Okay, simple might’ve been a silly word to use here because if you aren’t used to creating content online then this might seem like anything but simple.
But when you compare it to the struggles of other content strategies, then this one is going to be a walk in the park for you.
So what is the point of having an online content strategy?
To make more money consistently.
Let’s not pretend otherwise.
When you have a solid online content strategy in place you:
- never wake up freaking out about what you’re supposed to post today
- engage more people that become long-term customers
- establish yourself as an authority in your niche
- give yourself more time to focus on other things or relax
- are able to take a break from time to time and not get stuck in the Hustle Culture grind
In the Creator Economy, those with content strategies succeed in the long run without burning out while those without them fade into nothingness.
That may sound bleak but when your main currency is content, not having a strategy around it is a sign that you’re not going to make it.
The Goals of a Content Strategy
If you want to succeed in building an online income, then you need to follow the Pocket Business Framework:
- Get them to notice you
- Get them to pay attention to you
- Get them to trust you
- Convert that trust into money
The goal of your content strategy should be to create content that applies all of these things.
In doing so, you’ll make your life easier along with bringing in more money.
If your content isn’t doing one of those things above, then it’s just a waste of content and you don’t look like the type of person that wants to waste their time on content that doesn’t do anything.
Why Today’s Content Strategy Is Broken
Chances are that you’ve already come across content frameworks and there is a good chance that they are broken.
Instead of looking at your brand as a system, most content advice looks at individual parts.
For example, it’s important that you know how to write good headlines, but looking at headlines alone means they can be very detached from everything else.
Or you might see a list of 100 Content Ideas that you can use today which give you prompts to create random content. These are helpful when you want random content ideas, but again, how does that make the whole system more effective?
Ideally, you want your content to always apply one of the steps in the Pocket Business Framework, but you also want to make sure that you know who your content is for and how it will guide them.
When you’re posting a new topic every day it can be confusing for your audience.
But when you are honing in on a topic (for a bit or forever) and have different pieces of content laid around that act as guideposts for your audience’s journey, you’ve made your life easier.
People get the goals of content confused in the Creator Economy. They think it’s the content that gets the most impressions, likes, retweets, or whatever else that wins.
That isn’t the case at all.
The content that wins is the content that converts. The content that makes a consumer a buyer.
If your content isn’t doing that, then the likes don’t mean a damn thing.
Likes ain’t money.
My Content Strategy
We aren’t going to pretend to deal in theory. Instead, I’ll show you the content strategy that I use for Struggle College along with all of the other brands that I create content for.
Remember, the goal is that every piece of content has a purpose and fulfills at least one of the steps of the Pocket Business Framework.
And as you’ll see, I want one piece of content to do a LOT of work before I need to move on to the next one.
Step 1. Know Your Audience
It doesn’t make much sense to work on any type of content if you don’t know who you are talking to.
So the first thing that you need to do is understand WHO you are talking to.
But you can’t come up with something generic like “teachers”.
You need to be as specific as possible.
For example, with Struggle College, my audience is the people that want to be online creators but struggle with making a living from it.
More specifically, the person that is trying to be an online creator and they don’t see any other life for them. No matter what, they’ll find a way to make this work.
More, more specifically it’s the person that is an online creator who is creating content to generate an audience that will buy their offers.
From there I can move on to the next step.
Step 2. Know Their Desired Outcome
What exactly does your audience want?
Just like with Step 1 you need to be specific. Don’t use things that someone can’t easily imagine.
For example, I know my audience wants to be happy but so does everyone else. And it’s hard to envision happiness.
However, if I say my audience wants to make $100,000 a year by being an online creator then that is something that is easier to picture.
This step can be challenging because it’s very easy to think about a lot of different outcomes for an audience.
Here are some of the outcomes that my audience would love:
- quit their job
- go on more vacations
- get out of debt
- retire early
- spend more time with family and friends
These are all things that I can talk about, but you want to find an outcome that can lead to these things.
Not everyone in my audience will care about more vacations so if I try to make the desired outcome just about vacations, then I’m leaving out a part of the audience that I selected.
However, because I say that the desired outcome is making over $100,000 a year as a creator, my audience can then envision the other outcomes that can bring.
Step 3. Apply the OPQ Framework
The next thing that you need to do is understand the opportunities, problems, and questions that revolve around the desired outcome.
Opportunities are the examples that I listed above. Getting out of debt, spending more time with family and friends, etc.
Problems are the things that prevent them from achieving the outcome. In the case of my audience, they might not be able to build an audience of their own or they can’t get people to buy their offers.
Questions are questions. Is this for me? How do I build an audience?
When I list out the different opportunities, problems, and questions, I can come up with an endless array of content that will help me bring in an audience of buyers.
Step 4. First Big
This will be the “do I really have to do that” step.
And no, you don’t HAVE to do it, but if you want to be seen as the go-to resource in your niche over time, this still will make sense.
The idea is that when you want to tackle a topic that you’ve unlocked from Step 3, then you should start by creating some type of long-form content.
This can be a blog post, a newsletter that can be publicly accessed, or a YouTube video.
This is going to be niche-dependent as some forms of content work better than others.
For example, writing a blog post showing me how to garden probably wouldn’t be as effective as a video, but you could still do both. Just understand your niche and what is the best form of media for it.
Once you have the long-form piece of content, this acts as your hub.
This is THE resource for that topic.
It’s something that you can link back to until the end of time and something people will want to visit as time goes on.
Now, the goal isn’t necessarily to drive a lot of traffic to this piece of content. If it blows up then awesome, but the main intent is to just be available for those that are ready.
How will you know if they are ready?
Step 5. Then Small
Now you take your long-form content and you get the absolute most out of it.
You break it up into smaller pieces of content that you then use on whatever social platforms you’re on.
The obvious thing to do is to quote certain parts of your long-form content and that can be useful. But you also want to take it further.
You can find small pieces and expand upon them or you can give full summaries.
This post itself is a piece of the long-form content that I’m talking about so how would I break it up?
- 5 Steps to Creating Infinite Content (Twitter post/thread, LinkedIn post, YouTube video, TikTok video)
- The Secret Framework (OPQ) to Unlimited Content (Twitter thread, LinkedIn post, YouTube video, TikTok video)
- Why Your Content Isn’t Working (Twitter thread, LinkedIn post, YouTube video)
- Why Long Form Content Is Making a Comeback (Twitter thread, LinkedIn Post, YouTube video)
- How to Never Run Out of Content Ideas
- How I Create Content for 5 Brands Without Burning Out
- You’re Not a Creator Without Content
As you can imagine I could do this all day.