But how can I figure out what these shared experiences are, and when they will occur? How can I add them to my content plan? There is a simple and ubiquitous tool that can help with this. And there is a good chance you already have one nearby, right now…

Using a calendar for content idea generation

One of the biggest obstacles in creating consistent high quality content is idea generation. This will be a major topic on this site for a long time. But today I’m going to address the lowest of the low hanging fruit – the calendar.

Now, I’m not talking about a calendar app for your smartphone. Nor an editorial calendar plugin for your blog. This is old-school, much like the word “nor”. I am talking about a printed calendar, with dates all laid out in monthly blocks. A calendar where you can look forward and look back. And most importantly, where you can see as many national, regional, and religious holidays as possible at a single glance.

What makes a calendar so powerful for content idea generation? It is universal. It’s part of our collective consciousness. Let me illustrate…

Once the days warm up, we all think about summer days and vacations. When the leaves turn, we think about shorter days and hunkering down for winter. Once winter sets in, we think about the holidays and spending time with family. As soon as we get past the holidays, there is a brief period of consideration for the upcoming new year. And then, when you just can’t take any more cold weather, we think about spring flowers and being able to get outside again. And the cycle starts over (I wrote this from a northern hemisphere perspective, but I’m sure you folks south of the equator go through a similar cycle).

So what does this all mean for your content creation? It means that you have a structure in place. A set of constraints you can work within to create timely pieces of content that will resonate with your audience. By simply looking at a calendar, you’ll know what is likely to be on your prospects’ minds when they reach a certain date, or month, or season.

Even if your product or service has nothing to do with the weather outside, or the time of the year, or whatever holiday is coming up next, you can still weave those themes into your content. And thinking about those themes should trigger ideas for your next piece of content.

Let’s look at this calendar concept a little more tactically…

I am writing this article in the middle of February, 2017. So let’s look back at last month (or eleven months into the future) and do some content idea generation for a fictitious small business:

• The first thing I notice about January is that there are few major holidays in January. Here in the US we have Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but that’s about it. Now Dr. King is one of my favorite historical figures, so this would probably be an excellent opportunity to talk about the things he has taught me and how they apply to my business. The key to an article or podcast or video about a significant historical figure is to keep it respectful and “non-salesy”. People will definitely take offense if you try to use their hero’s name to hawk your widget.
• We have one major event that we absolutely can’t pass up – the new year itself. This is a great calendar event to weave into our content. Chances are our product or service makes someone’s life better. The new year gives us an opportunity to point this out. We could write about resolutions, or how we hate resolutions. We could record a video about making life better in 2017. It might be the perfect time for an infographic about planning for a successful “fill in the blank” in 2017.
• This January, we also had a really big event that it might be better to let sail right on past … the inauguration. Politics is almost always a sticky subject, especially if you are writing for a business blog. No matter what you write, it’s virtually guaranteed that half of your customers/prospects will disagree with you – some of them vehemently and vocally. My advice would be to spare yourself the headaches and steer clear of politics on your business website (unless, of course, politics is your business).
• Here in Colorado, and much of the US and Europe, January is a cold and dreary time. This is another theme that we could exploit in our content plan. Maybe provide a list of indoor activities that our product could facilitate. Or write about why this is the perfect time to implement our service because the prospect won’t be distracted by summer fun.
• Finally, there are some great winter time activities that people, at least here in Colorado, absolutely live for. Activities like hockey, skiing, snowboarding, and snowshoeing. This would be a great opportunity to tie our product or service to one of these activities. Even if the widget is completely unrelated, maybe we create this tie through an analogy or a metaphor. Or we could use it as a personal story that will add flavor to an otherwise dry topic. The point is, people will have these activities on their minds. If we can add them into our content, our prospects will feel like we understand them and know where they are coming from.

So, what ideas have we generated for our timely January content?

1. Let’s start with an article about how our widget will help our prospects with a common new-year’s resolution, or maybe a resolution they haven’t considered.
2. Next up is an infographic about how our widget can be set-up and mastered over a month of long, cold winter days.
3. On MLK Day, we’ll release a podcast episode where we discuss the lessons we have learned from studying Martin Luther King Jr. and how those lessons influenced our business strategy.
4. Toward the end of January, we will publish an article comparing our widget to the rewarding nature of snowshoeing up a mountain, enjoying the view, and then running back down the mountain (if you’ve never done this, it’s an absolute blast).

There you have it, four timely content ideas generated from spending a couple of minutes looking at a calendar.

What’s the next step?

Take some time and go through the rest of the year. Generate content ideas for each month and add them to your content calendar. Finally, as each month gets closer, take a little extra time to do some more research. Maybe there are some funny holidays or “this day in history” dates you could add to your content. Did you know that January 20th is Penguin Awareness Day? This might not be the subject of an entire article, but it could be something you work into a social media post. And you will be far safer talking about Penguins than Presidents.

The beauty of working with a calendar to generate content ideas is that it eliminates the curse of the blank page. A connection to a date, or a month, or a season gives you a place to start. And that is usually all that’s needed to get your creative juices flowing.

***

Photo courtesy Gabriel Santiago / Unsplash

The post Using a calendar for content idea generation appeared first on Jason Noffsinger.

And what about those rainbows? What do they represent? How about enlightenment, or realization – the knowledge that Mr. Customer truly understands your product. He knows you, he likes you, he trusts you. And now he is ready to buy from you. He doesn’t need to be sold, he has learned what he needed to learn, and now he is ready to commit.

So, how do you “do” content marketing? Simple, be the waterfall.

Too Zen for you? Lets get down to the nitty gritty…

What is Content Marketing

The word content has recently become a buzzword in the marketing world. Someone, somewhere, coined the phrase, “content is king”. But why? Why is content king? What can it do to help your business?

Put simply, content is a tool that you can use to educate your customers and prospective customers about your product or service. Rather than trying to convince them that they should buy your widget, explain to them all – and I do mean all – of the benefits that they will enjoy from using it. Then let them reach the conclusion that they must buy it.

Content can be an article or blog post like you are reading now. Content can be a photograph or illustration of your product. Content can be a YouTube video describing how to use your product or service. Content can even be a podcast helping your customer get to know and trust you, the business owner.

Content has been around since the days of cave paintings, but until recently it was called something completely different. It was call teaching.

In the new world of marketing, people do not want to be “sold”. They don’t even want to be marketed to. They want to be taught. They want to be taught about your product. They want to be taught about your service. They want to be given all the facts, and then they want to make a decision for themselves. In today’s digital world, the best marketers and salespeople are actually the best teachers.

So what do I create content about?

This is actually the easy part. You already know what to create content about, because you know your customers. What are the questions they ask you everyday? What do you wish every customer knew before you talked to them on the phone? What single piece of information should they have before they walk through your door? All you have to do is start answering these questions and you will be well on your way to establishing a content marketing platform.

There are lots of gurus in the internet marking echo-chamber who will want to talk to you about keyword research, search engine optimization, and content marketing strategies. These are all great things to consider … once you have established your foundation of quality content. But to get started, focus on one, and only one, thing – answer your customers’ questions:

• How much does that service cost?
• What does the product look like?
• Which of your services will solve this problem?
• Will X product fit in Y space?
• How soon will I see results?

These, and a thousand more like them, need to be answered to your customers’ satisfaction. These questions can be answered in a number of ways: Articles are great for communicating complex ideas, video works really well for demonstrations, and audio is best for developing a “personal”connection.

Also, there is no need to only think BIG when it comes to content. 2000 word articles and 30 minute documentaries are great, but simple things can make a huge difference. Are your product photos properly lit and in focus? Do you have photos from multiple angles? How about product descriptions, are they thorough and well written? Are they specific to each product? We are now talking about basic merchandising. If you sell products, your merchandising is your most basic and most critical content. Product (or even service) merchandising is the engine that drives your marketing efforts forward. If it is not on-point, it really doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your site or how much your prospects know, like and trust you. If they don’t truly understand what you are selling, they are not buying.

What type of content marketing platform do I need?

There are three general types of content marketing platforms – written, audio, and video. If you are most comfortable with written content then a Website or Blog is probably best. If you are comfortable in front of the camera, and you have a product or service that is highly interactive or requires demonstration, then video may be the way to go. If you would prefer to be heard but not seen then audio is a great choice. The key is to build your platform on “real estate” that you control. In other words, don’t put a lot of time and effort into building a platform on someone else’s property.

If you build your platform on Facebook or YouTube or iTunes you could be kicked off at a moments notice with absolutely no explanation or recourse. So even if you are posting videos on YouTube or podcasts on iTunes, be sure that you are always referring your customers back to your own website and getting them to opt-in to your mailing list. These are assets that you control and that no one can take away.

After I build this platform how will it help market my business?

A content platform can help market your business in many ways. The most obvious being search engine optimization (SEO). Put simply, the more content you have on the Internet the more likely that it will be indexed and have traffic sent by Google and the other search engines. But, moving beyond SEO, the possibilities for content marketing are virtually endless.

Creating content for your website helps you generate collateral content for your various social media platforms. This content can also be repurposed into an eBook that can be used to generate email leads (lead magnet) or even sold in Amazon’s Kindle store. There is no better way to confirm your authority than to be “published”.

Compelling content gets “shared” online. This reality turns your loyal readers, viewers or listeners into a guerrilla marketing team that is out proselytizing on your behalf even when you are asleep. One caveat here – this only works for products or services that people are excited to talk about. If you are marketing a natural treatment for urinary tract infections, don’t expect a lot of social sharing. But don’t let this discourage you either. People still need your more pedestrian products, and the fact that they don’t generate a lot of online “buzz” means that each piece of new content you generate will be that much more likely to be promoted by the search engines.

Additionally, your content can and should be used by your sales team to help shepherd customers down the sales funnel. As your customers consume more and more of your content they will grow to know, like and trust you. This makes the process of “selling” far easier. If they continue to value your content, eventually the idea of selling can go away completely. They will be waiting anxiously to buy whatever you are offering.

That is the true beauty of content marketing, it can turn even introverted non-salespeople into great sales people through the simple (not easy) act of teaching.

I hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to the vast topic of Content Marketing. I will be covering all the topics presented in this article in much greater depth in the future, so stay tuned. Additionally, if there are any of these topics that you are particularly interested in, or are currently struggling with, please hit me up in the comments. Your feedback will help me prioritize my future articles.

***

Photo Courtesy Jared Erondu / Unsplash

The post What is content, and how can it help me market my business? appeared first on Jason Noffsinger.