The 3 Things All Your Content Should Do
What exactly is the goal of your content? What is it supposed to do?
You’ve no doubt heard the “gurus” come out and say you need to “give value”, or “create epic shit”. <– Their words, not mine. 😉
That’s all well and good, but simply telling a person to write something awesome doesn’t exactly help a lot. And it doesn’t really connect the dots to how that content is supposed to help your business or make you money.
Your whole business has to be based off of making an offer. That offer provides a product or service to an audience who wants it in exchange for money.
Captain obvious right there, but I think it needs to be repeated pretty often so we never forget. 🙂
But, tack on blogging and content marketing onto all that, what is the purpose?
It comes down to 3 things. Your content has 3 basic functions:
- Provide something of value.
- Build goodwill.
- Make an offer.
Your market wants a transformation. They want to move from point A to point B. Along that transformation will be certain pillars that they have to do. Certain barriers to overcome, etc. Anything you do in your content to help them get further toward their point B is value.
But, you also want to build good will. You want them to know, like and trust you. Well, if you provide them value, you will raise that goodwill. If you do it in a cool way, or perhaps even a little entertaining, the goodwill can raise even faster.
Then, lastly, always make an offer with your content. And, no, that doesn’t have to mean a “buy now” button. It could just be to opt in for a free download. But, make some kind of offer and give them a next action step.
Those are the 3 things your content should be doing. And there are 3 simple rules you should keep in mind about all this:
- The income you make will be directly proportional to the amount of value you put out into the marketplace.
- The income you make will be directly proportional to the amount of goodwill you have built.
- The income you make will be directly proportional to the amount of offers you make.
And so…
You make valuable stuff. You help people. You build goodwill. And you make a lot of offers.
Do that… and you make money.
Keep in mind…
Most people are not ready to buy from you. It used to be said that it took 9 points of contact before somebody will make a buying decision. These days, I think it is much, much higher. With all the attention span dwindling and the social media firehose, I think it takes WAY more touch points these days. Which means…
Frequent content is valuable to keep you top of mind and in their view. This way, when they ARE ready to buy, you’ll be there.
Now, don’t think this means a violation of The Redwood Strategy. Or that I’m now advocating turning your blog into a firehose of new posts. No sir. Because our blogs are just part of a much bigger thing. Content these days can be published on social media or in email… and it can be incredibly short. Hell, 15-30 second videos work quite well these days on social. It’s insane to me that people have such short attention spans, but they do.
So, yes… content frequency is important. But, it doesn’t have to mean loads and loads of blog posts. In fact, it shouldn’t.
The more you do those 3 things, the more money you can make.
This stuff isn’t really complicated.
Here’s how I help people every day…
Make everything about managing your site simpler… by having me on your team to help make sure everything goes smoothly. By providing the very best tools, the best hosting and maintaining everything for you… I’ll take care of the mechanics so you can just focus on growth.
Did you like this issue? Consider sharing the opt-in page on social media to help it grow.
And feel free to forward it on to somebody you think will benefit from it.
The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.
