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Most People Have Content Marketing Backwards

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Each part of my book Content Marketing Secrets reads out the way most people approach content.

First you create the content. Then, you use content marketing to expand your reach. Finally, you monetize by leading all of that traffic to the right pages.

That’s how it works from a consumer’s experience and for the end result.

However, “Create, Market, Monetize” is not the right way to think about your content brand.

If you think like this, you’ll create content on anything in your niche that you desire without any purpose behind that content. Sure, it would provide your audience with value and help build trust. But other than that, there’s no purpose behind the content.

The top content marketing experts don’t start their thinking process with the creation step. Instead, they start with the monetization step.

Determining what you’ll monetize will make it easier for you to create content that better aligns with your offers.

I create and provide free content with the intent of monetization. Providing value and building trust are two givens. Those form the foundation of the content I create, but I focus on monetization for two reasons:

  1. Since, for me, value and trust building are a given, I can focus on monetization without sacrificing any value
  2. If I don’t focus on monetization, it’s going to be really hard to monetize the content I create later

Let’s use my blog as an example. Right now, I’m talking about content marketing. I’ve already mentioned my book and can point people to the Content Marketing Success Summit like I just did.

I’m not pushing a sale and ending it there. I’m just sharing valuable insights and giving you options.

It’s no secret that content creators need to make money in order to continue creating content. You can use each of your blog posts to promote your product(s) or other people’s product(s) in an informative but non salesy way.

I know what products I have available. I then choose my content topics accordingly.

Another way you can think of monetization first is by creating free content that you incorporate in future products. It’s not uncommon for me to make some small edits to a blog post and put it in one of my books.

I’ll also take some of my free videos and put them in the bonus section for my training courses. It’s a way of providing customers with more value. Each product I create is a mix of exclusive content and some free content people forgot about. The products allow me to put my best blog posts and videos back in front of people.

And you’ll remember and implement more from a video in a $97 training course than if you just found that video on YouTube. With the right knowledge, you can use content marketing to expand your reach.

 

In Conclusion

Content marketing has always fascinated me. We all have the ability to make money from our content and serve a tribe at the same time.

But the monetization piece is pretty important for the content creator. We need money to keep going and providing more people with massive value.

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

How To Batch Content Creation So You Can Pursue Bigger Projects

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Consistently providing valuable content keeps your content brand alive, and generating revenue from your efforts allows you to thrive.

Content creators often struggle with generating revenue from their products while continuously creating fresh content.

While I believe both can be interwoven together (maybe the idea for a future blog post?), one proven approach is to batch your content creation so you can dedicate more time, attention, and energy to revenue-generating activities.

What Is Content Batching?

Content batching is as simple as committing one day to producing an extraordinary amount of content.

John Lee Dumas, for example, designates two days a month for conducting interviews (his daily episodes over at EOFire mean he’s interviewing 15+ people on a regular basis). John also dedicates one day per month as an interviewee for more than 20 podcasts.

If you choose one day to write a month’s worth of blog posts, you can then focus on product launches, brand building or other initiatives for the rest of the month.

How To Batch Your Content Creation

Batching content creation begins with nailing down a date to write all of your content.

Prior to writing, set one day aside to come up with ideas. So if you decide to create all of your content on the first Tuesday of each month, you should create a list of topic ideas no later than Monday.

If you want to use the content batching strategy for your podcast guests, start contacting people 2-3 weeks in advance. Booking guests for your podcast is different from batching blog posts because of the time needed for emailing and scheduling the podcasts.

But in either case, you must be hyper focused once you have your ideas clearly in mind.

Becoming Hyper Focused

You may choose one day to create your monthly content, but if you frequently get distracted, you are not fully unlocking your potential.

To succeed, you must be actively engaged in your work for most of the day. This means not only thinking about how you work, but also getting smart about the environment in which you work.

Always choose a commitment-free day for content batching. For example, I enjoy participating in cross country and track meets – which usually take place on Saturdays – so I wouldn’t plan my content batching initiatives on the weekend.

Choose a day that isn’t surrounded by work or outside commitments.

The day before you’ve committed to content batching, remove all distractions from your environment. Since each of us is distracted by different things, it helps if you create a list of potential triggers.

Writing a list of potential distractions will help you prepare in advance: you’ll know what to avoid while working, and what to ignore before you even get started.

Advice On Pursuing Bigger Projects

Once you begin creating content in batches, you’ll have extra time to work on bigger projects. Don’t take that time for granted because your next content-batching day will arrive sooner than you think.

In addition to creating lists to assist you on your content-batching days, create a detailed plan for how you’ll pursue bigger projects.

What progress must you make by the end of the month? How will you plan each week to reach your monthly goals? What will you do each day to accomplish your weekly goals for each week of the month?

If you struggle with keeping yourself accountable, ask someone to help you. In a sea of free information, hiring a coach is one of the most underrated investments you can make for your success.

A coach will steer you away from common mistakes and move you towards success, but in this case, your coach will keep you accountable.

Advice On Content Creation

One of the dangers of content batching is the tendency to consider content creation as a necessary evil.

Viewing content creation as a chore keeps you from content marketing, and always pursuing bigger projects prevents you from enjoying the work at hand.

Once I’d focused so much on content marketing and bigger projects that I saw content creation as an obstacle. This is one of the main reasons my blogging consistency dropped from two posts a day to once per week.

Before I changed my mindset, I was even inconsistent with publishing the weekly post. So if you decide to batch your content 1-2 days per month, never forget to look forward to, and enjoy, those days.

In Conclusion

Content batching allows you to focus solely on creating content 1-2 days each month, giving you the rest of the month to concentrate on promotion and additional projects.

You can also apply the batching method to any time-consuming task in your business to open up more time in your month for other tasks.

But you must be careful not to look at batching activities as a necessary evil. Rather, try to appreciate those days as time to be hyper focused on something that brings you pleasure.

If you see any of your tasks as necessary evils, change your thinking! If you can’t, eliminate or delegate them.

What are your thoughts on content batching? Do you have any suggestions? Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Turn Content Creation Into Content Marketing

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content creationNo one questions the importance of content for a content brand. Without content, content brands wouldn’t exist. The critical question surrounding content revolves around how much time we should spend on content creation versus content marketing.

As the theory goes, every minute you spend creating content you’ll lose on content marketing. But what if I told you that theory was completely wrong?

You can engage in content creation and content marketing all within the same minute. No, that doesn’t mean allocating 30 seconds for each task. Certain tasks fulfill both the creation and marketing components of successful content brands.

This is what Andy Crestodina referred to as the ‘gray area’ during my Content Marketing Success Summit. Andy explained that certain tasks fit both the creation and marketing parameters, tasks that we tend to separate as if they were oil and vinegar.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the gray area so your can create and market your content at a much faster pace.

Content Creation Gives You Marketing Ammo

You can’t market content unless you create it. But you can take the same piece of content and republish it on multiple platforms. It’s commonplace to see top content creators republishing their blog posts on LinkedIn, Medium, and elsewhere.

Each time someone in your preexisting audience shares your content – regardless of where they share it – it will lead to more people viewing that content.

If your blog posts, LinkedIn posts, and Medium posts each get 500 daily visitors, then you have a total of 1,500 visitors. And it only takes 5-10 minutes to republish already written blog posts on those platforms to see a big traffic increase.

As an added bonus, republishing your content on LinkedIn and Medium creates viral potential as more people engage with your content. This will put you content in front of a larger audience that you wouldn’t have reached on your own.

And when you publish on LinkedIn and Medium, you should include calls-to-action to drive people back to your blog.

At the start of one of these posts, use the anchor text, “This post was first published on [name of your blog].”

And at the end of your post, lead people to a relevant landing page (based on the topic of the content the visitor just read) that asks for the visitor’s email address.

You can also link to older blog posts throughout these posts to lead people back to your existing blog content. Just make sure these older blog posts are relevant to the topic your visitors are currently reading.

This model supports the idea of creating as much content as possible, assuming you have at least a decent sized audience on LinkedIn and Medium.

Influencer Outreach

Andy went into great detail about influencer outreach during our interview.

Basically, you contact several influencers and ask them for their opinions, recommendations, or a quote. This is content creation and marketing at its finest because you get thousands of words of content and influencers who will be happy to promote the post since they’re featured in it.

I leveraged this tactic for my blogging tools post. I asked dozens of influencers for their recommendations and 22 influencers came through. The post itself surpassed 4,000 words (and I added around 400 words at most).

Talk about an unfair advantage!

Other people basically wrote my content for me, and then more people marketed my content for me.

Granted, I did have to reach out to many people and copy and paste their content into the blog post. But many connections, combined with the power of HARO, made the mission easy to accomplish.

You don’t have to turn your entire post into other people’s opinions, quotes, and recommendations. But you can incorporate information from at least three influencers into your content.

Contact each influencer and see if they can provide 100-500 words. I typically ask for 100-250 words (unless it’s just a quote) because I want to make it as easy as possible for an influencer to provide me with free content (and share it with his or her audience).

If you can’t get the influencers to participate, you can hunt for quotes by reading their blog posts, watching their videos, listening to their podcasts, or reading interviews. You can then tell the influencer you mentioned him/her in your latest blog post and you may get a share, or at the very least some appreciation.

This strategy also allows you to build relationships with influencers so that in the future they might agree to be guests on your podcast, speakers at a virtual summit, etc.

For these relationships to work, you must get off the WIIFM Station (what’s in it for me). Only connect with influencers if you want to create a win-win atmosphere. My two favorite ways to build healthy relationships with influencers involve blog content and podcasts.

Incorporate Internal And External Links

Both internal and external links are important for SEO. Internal links lead people to your older blog posts. These links help keep people on your site longer as well as decrease your bounce rates, two metrics that are critical to your blog’s search ranking.

Internal links also drive LinkedIn and Medium readers directly to your blog, which allows you to keep these readers’ attention longer.

You can also connect certain blog posts together into a series. This requires readers to read all the posts in the series to get a complete overview of what you’re trying to achieve with your content.

External links to authority sites within your niche will allow you to piggyback on these sites’ search engine rankings. Search engines will recognize that you link to authority content. And the algorithms will assign more authority to your own site.

External linking is a long-term game. But you can immediately see the impact of internal links. And, if continued, they result in even sweeter results over the long-term.

In Conclusion

Content creation and marketing are both critical to the success of a content brand. While both involve a significant time investment, you can tap into the gray area of creation and marketing and feed two birds with one scone.

This time-effective route, combined with delegation, will make it much easier for you to grow and sustain your content brand.

What are your thoughts about the gray area? Do took have any other content creation and marketing hacks for us? Want to ask a question? Sound off in the comments section below.

11 Cool Content Marketing Tactics That Will Push Your Blog Traffic To The Next Level

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Effective content marketing can determine whether your content is read by thousands of people or a handful of people, and your content marketing strategy can determine whether you’ll make a full-time income as a blogger or struggle to get by.

Many bloggers know this, which is why they continuously test different methods to expand their content’s reach. The blogger with 100 monthly visitors and the blogger with 100,000 monthly visitors both strive to get their content in front of more people.

But how can you consistently expand your blog’s reach? How can you attract more readers today than you did yesterday? Here are 11 cool content marketing tactics you can use to push your blog traffic to the next level:

 

#1: Accept Guest Posts 

My blog generated the most traffic when I published two posts per day. But as my blog posts became longer and more content rich, it became increasingly difficult to publish as frequently and consistently.

I’m slowly getting closer to achieving that same frequency, but not because I’m writing 14 blog posts each week. Rather, I started accepting guest posts from my community.

Now I get free content for my blog without having to write a single word. How cool is that?

Of course, I still love writing at least one blog post every week, but having to write (and publish…big difference) a blog post every day would prevent me from addressing other parts of my business.

Accepting guest posts results in more updates and fresh content, and that results in more SEO love.

 

#2: Hire A Contributor

If you want to take accepting guest posts to the next level, you can hire a contributor who will produce the content for you. I recommend finding a paid contributor on Upwork and making sure this person is passionate about your blog’s topics.

You don’t want to hire a contributor who will write a blog post without any passion behind the topic. That lack of passion will show in the final draft.

If you hire a contributor, I recommend monitoring his or her content for 1-2 weeks and engaging in frequent conversations. This way, you are both on the same page and you’re more likely to get the content you want and expect.

 

#3: Use Internal Links 

By linking to your content internally, you increase the amount of time readers engage with your blog. And the more time people spend on your blog, the more likely they are to come back for more.

Keeping people on your blog longer also helps build trust and will result in more subscribers and sales over time. Bring attention to some of your older posts and every new post you publish. On the flip side, you can edit your older posts to link to your newer content.

 

#4: Outsource More Tasks

Outsourcing opens up so much time to pursue other parts of your business. I’ve outsourced social media posts, blog post editing, podcast episode editing, video editing, and an array of other tasks.

After I started outsourcing these tasks, I was able to concentrate on creative ways to promote my content such as reaching out to influencers, promoting my content through various outlets, and growing my brand.

Outsourcing will open up more of your time, but be sure to use the extra time productively. Otherwise you’re completely missing the point of outsourcing.

 

#5: Create A Content Calendar

An editorial calendar is a guide that lays out which content gets published when. You can organize the publication of your content in such a way that includes weekly or monthly themes on your blog.

Monthly themes can help with product launches or affiliate promotions. For instance, let’s say you write a blog about the best toys around in July (and also know that new LEGO sets are coming out in August).

You can use mid-July and the entire month of August to focus your content creation efforts on LEGO sets. By the time you introduce your affiliate links, your audience will be more conditioned to buy the LEGO sets.

 

#6: Write Longer Blog Posts

Longer blog posts like these grab more attention and provide more overall value. When I published two blog posts each day, most were only 250-500 words. While I’ve lost that level of frequency, my current blog posts are more in-depth.

Writing longer blog posts is also great for more blog traffic. Not only do search engines love longer blog posts, but you’ll keep people on your blog for a longer period of time.

Think about it. If you’ve made it to this sentence, you’re virtually committed to reading this entire blog post. You’re committed to knowing all 11 tactics mentioned in the post, even if you skim.

Of course, no one is forcing you to read through the entire post, but once you make it to this point, full commitment tends to be the unwritten rule of reading content.

 

#7: Write 1 Blog Post Per Day

If you can muster it, writing one blog post per day will result in a blog that’s consistently updated with fresh content. While it may take a while for search engines to boost your traffic, writing blog posts at a frequent rate will also give you more content to promote on social networks.

My Twitter usage motivated me to write two blog posts per day. I mean, I was tweeting every 15 minutes and wanted to share fresh, original content. And by spacing it out over a long period of time, I was able to garner strong interest for my content.

I still knew I could tweet some content over and over because my new followers wouldn’t have seen it before, and my regular followers wouldn’t have seen everything. I try to write a lot of evergreen content so a tweet linking to a blog post from two years ago would still be relevant to both groups.

 

#8: Submit At Least 3 Guest Post Pitches Per Day

Writing guest posts for other blogs is a well-known tactic to expand your reach. In my experience, it’s easy to approach guest blogging inconsistently.

It’s easy to send multiple pitches in a single week, but then concentrate on creating content for one or two guest p0sts, and stop or simply forget to keep sending pitches.

That’s a mistake. Sending at least three pitches per day helps step up your commitment to producing more content because you may have to meet a deadline that is not self-imposed.

If you submit at least three guest post pitches per day, you’ll submit 1095 guest post pitches each year. Assuming a conservative 20 percent acceptance rate, you’ll write at least 219 guest posts in a given year.

Writing one guest post every other day may seem like a lot of work, but it will result in many more people seeing your content (perhaps millions of additional people will read your content depending on where it’s published).

A single guest post of mine, published on Jeff Bullas’ Blog, was shared over 6,000 times. Talk about more exposure (and that’s just one guest post)! Imagine if you got those results from more than one of your 219 guest posts.

In fact, if you averaged 1,000 shares for all 219 of your guest posts, you’d get 219,000 shares for all of your guest posts that year. It’s very easy to assume that, at this point, over 1 million people will have viewed your content.

 

#9: Link To Influencers In Your Posts

Influencer marketing will be a strong form of marketing for a very long time. The idea behind influencer marketing is that you mention several influencers within your blog post. You then email them to let them know.

Some will share your content with their audiences while others won’t. The key thing not to do in every email to an influencer is to ask them to share your content.

I’ve gotten many emails from people mentioning me in their content and saying something like, “Can you share this with your audience?”

Influencers know how influencer marketing works. Instead of asking them to share your content, just tell them you featured them in your blog post. Don’t try to influence the influencer with explicit requests because those emails are usually ignored.

The more influencers you mention in your content, the better, but make sure the content doesn’t drag on because you’re trying to mention every possible influencer in your niche. That’s why you write multiple blog posts.

 

#10: Create A Content Series

There’s nothing more frustrating than not knowing the ending. Imagine going to the theater, watching Rogue One, and then halfway through the movie the screen stops working. The staff comes out and says they can’t fix the problem. You get a full refund, but you are left with only half of Rogue One.

You don’t know the ending, and that will frustrate you until you see it at another movie theater.

While it’s very difficult to reproduce the same feeling as stopping halfway through Rogue One, you can still create a content series without an ending.

Imagine writing a blog post called “5 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers.” At the end of the blog post you can say something like, “I actually have a bonus tip to get more Twitter followers, but I’ll reveal it in the next blog post along with four additional tips.”

Now you build suspense while creating a content series. People who read and enjoy Part 10 will be more likely to read the other nine blog posts in the series.

 

#11: Ride The Trendy Waves Of The Internet

Google Trends allows you to see what is trending on the internet. If you can connect a trending topic to your niche, you’ll write a blog post that will get traffic from its value plus additional traffic from riding a trendy wave.

One writer from Mashable rode the wave of Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour at just the right time. She wrote a post in June 2015 on the Taylor Swift businesswoman guidebook.

No, Taylor Swift didn’t actually write a businesswoman guidebook and publish it on Amazon. Rather, the writer analyzed Swift and came up with tips that Swift seemed to exemplify. The final result was a blog post filled with business insights and Swifty euphoria that was shared across the internet.

 

In Conclusion

The great thing about content marketing is that no matter how much traffic you get, you can always get more. You can always challenge yourself to do more today than you did yesterday.

Getting more traffic involves writing valuable content and spreading it. Spread your content to more people via search engines, social media, blogs and influencers, and you’ll eventually build an unforgettable blog.

What are your thoughts on these content marketing tactics? Do you have tips to share? Sound off in the comments section below.

Myth Busting: Offering Free Content Doesn’t Bring In Money

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The blogging journey is a whirlwind of emotions, especially in the beginning. It’s a privilege to put your voice on the web. However, there are the days when newbie bloggers look at their revenue and find zeroes.

When the mentality shifts from fun to profit, some bloggers focus more on offering products than writing content. At this stage, the myth that offering free content won’t make any money arises.

Although the name doesn’t suggest it, free content is essential for making revenue from your online business. In the video, I’ll tell you why that is the case.

If you like this video, then I would love it if you subscribed to my YouTube channel and spread the word.

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4 Ways To Make Money With Your Content

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Making money isn’t hard if you know how.

Writing is a lot of fun. You get to convey your thoughts on paper or in an online document. Then you share those thoughts with the world.

There are plenty of things to write about, but for some writers, writing becomes a passion. They want to write for the rest of their lives.

It is possible to write for the rest of your life, but why not also make money from it. Ditch that 9-to-5 job and do what you love instead.

Making money with your content is a process. Not only do you have to write the content, but you have to publish that content on the right places and promote that content.

In all challenging journeys, it is always beneficial to give yourself a basic roadmap. The basic roadmap just gives you an idea of where you have to go. Then it gets modified later based on your progress.

When creating your roadmap, consider these four methods of making money from your writing.

 

#1: Write Books

It’s far easier than ever to publish your own book. Before the internet, you had to pursue a publisher and make a deal. Now all you have to do is self-publish your own books (I self-publish my books with KDP and CreateSpace).

The only thing about writing books is that in the beginning, you won’t get many sales. That’s true about any product, but I had to let you know.

Unless you already have a large email list, chances are you won’t get many sales in the beginning. But in some ways, that’s good.

Not receiving many sales will motivate you to make more sales. You may decide to write multiple books (great idea) and see that one book start to take off.

The other books will eventually get consistent sales.

If you want to pursue the life of a self-published author, you’ll need to publish as many books as you can for lower prices (think $2.99 for the Kindle book). That’s the advantage self-published authors have over the authors who got a deal from a publisher.

 

#2: Write Blog Posts And Monetize Your Blog

If you are looking for the best way to improve your writing, then look no further than blogging. If you write blog posts every day, you will become very comfortable with writing content.

I wrote about 1,000 blog posts across all of my blogs before I wrote my first book. The more content you write, the more comfortable you become with writing.

So that’s all great. Blogging improves your writing. Now, show me the money!

The fact of the matter is that the content alone won’t make you money. You need to have your blog optimized for monetization. There are a wide variety of ways to make money with a blog:

Create products and promote those products. This is my go-to for making money with a blog. I promote my products each time people subscribe through my landing pages and promote direct product links at other locations on my blog. If you don’t have a product, you can offer consultation sessions as you create that product.

Affiliate links. Only promote affiliate products on your blog that are relevant to your audience’s interests. I wouldn’t promote an Amazon affiliate link to a LEGO product here because that wouldn’t go well with my audience.

Advertisements. These are overrated and I don’t like them. You should be getting over 10,000 visitors per month before you even consider ads. However, you can make more money by giving your products the same space that the ads would have received.

Those are the three main ways to make money with a blog. But there is one thing a blog gives you that can’t be overlooked.

Credibility.

Having your own blog filled with rich content will establish you as an expert within your niche. And if you’ve been writing enough blog posts, it will become effortless for you to write that rich content.

 

#3: Become A Ghostwriter

If you want to make money with your content without having any type of platform, then ghostwriting is a great option.

All you do is set up an account on UpWork and let people know you are a ghostwriter. Then, apply to people’s jobs where they ask for a ghostwriter.

The only challenge with UpWork in the beginning (and ghostwriting in general) is building credibility.

There are ghostwriters who (even if you are better than them) have more credibility than you. They’ve been hired more often and have more five star reviews.

In the beginning, you may have to charge a lower price for your services than you want just to attract clients. You can then scale up as you get more jobs and reviews.

However, that beginning will be tough. My best advice is to apply to as many ghostwriting jobs as possible (as long as you can do them) so you get enough credibility to raise your price per hour.

 

#4: Contribute Your Content To Other Websites

We have all heard of guest blogging. You can put your content in front of a larger audience. However, some websites that ask you for your content will pay you to write for them.

Some of these websites will pay you as much as $100 per article.

While this isn’t a way for you to make a living, you can definitely make thousands of dollars from your writing. Just make sure you can write content that these websites want.

I haven’t explored this opportunity much because most of these types of blogs are outside of my niche. For the curious writer, here is a list of these types of blogs and how much you make for each piece of your content.

I prefer to get paid by putting some of my content on places like HubPages and Zujava. I don’t write for them as often as I once did, but I’ll occasionally publish a new article on one of the two.

 

In Conclusion

All writers deserve the opportunity to make money from their content. After putting in all of that work, we should see some type of reward that creates positive reinforcement.

The best way to make money with your writing is to build a platform (your social media audience, your blog audience, and your email list).

The platform gives you an audience that you can always communicate with and occasionally promote products to.

Regardless of which opportunity you choose to make money with writing, there will always be more involved than simply writing the content.

Which of these methods of making money as a writer do you like the most? Are you writing to make money or just for fun? Sound off in the comments section below.