content marketing

Your content portfolio consists of all of the content you’ve ever published online. While it’s fun to keep on creating content, we need to assess what we have and how well our content has performed.

Assessing your content portfolio allows you to discover what your audience likes. It also allows you to discover what can change.

For instance, I frequently update my YouTube channel, but to any new viewer, this is what my YouTube channel looked like for a long time…

I have a few of the latest uploads on the top, but for the most part, this is a bunch of videos I did in the past. Are they good? Questions like those are always up to the viewer.

But should I be leading with them? Probably not.

My current videos are more branded than those videos. I have a bunch of interviews I’ve done with awesome people that only show up as recent downloads. I recently changed that part of my YouTube channel to make it look like this:

That’s an example of assessing your content portfolio and making the right changes. I was putting out new YouTube videos but still leading with my old stuff. I was also making it difficult for people to find the specific videos they were looking for.

Organizing Your Content

The goal of assessing your content portfolio is to better organize your content to provide your visitors with a better experience. I’ve uploaded hundreds of YouTube videos, and for my viewers to find the right one with the original set-up, it could have felt like finding a needle in a haystack.

With the new structure, I now provide my viewers with a higher value experience. This is one of the benefits of assessing your content portfolio, but we haven’t scratched the surface.

The Most Engaging Content

Not all of the content you create is equal. Some of it will get no engagement and other pieces of content will get massive engagement.

When I saw people liked my Twitter articles, I created more Twitter focused articles. When that changed to content marketing, I adapted based on my audiences wants.

Right now, I see a big demand for self-publishing and becoming a bestselling author. For the most part, I know focus on that kind of content while also addressing the content marketing folks.

Knowing what’s worked the most allows you to put more of your focus on the right areas moving forward.

Monetization Potential

When you discover what content engages people the most, you also know what products are most likely to sell within your audience.

Part of the reason I wrote The Wealthy Author was because the Wealthy Author Summit was a recent success. More people wanted to learn things like how they could write books and turn those books into passive income.

I’ll also look at future product ideas and create free content that I can later repurpose into the paid stuff.

I don’t just put out any content for the sake of it. I’m out there providing value but also thinking monetization. With that said, you don’t want to safeguard all of your best content for paid products because people see your free content as the preview for your paid content.

No matter how great your book or course is, if people don’t like your free content, they won’t buy your products.

In Conclusion

Assessing your content allows you to make smarter decisions for future pieces you put into the world. You also get to see some of the existing flaws with how you present your content. YouTube was a glaring one for me especially with the work I’m putting into the channel’s growth.

What are your thoughts on assessing your content portfolio? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

It’s no secret that videos are highly engaging forms of content. It’s been an engaging form of content for a while that you need to embrace if you haven’t already.

But this post isn’t going to be a “Get started on video” kind of post. 

Instead, we are going to tackle something different: personalized videos.

It’s incredible to think about the amount of choices we have for every category under the sun. There are thousands if not millions of digital marketing blogs on the web. 

To further ride on trends, you may want to see the top 10 profitable niches.

Almost every category you can think of is surrounded in a sea of competition. How are people going to remember you?

Earlier I talked about frequency being a fundamental way to boost your brand’s status. The more frequently you post new content, the more people will trust you. 

The only weakness with the frequency model is the 1-to-many nature of it. You’re producing one piece of content for many people. There’s no personalization. This blog post isn’t going to say, “Hi Mary,” or anything like that. 

We can do that in emails which is great but not in individual pieces of content meant for our entire audiences.

So what’s the fix? What’s the big trend we have to go after in 2019?

The answer, as mentioned before, is personalized videos.

When someone shoots you an email or shares one of your pieces of content with their audience, most people ignore it. A few people reply to the email or social media post and start a conversation.

But if you want to win in a big way, shoot personalized 30-60 second videos on your smartphone and use those to build up the conversation. In the video, you can say something like, “Mary, thank you for sharing that article.”

You can also type it, but if you take the time to shoot these kinds of videos, your audience will love you for it. 

You don’t have to make these videos perfect. Due to the nature of these in the moment videos, they could and should be lower quality videos than the ones you’d shoot in a studio.

I emphasize the lower quality audio because one of the only flaws I see with this method is that some people wait until they have the perfect lighting and set-up before they create the personalized video. 

This is going to be a big hit in 2019. You’re going to see more personalized videos from myself and other players in the industry. Please let me know your thoughts on this trend? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

I went through my inbox and noticed an email from Grant Cardone about his 10X Event. But this wasn’t any ordinary email.

This was the second email he sent me that day.

If you read through articles on emailing frequency, you’ll typically hear that it’s good to send out a new email to your audience each week or each day if you’re ambitious.

But two a day was seen as overkill. The only time I ever sent multiple emails on a given day was for a close cart promotion, and those emails get sent to a narrow segment of my audience of people interested in the product.

I noticed this and ignored it. 

But the next day, I checked my inbox towards the end of the day.

And Grant Cardone was in there twice…again.

I thought, “There’s a reason Grant’s showing up in my inbox four times in the past two days. Let’s check my history.”

And it was in that moment I realized Grant has been sending me two emails each day for a while.

In this realization lies an important truth.

Even though I admire the guy (I’m actively going through his Instagram feed, stories, books, videos, etc.), I still didn’t notice he was emailing me twice per day. 

I checked my inbox today (December 21, 2018, as of writing) and saw that he emailed me THREE times today. I received about 80 emails today. Grant was just three of those emails tallying at 3.75% of my emails for that day. 

With the exception of special circumstances (i.e. political, point of view matters, potential biases, etc.) people don’t care who authored the content. They care about the value or entertainment that content provides.

If you’ve ever surfed random videos on YouTube, you probably didn’t care about what channels the content came from. You just cared about the content and how it empowered or entertained you depending on what you were looking for at that time.

I bet you can’t list the last five articles (online or print) you read and their respective authors. I surely can’t.

People will remember you and your brand more than they remember individual pieces of content you produce. When I think of Grant Cardone, I immediately think of the 10X Rule. I don’t think of the title of his latest video or even a video I recently watched.

When you share your content more frequently, people begin to remember your brand. The less frequent you are, the less people will remember you.

My blogging career skyrocketed when I decided to publish two new blog posts each day. For some people, it’s hard to keep up with. How can you keep up with a blogger who’s publishing two blog posts each day?

But if you just found this blog today, how can you possibly keep up? I’m not being disrespectful to your ability to keep up, but we’re approaching 2,000 blog posts on this blog (we’ll definitely hit that in 2019). If this is the first blog post you’re reading, then buckle up because you’ve got about another 2,000 to read.

But you’re not going to buckle up and read those 2,000 blog posts. You’re going to pick the ones that most resonate with you. 

No one reads every news article ever published. It’s impossible and like trying to kill a hydra. The moment you finish reading one article, at least 10 more get published. 

Now I’m scheduling two emails to go out each day. I want people to see me often. Why?

That’s because the most successful people are the ones we see the most often.

Think of someone like Taylor Swift. When she starts a new tour, she seems to be everywhere. She’s trending on social media, all over the radio, and getting coverage on the top media outlets. She’s even on Netflix now. 

It’s no coincidence that someone as successful as Taylor happens to be active on many platforms. 

So what does this mean for you?

No one is going to read all of your content. Few will retain most of it. But your audience will remember your brand and the core themes you hit upon. They’ll remember how you feel.

But all of that starts when you become more frequent and build trust by showing up.

People won’t get annoyed if you show up more often with valuable content. In fact, they’ll welcome you each time. Some of these people will keep thinking of you long after they’ve viewed your content. They’ll start checking your social media, blog, podcast, and other places without you prompting them.

That’s when you start to build a loyal tribe. If you are afraid that showing up too frequently will annoy your audience, it’s just not true. Your audience wants valuable content and if you give it to them weekly or five times each day, they’ll appreciate you. 

Your audience won’t view each piece of content you produce but that’s to be expected anyway. You’re just presenting more options that will help when your audience narrows their searches by typing something like “content marketing” on your blog’s search bar. 

If you aren’t being frequent enough, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You’re missing out on the potential for a stronger community.

But a lack of frequency is also selfish towards your audience. You’re not giving them the content they want…and in some cases need. 

What do you plan on doing to increase your frequency? Let me know your thoughts and initiatives in the comments.