Content is king and here’s what you should know: 

People want to learn before they buy and be educated instead of pitched.

As a coach, consultant, and business owner you need a constant stream of fresh content.  However, this is one of the most challenging things that you will face.  This is why you need a well thought out content marketing strategy.  A system that is designed for planning content creation, distribution, and management. 

There are 6 key factors to consider when creating your content strategy.

Produce High-Quality Content

Your audience expects a steady flow of high-quality content. If you post on your blog each week, your readers will be expecting it. If you send emails daily, your subscribers will be looking for those. If you publish new videos weekly, your viewers will be checking in to watch them.

All of your content, no matter where it’s published, needs to be interesting, unique, helpful, and informative in order for you to keep your audience engaged. It’s nearly impossible to create good content consistently without a content strategy in place that emphasizes your standards of quality.

Create Your Magnetic Message

Your overall strategy in content marketing should be to brand yourself as an expert or authority on a certain topic. In order to do this, your content needs to be relevant to that topic. Everything you publish must contribute to your brand story and show why you are the expert. It’s like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together, and it’s only possible to do this if you take the time to define the key message in your content strategy.

Set Goals and Key Metrics

Your content strategy helps you to set goals and determine whether or not you’ve reached them. How do you know if your content marketing is getting results? The only way to know is to create specific goals that are achievable and measurable, and then tailor your strategy to meeting those goals.

Your content marketing goals should be in direct alignment with your overall marketing goals. For example, your broader goals may include driving more visitors from your social media profiles to your website. That may mean that you need to set goals for creating more content that will be shared across your social media profiles.

Identify Your Audience

Part of developing a content strategy is to identify your target market. You need to know who you’re creating content for. Only then can you identify what kind of content they need to help them solve their problems.

A good content strategy will outline as much detail as possible about your target market. That includes demographics, pain points, hopes, dreams, preferences, learning styles, personality, etc. The more information you can use to paint a portrait of your typical customer, the better. Then you’ll be able speak directly to that “person” when you’re creating content.

Avoid Getting Stuck

A solid content strategy helps you a great deal when you get stuck for ideas or if you have writer’s block. By including an idea bank and previously identifying sources of ideas and information, you can simply go to these sources when you don’t know what to write, or send your content creators there. This is one of the keys for becoming a “content creation machine”.

Know What  Resources You’ll Need

As part of your strategy, think about the type of content you’ll create early on so you can assess what resources you need before you need them. For example, if a video is part of your strategy, you need video creation and editing software or a video expert on your team. There may be areas where you need to outsource parts of your content creation.

Your content strategy should start with your audience and focus on the problem that you solve for them. As you begin producing and publishing content, pay attention to audience feedback and traffic metrics to help you decide how your strategy should be changed.

Try these 10 tips to create compelling content:

• Use an in-demand topic. Try using Google Trends to find out what’s popular.
• Do your research.  Research your topic before you start creating.
• Identify your audience.  Who is your target market?  What do they like?  What is the best way to reach them?
• Tell a story.  Try to construct a beginning, middle, and end in whatever format you produce.
• Show up as the expert.  Be credible.
• Be unique.  Even if you are curating content, present it from your point of view.
• Be dynamic.  Be as visual as possible to keep your audience engaged.
• Be personable.  Keep your communication style as human as possible.
• Stimulate Conversation. Intriguing + Interesting = Memorable
• Check and double-check.  Pay attention to grammatical errors. Always edit your work.

I turned on my camera and….I heard crickets!

What’s the point of conducting a Facebook Live if no one shows up?

How many times do I have to do a Facebook Live and no one is tuned in?

These are the questions that I am asked almost weekly.

My answer is uncomplicated…Promote the heck out of them!

I realize it.  One of the most frustrating feelings as a coach or consultant who yearns to expand your business by utilizing a video marketing strategy is the tussle to increase visibility.

I too remember when I began conducting Facebook Lives.  In addition to being crazy nervous and in my head with my perfection issues, battling the feeling of failure was at the top of the list.

Is it my look?

Is it my accent?

Why should anyone listen to me?

And a list of other “stuff” that is too long for this post.

Nonetheless, one day, I received an email from someone I admired and followed in the industry.  And in that email was an invitation for me to join them LIVE!

My light bulb went off!  If they were using emails to promote their lives, what was stopping me from doing the same?

NOTHING!

Subsequently, I took it a few steps further.  How about sending invitations on all the platforms that I use?  Everywhere I had an audience should be where I promote my Facebook Lives!

Here  are 5 Effortless But Overlooked Ways to Promote Your Facebook Lives

1. Create an event on your Facebook profile, group, or page.  If you have a group, once you create the event Facebook would automatically send an invite to your members.
2. Use the Live video scheduling option.  This can be done directly in Facebook or you can use a third-party app such as BeLive.tv or Streamyard.  This option will give you a link to your pre-scheduled video that you can share across your other social platforms.
3. Send an email out to your list prior to your Facebook Live. Since you’re using email, give your list at least 24-hours notice.
4. Create a graphic with the scheduled date and time and post an update on your other social sites about 5-15 minutes prior to going Live.
5. Notify your audience via Text Message or Messenger Bot by posting an update there as well.

It’s time to place an end to frustration by applying small-scale planning! I know that you’ll be amazed by what this effortless preparation can achieve!

It’s your time to #SHINE

Ten years ago, I embarked on my entrepreneurial voyage equipped with enthusiasm like other entrepreneurs previously of me.  I remember it vividly as if it happened yesterday. Although I felt enthusiastic and convinced it was the best career move for me, I was oblivious of what it would actually require to succeed.  When I reflect back to the beginning of my entrepreneurial voyage, I recall how I slept most of its first year. It was not until my second year, that I understood if I wanted this new career move to definitely work, I had to make changes.

Watch the video and join in the conversation, “Turn Your Home-Based Business Into a Financial Opportunity.  Learn the five strategies which helped me thrive and march forward on my entrepreneurial journey.

Shift Your Mindset

I had to learn how to become productive by eliminating distractions.  For many of you who have also experienced an organizational culture in which you worked prior to your entrepreneurial aspirations, you know that chatting during working hours, taking extensive breaks and sleeping are not a part of the workday.  The same needs to be applied to your gig. In other words, I had to learn to treat my opportunity like a real business, not as a passing of time to earn a few dollars infrequently. As a part of this realization, I addressed my new work needs via tough conversations with family and friends as to why I would not chit chat on the phone during “working hours”.  Working from home meant that I was unavailable to do household chores such as laundry and cooking during the workday. My workspace had changed but not the discipline and the commitment about it.

Dress for Success

Having my own entrepreneurial home opportunity provided me the freedom to do things in a different way than if I was going into a 9 to 5 organizational daily shift.  I enjoyed the freedom to work in a comfortable environment versus the fast pace of the sales floor. But the one thing that became a game-changer for me was dressing to go to work.  This allowed me to transition my mindset to work mode. Once I am dressed for success, it’s game on! There are studies that support what I found out to work for me. There exists a direct correlation between how we feel about ourselves and how we show up in the world.  Dressing up positively impacts the way you feel about yourself and therefore how you communicate with others throughout the workday.

Utilize Online Marketing

Early on, I predicted the lack of a massive budget for my marketing and PR and quickly understood I had to discover a way to showcase my business externally to attract my perfect clients.  Social media became the answer. Ten years ago, it was very difficult for me as an entrepreneur to compete with larger organizations, but social media leveled the playing field. Investing in online properties such as my website facilitated the improvement of my brand and the attraction of the right clients.

Develop Daily Habits and Routines

Success is determined by the sum of your daily habits.  Establishing the right habits and routines will lead to your success.  I have found that having a detailed morning and evening routine allowed me to get excited about my day, focus on what really matters, as well as giving me the time necessary to unplug and unwind.  Therefore, taking time to build your daily morning and evening routine is of the utmost importance when building a successful business.

Make the Best Use of Time

In relationship to developing daily habits and routines as mentioned above, I also had to learn to use time wisely.  Initially, this was an enormous challenge for me since I don’t enjoy being “managed” or the feeling of “managing others”.  As I continued to grow my business, it became imperative that I began building a team. In order to keep myself and the team focused on productive tasks, I implemented a time-tracking system that reports activities and monitors production.  This tool allowed me to identify areas where we could improve efficiency. Time is priceless, so let’s be mindful of how to best use it, daily.