey, you should watch my video”, or “you should read my blog post across
everything else” that your ideal customer could be engaging with.
And this is simply answering the question, what do they think is holding them back from
knowing or doing what they really want?
And you'll see how this ties into creating your headline when we get to our concrete
example here.
So let's go back to our example here, of someone who's trying to grow a YouTube channel, and
let's say, we're going after the keyword get more views, we'll keep this real basic.
This can always get more advanced.
So the very first question we have is okay, if the keyword is how to get more views, well
then the question is how do I get more views to my videos?
And I like writing these in first person.
And then desired result, get more subscribers, have a bigger YouTube channel.
So it's not just about getting the views.
The views is a stepping stone to having a larger channel, which is a stepping stone
to having more subscribers, which is a stepping stone to being able to do YouTube full time.
So that's kind of how you want to think about the progression of things.
Of course, we're not going to talk about how to be full time on YouTube, but this piece
of content, we're just talking about views, but it's important.
We remember that just talking about views is this little piece that's contributing to
ultimately they want, and maybe we have a product or service.
That's all about, you know, the whole process as opposed to just this little part.
And then finally we have the perceived roadblock and this is going to be, my channel is too
small to compete.
I don't have a big budget for better equipment or advertising.
Okay, great.
So now not only do we have a clear picture of the question, we know the ultimate result
of that they're looking for, which is to quit their day job, but we're going to kind of
scale it back a little bit.
And then also we're looking at okay, but what specifically do they think a problem is?
That's keeping them from what they want right now, which is more views.
It could be budget because of equipment, or it could be budget because of advertising.
And so we can take all this information and create our headline and actually create several
headlines.
And then go ahead and create something, I like to call a teaser text.
And this is something you'll use to share your piece of content across social media.
And this is kind of like creating this really many small power packed, unique selling proposition
for your piece of content.
So in this particular example, a video title could be how to get more views as a small
channel and then under parenthesis, under 5,000 subscribers.
So we're saying what result they're going to be able to achieve or get closer to as
a result of going through our piece of content.
And we're talking about a roadblock.
So when, if we just said how to get thousands of views to your YouTube channel, well, that
sounds great, but that doesn't really speak to anyone specifically.
But as soon as we had as a small channel, we're under 500 subscribers, all of a sudden
someone who has a small channel and they might not, have 500 subscribers.
They might have 2000, but they would still find value in something that's designed for
a small channel.
And then they can immediately connect and say, “Oh! that one is for me.
Because I have a small channel and I want more views” as opposed to, “Oh, okay.
Another article about how to go more views”.
There's probably not going to work for me.
Right?
And then we have our intro or teaser text.
And this is in this video, you're going to learn, a video ranking strategy that allows
you to compete with larger channels on YouTube.
Even if you have less than 5,000 subscribers.
Now, of course, that's an intro for a YouTube video, but you can always modify that to be
the intro to your podcast or the first line of your blog.
And so with that, that completes the five of your content marketing template.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and have some ideas on how to put
together a content marketing strategy for your business.
So make sure you comment below with any questions because I read and reply to every single one,
hit that like button and subscribe for more deep dive marketing tutorials and walkthroughs,
just like this one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.