Table of Contents
If you want content marketing tips to build your brand or grow your business, there’s no better place to look than to people who’ve successfully done it themselves.
This list of content marketing tips comes from social media experts, company founders, and marketing pros who’ve used content to spread awareness and generate boatloads of cash.
Speaking of cash, let’s kick off this list of content marketing tips with an important idea to remember.
1. Likes ain’t cash
The phrase “likes ain’t cash” comes from JK Molina, who went from making $250/month on Twitter to more than $100,000/month by creating a SaaS product for Twitter influencers. He also developed a high-ticket program that helps people use Twitter to get clients and grow their businesses.
A lot of business owners try to grow on social media for the sake of improving vanity metrics. Instead, they should focus on creating content that leads to the outcome they’re looking for, which is to grow their business.
Focus on creating content that:
- Has one core idea to share
- Builds awareness for your company in a way that can lead to sales
- Drives your potential prospect to the next step in the funnel, e.g., joining your email list, booking a call, or buying your product outright.
2. Document, don’t create
Gary Vaynerchuk came up with this concept.
Too many newbie content creators try to establish themselves as experts without relevant experience. They speak from a pedestal and try to teach people things they don’t know how to do well themselves.
Instead, they should document the things they’re working on in real-time and share the knowledge they’ve learned along the way.
Say you’re creating content in the fitness space.
The first thing you can do is talk about your routine. You can shoot content of yourself working out and talking about your diet. Then, when you’ve transformed your body in front of an audience, you’ll have the authority to start instructing people on how to do the same thing.
Avoid creating content about making money until you’ve made money in a way that doesn’t involve teaching other people how to make money. Documenting instead of creating helps you avoid the pyramid nature of the content influencer game.
The good news? You don’t need to be an infallible expert to help others.
You just have to teach people who are a few steps behind you:
- Talk about problems you’ve recently solved.
- Share lessons learned without telling people what to do.
- Show people how you work. There’s a great book called “Show Your Work“ that talks about this in-depth.
3. Use this model to expand your content creation strategy
Alex Hormozi has been exploding in popularity online in recent months.
After building several multi-million dollar businesses, he’s gone on to teach others about business without asking for anything in return. No course, consulting, or products of any kind, just free education for those who want to win in this business.
In this video, he talks about the five phases of content creation strategy:
- Make something: post something, sometime, somewhere
- Post something consistently: choose a platform you like and find a regular cadence
- Post reliably on all platforms: the total amount of volume increases because you’re now regularly posting across all major socials
- Maximize output on all platforms: go full throttle and max out how much content each platform can take.
- Capture and create: be intentional about generating new customers through your content
Master one level before graduating to the next, and you can eventually grow a massive content marketing empire.
4. Make the content you want to see in the world
Remember to DO YOU. Outsiders will always tell you what they think works. But what works for one person does not work for another. Path your own path. Rather than trying to be like someone else, think of what YOU in 5 years looks like, and be them – now.
—Leila Hormozi
When it comes to making content, there are a few things no one else can copy:
- Your personality
- Your life experiences
- The unique way you see the world
There are several tried and true content marketing strategies you can use. Just don’t get caught in the copycat game where you’re making stuff only because you think it’ll attract views, likes, shares, etc. You want people to see your content, yes, but if you start pandering to the crowd too much, it’ll come across as inauthentic.
Related:
5. Use your content to take your potential customers on a journey
This one comes from Bushra Azar, founder of the Persuasion Revolution.
Here’s what she had to say about the way she views communication with customers:
The way I have structured my products is that I imagine a problem that I see, a person who is facing a problem, and I map out a journey. I call it the “Dread to Dream Journey.” The person is in a dreadful situation and you need to take them to a dream situation. When I map out that Dread to Dream Journey, I don’t just create one solution that takes them from the dread to the dream in one full step.
— Bushra Azhar
When creating content, focus on guiding your potential customer on their journey. You have to be mindful of where they’re at on that journey:
- Are they aware they have a problem? If not, you have to make it clear they do.
- Are they aware of the problem but unaware there’s a solution? If so, use your content to begin solving those problems and alluding to a bigger and better solution
- If they are both aware of their problem and aware you have a solution that can work for them, this is when you use your content to close the deal
6. Be greedy when others are fearful
I recently watched a video from Patrick Bet-David, founder of Valuetainment, which has millions of followers on YouTube. He said that this time window from now through the next two or three years will be the time when some entrepreneurs will add another zero, or two, to their net worth.
His thinking comes from the saying Warren Buffet has:
When the tide comes in, you’ll know who’s swimming naked.
—Warren Buffett
A lot of entrepreneurs were flying high after Covid. Interest rates were at zero. Free or cheap money was everywhere. The stock market soared. Crypto went bananas, and everybody was making money. Everybody was a genius.
In late 2021, the market crashed. Inflation went up like mad. The crypto bros went quiet, and stocks went into the tank. A lot of fake gurus and business owners who didn’t know what they were doing got wiped out.
Bet-David argues that market downturns are some of the best times to start new businesses. He started his multi-million-dollar insurance company after the great recession.
So, his advice is to double down on your business right now and quadruple down on creating content for your business—because the best time to build awareness and make cash is when everyone else is running scared.
We haven’t hit peak fear yet, but many say it’s around the corner. Either way, putting your head down and making a huge bet on content is a smart strategy regardless of how well the economy is doing.
7. Follow the rule of 100
This piece of advice comes from Cammi Pham, an e-commerce marketer and partner at a digital marketing firm with nearly one million followers.
Your first 100 blog posts will mostly suck.
Your first 100 podcasts will mostly suck too.
Your first 100 talks will not be perfect.
Your first 100 videos will be nightmares.”
So what should you do, given that your initial work won’t be good?
“The truth is no matter how smart you are. WE ALL SUCK IN THE BEGINNING.
Most people give up right away. A few people stick around until they get it right.
—Cammi Pham
When it comes to the content creation game, most people quit far, far, far too early. Get a minimum of 100 reps in before you even think about whether or not your content is good. If you do enough volume, eventually, you’ll no longer suck.
8. Ask yourself these four questions
This advice comes from Justin Welsh, a content marketing expert who teaches people how to create viral content on Twitter and LinkedIn:
How to write unique content for your niche:
What is something everyone believes that you don’t?
What is something nobody is talking about but should be?
What are the big mistakes people make that they are oblivious to?
What change is happening that people aren’t noticing?
You always want to look for angles your competitors don’t see. You want to juxtapose yourself against other creators so you can position yourself as a non-commodity. This means keeping your eyes constantly peeled while simultaneously avoiding the need to create the same stuff as everyone else.
9. The counterintuitive way to make money with content
This piece of advice comes from Naval Ravikant, an angel investor and entrepreneur who has grown a huge social media following by sharing his wisdom.
This quote sounds like career advice, but it can also apply to content marketing:
Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.
—Naval Ravikant
It’s all about your motivations for creating content and having staying power. If you’re creating certain forms of content just because you want to hop on a trend, you’ll give up the minute the trend dies. Money in and of itself isn’t always the best motivator. Sure, there are some people out there who just ruthlessly and pragmatically acquire revenue by doing whatever is profitable, but those people are few and far between.
If, instead, you simply start talking about stuff that interests you and overlaps with the interests of others, you can build a foundation for a content strategy you can use for a really long time, which is what you’ll need to do to stay ahead of the pack.
10. Stop using logic to sell
This one comes from Dan Koe, a writer who focuses on human potential, creative work, & philosophy.
Mercedes sells status, not cars. Budweiser sells good times, not beer. Coca-Cola sells happiness, not soft drinks. The best marketers sell emotions, not items.
—Dan Koe
You have to think beyond the literal.
Don’t describe what your products and solutions do as much as you describe the benefits and outcomes of using them.
Think about the underlying emotion you want your audience to feel and give it to them.
Some of the best content creators out there aren’t the most technically gifted, but because they deeply understand who they are talking to, their content goes viral.
Final thoughts
In the end, none of these content marketing tips will work unless you put them out there.
There’s an abundance of content marketing information out there, but most people, including business owners, spend their time consuming content on content marketing instead of, you know, marketing themselves or their business with content marketing.
Content is the sexy new trend of today but getting it to work is hard.
It takes patience, diligence, and the ability to push past the beginning stages when nobody knows who you are.
You can do it.
The question is, will you?