Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

Your awesome site isn’t awesome. Getting your stories into the hands of the people who need them is awesome.

If you aren’t having fun creating content, you’re doing it wrong.

When we say to be authentic, we mean you should make it clear that your stuff has the stamp of an actual person or actual people and that that person or those people have the qualities (a point of view, a personality, a sense of enthusiasm for the subject, and suitability to your audience) that make for a compelling approach to content as a solid foundation for the start of your relationship with your audience.

Consider Pawn Stars, a popular show on the History Channel, and compare it with Antiques Roadshow, which airs on PBS.

Today, I see my business as a content marketing company. In other words, my entire goal is to give more valuable, helpful, and remarkable content to consumers than anyone else in my field, which will in turn lead to more sales.

Worry more about creating remarkable content; worry less about being professional.

Creating content as a cornerstone of your marketing allows you to truly place yourself in your customers’ shoes, to adopt their vantage points, and to consider their thoughts, feelings, and needs. In short, it allows you to get to know the people who buy from you better than any customer survey or poll ever could.

Content drives conversations. Conversation engages your customers. Engaging with people is how your company will survive and thrive in this newly social world.

2. Leverage This word is the poster child of words that began life as nouns and (perplexingly) find themselves now used as verbs.

Your video content, in particular, is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than your standard text-based content, according to a Forrester Research report.

How can you anticipate and meet their needs so that they start to see you as a trusted source of information they need, and not as someone who just wants to sell them stuff?

Instagram in particular is one of the best platforms we’ve seen that puts magic wands into the hands of us Muggles.

Share or solve; don’t shill. Good content doesn’t try to sell. Rather, it creates value by positioning you as a reliable and valuable source of vendor-agnostic information.

Do not be tempted by a 20-dollar word when there is a 10-center handy, ready and able.

People like printing a hard copy of the presentation slides. We don’t really understand why, but they do.

To use another analogy: you cannot have the mentality of survivalists who hoard everything they grow for themselves. Rather, be like Johnny Appleseed, spreading seeds to allow everyone to enjoy the fruits (metaphorically).

In fact, it’s just the sort of propaganda most marketers and business writers construct every day: “Here’s our product. It is great. Here are customers who say it is great. Now buy some of our product.

Build momentum. Why are you creating? Good content always has an objective; it’s created with intent. It therefore carries triggers to action.

Done right, the content you create will position your company not as just a seller of stuff, but as a reliable source of information.

So instead of viewing your story or content as a static and pristine object owned by your site, think of it as a social object that can be taken, retold, and shared by others.

Tell your audience how your stuff helps people by telling them about those people, not by talking just about your stuff.

When you are writing keep asking yourself “so what” until you are sure what is in it for the customer.

Everyone else, meanwhile, wants to know only what those products or services can do for them.

Regard your content as something more, as something other than just words and images on a page—as an extension of your brand.

The person with the abundance mentality wins.

Creating content as a cornerstone of your marketing allows you to truly place yourself in your customers’ shoes, to adopt their vantage points, and to consider their thoughts, feelings, and needs.

Producing any regular stream of content keeps you almost by necessity on the cutting edge of best practices and developments in your particular industry.

Prior to the web, organizations had only two significant choices to attract attention: buy expensive advertising or get third-party ink from the media. But the web has changed the rules.

content

But if your company has a website, you have essentially already given birth.