Your content has to be so much better than your competition that you really stand out. There’s no point at all in generating mediocre content.

Don’t just write about your business or product. Your content has to be educational and solve problems.

• Selflessly help your customers.
• Be personal and make people feel like you were there with them.

Content Marketing = Build attention and trust.

You need:

1. Great Content
2. Monetization Logic
3. A Great Business

This strategy only works in a High Growth Business, which has 10 traits:

1. They are fundamentally profitable; if you are unable to replace yourself and still make a profit, then you are in trouble.
2. They Operate In A Large Market; don’t be niche.
3. They Naturally Build Assets Over Time; have something that sets you apart from your competition. “What is stopping someone from coming along and taking what you have?”
4. They Have A Simple Relatable Differentiator; Uber: “like taxis but they smell better and you know when they arrive.”
5. They Focus on Growing Consistent Revenue At a High Lifetime Value;
6. They Invest In a Memorable Brand; find a designer who can execute and make you stand out from the competition.
7. They Are Started by a Team, Not An Individual. Single founders fail most often. No such thing as Jack Of All Trades. Own 50% of $1 million company, rather than a 100% of $150,000 company.
8. They Know How To Say “No” And They Do It Often; bolting more sub-par solutions on to your main service will not solve the problem it will only complicate your business increase the likelihood of running into a fundamentally unprofitable model. Be world-class at one thing.
9. They Understand The Power Of Monthly Growth.
10. They Think Long Term. Act as if you are building a brand that you can pass on to your kids.

MONETIZATION LOGIC

Ask yourself this “Does it make sense that someone would consume this content and then go on to become a customer?” There has to be a link between business and content.

But you also need to have a leap of faith. People quit too soon.

Your Content Strategy

Vision

• what do you think people want that they aren’t getting?
• real transparency behind the business. How things are done? Who are your clients? How are you investigating?

Who are you creating content for?

• Come up with a customer avatar, that describes exactly who your customer is, what they need, and what they hope to get out of your content.
• Your ideal customer hears about your content over a long period and through multiple sources and that’s how trust is built.
• Find your community and help them.

High-Quality Content

• Impact, not quantity, matters.
• Great content is something you provide your customers (that’s better than your competitor) that captures their attention and encourages them to engage and share.

1. Don’t be afraid of going outside of the niche: it has to be interesting!
2. Pay attention to your Community – go to Quora for topics.
3. Be More Generous Than Your Competition.
4. Be More Transparent Than Your Competition. Post about your processes- it builds trust.
5. Be More Contrarian.
6. Be More Actionable. Instead of writing “10 Tips for Writing A Sales Letter,” put together a useful sales template that walks you through the process.
7. Tell A Better Story. Talk about how you started from the bottom and have grown to a 6-figure income.

Come Up With 20 Content Ideas. Go to resources. www.contentmachine.com/resources

Quality Content Standards:

• Useful, easy to read, credible, emotionally relatable, not all about you, specific and not general, original, shareable, interesting, great design, flowing, entertaining, fun, long, gains measurable traction.

Traction doesn’t mean likes. It means email replies, comments, and shares. (Use Disqus or Facebook comments)

DIFFERENTIATION

Content marketers have to be entrepreneurial – enter an established audience and provide a unique spin on the product or service. Similarly, content marketing creates content for a certain community of people and do it better with a unique angle to get noticed.

THE WHISPERER

Put your prices online ($85-99/hour) to do a presales qualifier (eliminating bad customers) and tell them what they’re getting for the money. Where businesses are still secretive, a content marketer can come in and open the kimono. Be transparent about it build trust.

How to become the whisperer: see page 95.

THE HUSTLER

Release daily content, more than your competitors will.

THE GIVER

Like Noah Kagan, the giver provides as much free advice as he can.

THE ANALYST

Pull together more data and report on it than your competitors.

THE COMIC

Add 1% funny to your content at http://funnybizz.co/ where they rewrite your blog posts to be funny.

David Nihil – Do You Talk Funny

60secondsaleshook.com

THE PIONEER

Be the first to post your monthly revenues.

THE OPPORTUNIST

Basically become a newsjacking site and write about what’s trending and what your competitors wrote that was popular.

THE REPORTER

Become the source for curated news in your industry.

THE ARTIST

Screenshots, Instagram, Charts, and Graphs (lucidchart), Slideshares, Custom Illustrations (Groove), Online courses, infographics, Quotable Social Images (Canva, Wordswag), Memes, GIFs (GifGrabber, BuzzFeed)

Developing the Machine

Your website should be set up for conversion which means it’s closely tied to design. A Well-designed site looks good and works for it’s intended audience and converts well.

You have to narrow down your potential customers then into a funnel. You can do that in three ways:

1. The email funnel
2. The product funnel
3. The Content funnel

Five must-have sequences for content marketers:

1. Drip Email (weekly) ie Mailchimp automation sequence
2. Content suggestion sequence
3. Pitch Sequence
4. Cart Abandonment
5. Problem based conversion sequence

Find influencers and, comment on their blogs and be positive, include them on your blog, and follow them on social media, etc.

Create an ambassador list.

Have a style guide for your content when guest writers post for you. Make sure you include a text style guide.

Create a monthly feedback loop and goals for your content marketer to hit each month.

CONTENT PROMOTION

There are plenty of ways to do this by going to www.contentmachine.com/resources

Remember the key to scaling is to automate and delegate. things don’t scare without those key elements.