Why Content Matters (And How to Create Them Easily)
For the last month we’ve been doubling down on our content strategy for ourselves and our clients, and that makes the transition into this period (COVID-19 Circuit Breaker) so much easier for us.
After hustling the entire week to get our remaining clients’ content ad strategy rolled out, we decided to cover the topic of content in this quick discussion to answer questions that we’ve been getting all week long from other business owner friends in a new video we recorded. (Link at the end)
Thus, in this blog post, we’re going to breakdown the main points covered in the video to answer your questions on content marketing for your business!
What is Content?
Before we hop onto answering the question, it is important to first clarify for those who are still unsure, “What is content?”. We’ve been talking about it, and even Garyvee’s consistent business advice is to “create content”.
Anyway, here’s our definition of it. Content is information with a purpose for a targeted audience. For your business, content will refer to information with a purpose (we’ll talk about this later) and the targeted audience will be who your ideal customer is.
- Blog Post
- Video
- Audio (Or Podcast)
Why is Content Important?
Content is important because it is the “currency of authority” on the internet. In other words, content is the tool that builds you up as an authority in your industry.
Think about it with me, whenever you come across a problem and is looking for some help what do you do? Most of the time you’d pull up your smartphone and google it! That’s part of the reason for the exisitence of the internet – provide and make information accessible.
And the opportunity where you can leverage this concept to improve your business is by being the thought leader who produces this content.
When your content provides valuable information to your target audience in the context of your industry, your brand becomes a trusted source. And remember, people only buy from who they trust.
So why is content important? Simply put – it’ll help bring in more customers for your business and more customers mean more revenue.
On a tactical level though, creating content allows you to dramatically drive down your cost per lead (CPL) and cost per acquisition (CPA). This is because when you create content, your target audience knows, likes and trusts you. And when they do, it’ll be easier for you to persuade them to buy your solutions.
CPL: How much it cost to get a lead
CPA: How much it cost to get a customer
The 3Es Framework (The Secret to Good Content)
To create good content, you need to understand the “3Es” framework. This is an especially important framework we’ve used to ensure that our content is purposeful and is useful to our audience.
The first E in the “3Es” framework is:
Educate – This refers to content that consists of information that educates the audience. For example, the current post that you’re reading right now is educating you on marketing.
The next E is:
Entertain – This refers to content that entertains the audience. How many times have you found yourself spending hours on YouTube/Netflix? It is because those content published are entertaining.
The last is:
Engage – This refers to content where your brand engages with your audience. An example is celebrities going on Facebook/Instagram live streams and speaking to your fans. The more you engage, the stronger the relationship is between you and your audience.
Tip: You don’t have to combine these 3 points together into one piece of content. But if you can, those will potentially be the best-performing pieces of content.
How to EASILY Create Content?
So you now know pretty much all there is to know about content but the real question now is “How can I consistently create content for my business?” And that’s what we’re going to answer in this section.
Step 1: Know who your target audience is
Ensure you know who exactly your ideal customer is as they will be your target audience. Know everything there is to know about them.
What are their pain points, their fears, their wants, their desires? When you intimately know who you’re speaking to, planning out content will not be a problem.
Step 2: List out their problems (Planning content ideas)
The next step is to list out what are the problems of your target audience. More specifically, what are the questions that are going on inside of their head that they need answers to? From there you can easily pick out content ideas.
Step 3: Choosing the modality
The third step is to choose the form in which your content will be in. As mentioned above, there are 3 main forms that your content can be in. Blog, video, and audio.
Our recommendation is to create your content in video form so that you can easily translate them into other forms by ripping the audio for audio content and getting a transcript of the video created to turn it into a blog post – IF you want to. (You can use https://www.rev.com/ to get your video turned into a transcript)
Another great reason for creating video content is that it’s simply a lot more digestible for people! There’s a reason why things like “TLDR” exist.
However, if you don’t feel comfortable doing video content/it’s not your strength, blog post, and audio content do work effectively as well. The biggest factor you should care about more is whether your content provides good value or not.
Step 4: Publish and Promote
The final step of content creation is to publish and promote! Choose a platform where you can post your content and promote it. Cause if no one sees it, it’s as good as nothing. We recommend posting them onto Facebook (regardless of content form) and boosting them to get users consuming and engaging with it!
Conclusion
In summary, content is an extremely valuable tool to use to grow your business. Every business should in fact create content if they want to thrive and not just survive.
As the saying goes, what goes around comes around and if you want to create a great business with great customers, put out great information that helps make others’ lives better.
Last thing to note is to ensure you don’t over-analyze this whole process. (Analysis Paralysis) Your content doesn’t have to be perfect if you don’t have the skills or budget for it. It just needs to be valuable. So pick up your phone, turn on the camera, and start creating content!
Cheers and Stay Safe!