Content brands cloud up the web with valuable content as they aim to build relationships with a piece of their industry’s audience. A small number of content brands attract the lion’s share of traffic, but most get held back by these five critical content brand mistakes.
#1: Not Building Relationships
In any business, relationships are critical. Other influencers can provide you with the key to a locked door and/or promote your content. When my book Content Marketing Secrets came out, I got early praise and several immediate reviews because of the relationships I built in advance.
My favorite way to build a relationship for my content brand is to interview someone on my podcast. Not only does the relationship get built, but I also produce new content for my audience and get to learn new insights about my niche.
I believe you should launch your own podcast if you haven’t done so already because they represent an extraordinary opportunity for building strong relationships, providing content for your audience, and acting as a source of knowledge and income.
#2: Not Utilizing Webinars
While building relationships is important, it’s just as important to utilize webinars when selling products. Webinars account for the majority of sales for any launch, and that’s why I only become an affiliate for a launch when I know the product creator will host some webinars.
After changing beliefs, encouraging your audience, and sharing some insights for about an hour, you can then go on to promote your product. I recommend watching other webinars to see how this is done, and if you want the ultimate hack, just buy Russel Brunson’s book Expert Secrets. It has an entire chapter focusing on a slide-by-slide breakdown of a successful webinar.
#3: Forgetting About Optimizing The Experience
As you continue to grow your content brand and explore new opportunities, don’t forget about the core experience that you provide for your audience. As I got more inconsistent with blogging, I noticed that the core experience I provided wasn’t what it once was.
Fewer people stuck around and my traffic numbers went down. That’s what happens when you don’t focus on optimizing the experience. Now I’m creating as much content as I can each day. I’m writing daily blog posts and will have daily episodes for my podcast and YouTube channel shortly.
The winners are the people who put out the highest quantity of valuable content in front of as many people as possible. Think about how you are or aren’t creating that experience for your audience.
#4: Extending Yourself Too Thin
The blessing and cure with content brands is that we have so many choices for growth. Podcasting, blogging, videos, and social media (that alone has many pathways) are some of the many choices we have for creating our content and spreading our messages.
It’s tempting to explore as many of these opportunities as possible and become mediocre at all of them. Some people seem like they’re utilizing all of these platforms because they mastered one of the platforms and gradually expanded to other platforms.
If you spread yourself too thin, your work will suffer, and you’ll feel burnt out. While gradually expanding is one way to avoid feeling too thin, the next mistake (arguably the biggest business mistake of all time) can put a small cap on any brand’s growth.
#5: Not Delegating Some Of The Workload
Delegation’s importance cannot be overstated. Your workload is big enough already, and as you continue to expand your content brand, your workload will expand as well. While you can easily perform the tasks yourself, delegating them opens up more time you can use to pursue other projects.
For instance, I don’t grow my Twitter audience, edit podcast episodes, or schedule the episodes. Other people perform those tasks for me which allows me to work on my business instead of in my business.
When you work on your business, you get to take a satellite view to see what’s really happening. You get to see all of the paths you can take and contemplate the best choice instead of blindly going through each day and hoping you’re getting closer to your ultimate objective.
In Conclusion
All content brands have the potential to thrive and reach large audiences. Our inputs affect our outputs, but the ideal input isn’t based on how many hours you put towards your brand. It’s well documented that Gary Vaynerchuk works 18 hours in a given day.
Most people don’t hustle nearly as much as he does, but 18 hours isn’t the input. The input is what he puts into those 18 hours.
Your success as a content creator isn’t a minutes game. It’s a game of how much effort your exerting into every minute of your day.
What are your thoughts on these big mistakes that hold content brands back? Do you know of any other big mistakes? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.
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