Chapters

Summary

This episode provides tips on content marketing. Make sure to take notes!

Simon started with the definition of content marketing. “Content marketing is releasing something interesting, [it] grabs the attention of a potential customer [and] builds trust.” (Sourced from Dan Norris.) Grabbing attention through content has gotten harder with social media. You will need to come up with a content strategy.

Simon said that many ecommerce businesses tend to start posting content without any structure or vision. They hope that something will eventually stick out. Unfortunately, this method fails 99% of the time. Simon recommended using a framework by Dan Norris. He goes through the points in this episode.

Coming up with your content strategy:

• Vision – What is your content about when it reaches its full potential?
• Values – What are the key values that will form content choices?
• Inspirations – Where should you look for content inspiration?
• Strategy Comments – Write a high-level description of the overall strategy behind your content. (A document to look back to when you are stuck.)
• Target Communities – What groups of people are you creating content for? Where do they hang out?
• Differentiator – How will your content be different from other existing ones?
• Unfair Advantage – What about your business gives you an unfair advantage?
• Metrics – What are your measurements for success?
• Lead Magnets – What will you use or do to create leads?

The next topic is the types of content. Simon said businesses usually require a combination of content types to succeed. Here is the list.

1. Written content – blogs, white papers, checklists, case studies, blueprints, ebooks, and more
2. Video – can be re-purposed and re-used alongside written content
3. Images – product shots, team shots, behind-the-scenes, infographics, memes, and so on
4. Audio – podcasts, general interviews, sound bites, songs, and such
5. Social interactions – Typeform, Facebook polls, playlist shares, and so on

Next, you have to come up with content ideas. Here are seven ways to come up with ideas.

1. Check hashtags on Twitter
2. Check your most popular blog posts and create similar posts
3. Search on Reddit for your niche area
4. Research your competitors by putting them into Buzzsumo
5. Tell a personal story about your product or brand
6. Put a broad keyword into Q&Rs to see what questions people have
7. Ask your customers or followers what content they want to see

Now, what makes good content? Simon referred to Dan Norris again. “Great content is something you provide to your audience that captures their attention and encourages them to engage and share.” Here are some tips to make sure your content stands out.

• Don’t be afraid to go outside your niche
• Be more generous
• Be more transparent
• Be more controlling – better to be slightly contrarian than generic
• Be more actionable

Lastly, Simon shared some common strategies for content creation.

• The Gary Vee – re-purposing longer content into shorter chunks of content
• Cinderella effects – a framework for writing content that starts from misery but ends with ecstasy (e.g. in your blog post, present a problem, a solution, another problem, and another solution)
• 5:3:2 rule – the ratio of your social media posts in the order of curation posts, creation posts and humanisation posts.