Content For Creators

These days you can’t escape the need for content - whether you’re a solo entrepreneur, start-up team or big business, communication is key to creativity, community and growth. It also serves as a way to better get to know your consumers, but in the age of information overload, how can it best be made to work?

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Content Is King

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Content marketing can attract audiences more efficiently than paid advertising. It’s especially hard for advertisers to stand out when people are consistently buried under an avalanche of impersonal ads. However if you have a product you want to share with the world - customers are engaged by creative content.

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The Content Council is a global non-profit organisation focused on content marketing, their studies show that 61% of people are more likely to buy a company’s products and services when they provide content uniquely tailored their needs. Research by Content+ also indicates that 70% of consumers prefer becoming familiar with a company through articles that address their questions and needs, humour them, and satisfy their curiosity.

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This shift from traditional advertising to content creation is great news for individuals, small business owners and startups. Not only do they no longer need to run costly advertising campaigns from the days of Mad Men, but they are also better positioned to create content that feels more relatable. Love them or loathe them - this is one reason why the influencer market has expanded so rapidly. The technology needed to generate and distribute this kind of output is more readily available than ever before.

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Unlike traditional advertising, content can also help you better understand your customer. It offers immediate insight into what they are, or are not engaging with. If you’re a product business, you can even start doing this before bringing any tangible goods into the market. Focus on aspects that customers seem most excited about pre-release. Once you’ve discovered the sweet spot through a bit of experimentation and a few re-iterations, it will be easier to identify your target niche.

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Sourcing The Sweet Spot

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The sweet spot is a blend of skill, knowledge, passion and problem-solving. It can often be found in the most unusual of combinations. Andy Schneider is an entrepreneur who had a passion for teaching and loved raising chickens in his backyard. He soon realised he wasn’t alone in his avian pursuits, and a lot of people regularly asked him for information about chicken-rearing at home.

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Schneider started by holding regular meetings about poultry in his backyard in Atlanta. Fast forward five years and this has expanded into his own radio show, magazine and a book, and today he travels around the United States leading workshops and helping others explore his passion project. Schneider combined his interests to hit the sweet spot, but he also found the right audience. When you’re first starting out, it can be easier to hone in on an underserved niche, than to aim for mass market appeal.

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Andy Schneider could have tried connecting with students or amateur farmers, but he wisely honed in on his perfect audience: homeowners with an interest in raising their own chickens for fun. His success even earned him his nickname - ‘the chicken whisperer’. With unique and focused content, you can stand out and better position yourself to start becoming an expert in your field. Creating a content tilt is what makes it different from what’s already out there, and helps it be unique, memorable and valuable.

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Tackling The Tilt

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There are several ways of finding your niche or angle. If for example, your sweet spot has led you to the business of home office decoration, one way of pinpointing your tilt could be to peruse social media platforms and see what your target audience is talking about. Slot in the novel or unique perspectives you might focus in on, or contribute to. More direct methods would be to use online surveys, face to face interviews, and online market research via databases or internet trends. Your content should be unique enough to attract people who are interested in what you have to offer, and your knowledge needs to be detailed enough to deliver.

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Honing in on this means you should be able to condense your purpose into the form of an overarching mission statement. For example, x+why is a flexible workspace provider with a difference, who are on a mission to change the way the world works for good. We believe that advancing people and planet as well as profit goes beyond responsibility - it makes exceptional sense. We do this by offering start-ups the home and tools they need to grow: flexible work-wellbeing, partnerships with industry leaders such as the B Corporation, and a community of other heart and soul-led entrepreneurs.

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The right kind of content should attract the community like bees to pollen, but it also requires a platform that makes it easy to connect. Experimenting with a blend of blogs, podcasts and youtube channels can help you source where people are finding you best. Matthew Patrick was a struggling, out of work actor with a background in neuroscience. Since starting his channel ‘Game Theory’ on youtube, he’s become an internet sensation within the realms of science, acting and a passion for gaming.

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Sweet spot, channel and target audience in place, you’re now positioned to start committing to a content calendar that can help keep things on track. It can be overwhelming to keep an audience hooked, so having organisation and structure in place can help you plan-out over long periods, learning and adjusting as you go along, combined with email, SEO, and influencers. Email is one of the most important forms of communication, with subscribers here being more crucial than the number of social media followers.

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For this top-tier audience, you’re not just another person in their feed or business competing for their attention. With email you have a much more direct form of personal communication, and customers are also able to directly respond to you privately, whenever they want. Honing in on exciting trends in your industry, asking for feedback, hosting virtual workshops or having the community collaborate on content are a great way to start building a richer tapestry.

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Diversifying Into Content Assets

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When you have one channel nailed, you’re ready to diversify. The simple way of doing this is by adding more channels, however it can also take other forms, such as expanding into related areas. For example, a digital photography school might add an extra page to their website for sales on photography equipment.

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Another way to diversify is to buy a content asset - these are content providers who already have a platform, as well as an audience, in the area that you’re looking to expand into. If you want to expand quickly, it makes sense to buy an existing asset and its audience, rather than building a new one from the roots up.

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This is what the photography supply store Adorama did, when they bought the magazine JPG just as it was about to go out of business. The magazine already had 300,000 subscribers, adding extra diversity to their audience and creating a win-win deal for the platform that could no longer sustain themselves.

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Seeing which revenue streams work best is a matter of trial and error. For example, affiliate-marketing can help generate more traffic between likeminded partners, and is one demonstration of how collaboration often works best in the digital sphere. There are multiple ways of diversifying revenue whether that be through selling to advertisers and news outlets, magazine or podcast subscription fees, the modern day Patreon, or exclusive sales and discounts. You could also look into crowdfunding sites such as kickstarter, or cross-media offers such as webinar co-hosting events.

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The most important thing to remember is to keep your eyes open, as new and unexpected means are constantly cropping up in the ever expanding digital era. But don’t forget to listen to your audience, as some of the best opportunities come from customer feedback, or people that have heard you speak at an event. The potential payoff from content management can be huge, it takes time to build a loyal audience, but with the right tools, a good strategy and the right kind of content, you could be generating value for businesses and consumers alike.

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