How to do content marketing (so it doesn't suck your time)

Read time: 4 minutes

Hey there 👋 - it's Brian.

Business owners and founders know how important creating content is to get more customers. But posting online takes too much time away from building your business (which is already overwhelming).

So today, we'll talk about how you can stop making content creation feel like a time suck, and create content that also builds your business.

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Build your business (through content)

You have to do a bit of everything to keep your business afloat, so you're intentional about how you spend your time.

So you need to think about creating content in a way that's different than most people you see on LinkedIn and Twitter. Most people can create content just to get followers. You need to create content that also moves your business forward.

Let's walk through 4 ways you can build your business (through content):

1. Get customer insights on what products / features to build

I had a call with a founder this week who wanted to interview potential customers. She wanted to launch her product in a new geography, but was struggling to get prospects on the phone for insights.

So I said: "why not create content targeted to customers to get their feedback?"

Now, this doesn't replace talking to customers, but it's a good supplement.

One way to do it:

Create content that speaks to customer frustrations / desires. Pay attention to reactions.

Here's an example:

I joined Twitter after working in corporate strategy. So I wanted to see what aspect of corporate strategy people are most interested in.

So I wrote a Twitter thread sharing 13 strategy ideas and found one concept got 100% more "likes" than the average tweet in the thread (think of "likes" as votes for what customers are passionate about):

"3/ Strategy is not choosing the best market to be in, but choosing the market where you have a clear competitive advantage"

This tells me that my audience is most passionate about how to choose a market.

Knowing this - next step would be to create content that keeps getting more specific within market selection. I could:• Ask the audience to share their pain on market selection• Tell a story about how I solve a real market entry problem• Share best practices on market entry

Look at how prospects engage with each post and you get closer to finding your solution.

In addition to engagement I also post the same content on LinkedIn to see their analytics. You can see:• Job Titles• Location• Industries• Company size

2. Learn skills you need to build your solution

You're constantly learning skills to build your business.

So don't let your learnings go to waste. As you're learning the skill, take your notes in a Twitter thread. Then look over your notes and apply them to your audience.

You're doing the work to learn the skills anyway so sharing your learnings will get you a group of prospects who could buy your solution (for less effort).

Here's an example:

I needed to grow my reader-base faster. So while on a flight I read a book to attract and keep attention, called Writing for Emotional Impact.

Then, I thought: how can I apply my learnings to my audience?

So I summarized the notes (that I already took) and made them relevant to people growing their business:

If you're learning great things that your customers are interested in, share it with them and you'll grow your customer-base, with little effort to you.

3. Improve messaging to close more sales

If customers aren't clear you have the best solution for their pain, they won't buy.

That puts you out of business.

So once you can communicate how you have the best solution for your customer's pain, there's 100 different ways you can say it. Only a few will be great a selling to customers.

So we need to find the right way to say it that will get people to buy.

Here's how:

Craft a bunch of different ways to say why your solution is the best for your customer's pain. Then, share the phrasing in content. See which gets the most engagement (with your target customers).

Use that phrasing across platforms (landing pages, emails etc).

4. Close sales

The content you create also needs to get you paying customers.

Your content does this in 2 ways:1) Increase perceived value2) Drive traffic to an offer

The ideas you share are insightful solutions to your customer's pain. When customers see those ideas they begin to see you as a valuable solution to their problem. The more they value you the more willing they are to pay for your solution.

Then, drive the customers to a offer (e.g., a landing page). The offer closes the sale.

If you're using content to build your audience (without building your business) you're wasting time.

Content is just a way to share your ideas. So share ideas in a way that also builds your business.

Examples:• Learn a new skill (and take notes in a LinkedIn post)• Test messaging from your landing page in a tweet to see which gets most engagement• Write a Twitter thread on different solutions and build the one that gets customers excited

Build content that also builds your business.

That's a wrap!

If you have any questions, reply to this email. Feel free to let me know how you're using content to build your business today.

I read every email.

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian