I’m writing this post very specifically for my younger self, who had no idea what he was doing as a content marketer. I hope other content marketers find this useful.
Here’s some real talk about what it’s actually like to do content marketing:
- First of all, you have limited resources. Let’s not sugarcoat that, because the more starkly you face this truth, the better. If you or your team run out of resources before you achieve your goal, it’s game over. You lose your shot. Let’s just keep that in mind.
- If you want to achieve your goal, you have to make stuff that people want. Otherwise your content, however clever or magnificent you deem it, is going to go untouched. (Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.)
- You don’t have the resources to help everyone, so you need to prioritize. You start by helping one person.
- You can’t help that person solve ALL her problems, so you have to focus on helping her solve one specific problem. (And solve it satisfactorily, otherwise you just wasted both your time and her’s.)
- To help her change one specific thing, you have to develop a deep understanding of why she is in her current state. (Developing this understanding is an iterative process. You can’t just do a bunch of reading and figure it all out overnight.)
- Are you still there? Once you understand the problem, you’ll have to figure out the steps that she needs to take to get to the next, better state. (The challenge is to pick things that are simple-enough-to-do, rather than perfect-but-unlikely.)
- Once you’ve written something that made this one person’s life marginally better,you earn her trust. (Hooray! This actually feels really good, and will motivate you to keep going.)
- Do this repeatedly over and over again, and it compounds as you build relationships. These relationships become an ‘unfair advantage’ that you can leverage to achieve cool things.
As Rand Fishkin says in his kick-ass SlideShare “Why Content Marketing Fails“…
Minimum Viable Content: Real Talk About Content Marketing (And The 4 Mistakes You’ll Make)
