This post is from The Recipe, my weekly email where thousands of entrepreneurs get brand and marketing tips to help them grow their business.
It’s easy to get discouraged by content marketing. If you’re not getting subscribers to your email, followers on social, or likes on your posts it can feel like you’re talking to an empty room.
And you probably are, at first.
A big audience comes from pushing out content people want to consume. That’s the chicken and the egg. None of the good stuff comes without consistently entertaining, educating, or inspiring someone.
But don’t get discouraged. You don’t need a big audience. I know that phrase is worn out, but it’s true. I got my first client from this newsletter when there were maybe 75 people on my list. That client lead to two more. Momentum began to build and now our problem is adding team members, not clients. We get a steady flow of inbound inquiries from my writing—even though our audience is still small compared to many other marketers.
That’s the thing, you can’t judge your efforts against other companies already killing it. If they have an audience, they’ve put in the work. It’s your turn.
If you fight through the imposter syndrome and start putting out solid content that helps people get what they want, you’ll see a return on your efforts. Here’s how you get started…
- Decide who you want in your audience.
- Find their problems.
- Write content that solves those problems.
- Show up every week, no matter what.
Make it easy for someone to tell a friend about your content. You want people to be able to say, “You need to check this out. Andrew sends an email with marketing tips every Friday.”
Speaking of it, you should definitely tell one of your friends that right now.
This Week’s Reading List…
Writing has been the most valuable investment I’ve made in my business. Here are some articles to help you benefit from content marketing as well.
“Despite many of the companies in our dataset managing huge and successful social accounts and mailing lists, organic utterly dwarfs every other source of traffic.”
This is a great reference for companies of all sizes looking to get more from their content marketing. If you want proof to bring to your boss on the value of content marketing efforts, here’s the data.
“A successful content marketing strategy starts with defining who you want to reach, what you’ll provide these people, and how they’ll benefit from consuming your content.”
This may be the most useful brand and marketing tool I use for clients and myself. If you want to grow an audience, start with a content manifesto.
