CONTENT! It’s the next big thing, and it takes up way too much of everyone’s time. But whether you like it or not, nearly every marketing strategy involves some type of content creation.
Whether it’s creating a series of Facebook posts, managing a blog, writing Instagram captions, or guest posting — you need to be educating your audience and keeping them engaged. And one of the best ways to do that is with valuable content.
In this case study, we’re going to take a look at how we’ve been helping our clients produce massive amounts of content for their audiences with minimal effort on their part. This is unique content that uses YOUR domain expertise but hardly any of your time.
Curious how we do it? Don’t believe our shameless click-bait title? Read on to find out.
Content is only worth creating if it’s valuable
Before we dive into how this task works, let’s make one thing clear right off the bat. Content marketing only works if you’re producing interesting, attention-grabbing, and valuable stuff that is relevant to your audience.
As you know, everyone is inundated with content these days. With so many options available, no one is going to waste their time reading content that isn’t valuable to them. They’ll simply move on to the next thing.
How many times have you clicked an article, read the first couple of sentences, and then realized it wasn’t worth your time? If you’re like most people, you probably do this multiple times each day. You don’t want people doing that with your content.
If the content you’re producing is generic, boring, or irrelevant — no one is going to read it. And if no one is reading it, you’re wasting your time and money.
Which brings us to your role in this process…
Valuable content starts with domain expertise
The key to creating valuable content is to start from an area of expertise. And as a business owner, YOU are the expert of your niche!
Out of everyone in your company, you know the most about your industry, your product or service, and the people you’re serving. So, if we’re looking to create valuable content that comes from an area of expertise — who better to go to than you?
Whether you realize it or not, you already have the knowledge and information your audience is looking for. Our role is to pull that information out of you and use it to create valuable content that will engage them.
So, our content creation process starts with you. But don’t worry — as the title of this post implies, it won’t take up much of your time.
An hour of your time
To start this process, one of our writers will reach out to you to schedule a call. We ask for one hour of your time, although the entire hour may not be necessary.
There’s no need to prepare for this call, but if you’re the type of person who would never show their face in a meeting without an extensive agenda, you’re welcome to think about content ideas in advance and write them down.
To start the call, a Leverage writer will ask you about why you’re creating content, where you’d like to put it, and what unique insight you have that might be relevant to your audience. We’ll do our homework before the call so we can understand the basics of your business and online presence, but some basic questions will help ensure everyone is on the same page. (Get it? Writing puns…)
From there, your writer will ask pointed questions with the goal of creating an interesting discussion full of ideas that can be turned into content. A naturally-flowing conversation is a great indicator that there are many interesting ideas that can be turned into content.
Here are some examples of questions we may ask during this call:
What is the number one problem your audience is facing and how can you or your product solve it?
When you meet your clients or customers in person, what topics come up most frequently?
Is there any insight or advice related to your service or product that you find yourself repeating?
Are there any common mistakes that you see your clients or customers making?
Is there anything about your service or product that most people aren’t aware of?
Are there any exciting things coming down the pipeline for your business that your audience would be interested in?
Are there any interesting things currently happening in your industry? Do you have any insight into future trends?
Are there any fellow business owners in your industry that would be interested in writing a guest post or doing an interview?
Are there any interesting “case studies” of people using your service or product in a unique or valuable way?
Do your clients or customers have any unique success stories that you could share?
Do you have a unique take on something that’s recently been in the news that would be relevant to your audience?
Do you have any interesting stories about how you created your business?
And that’s just the start.
Your writer will continue to ask questions like this and prod you to get the information they need for a number of full-length posts (we promise, the prodding doesn’t hurt). By the end of the call, the goal is to have twelve or more ideas for full-length posts.
Putting it all together
Congratulations! Your job here is done. We’ll be able to take that call and turn it into a year’s worth of content.
Now, a “year’s worth of content” will depend entirely on your posting schedule and how much we’re able to cover in one call. But we’ve found that, on average, most of our clients are posting once per month and we’re able to get twelve or more content pieces out of an hour-long call.
This content is generally used for blogs, but we can also use it for newsletters, social media posts, and more. If you’re not sure where to post it, we can also help you make the right decision for your business.
After the call, your writer is going to start turning all those ideas into standalone posts. Before writing, we’ll take a look at your previous written content so that we can match the style and tone. We’ll also create a simple content calendar to store the posts for future use.
For budgeting, you can expect each post to take somewhere between one and four hours — depending on the length and other factors — but your writer will be able to give you an accurate estimate before they begin in earnest.
Pro tip: We can even take this a step further and use clips from your call recording for sound bites on Instagram, YouTube, and more!
From there, we can help you with anything else you may need — we can determine where the best places to post are, create a posting schedule, SEO-optimize your blog, and even post the content for you! And when we start running out of content, we can simply hop on another call to get what we need.
That’s how we create a year’s worth of content from one hour of your time.
Interested in trying this out for yourself? Read below for the next steps.
For Leverage Clients:
If you’d like the Leverage Marketing Team to complete this task for you, simply copy and paste the title below onto your next task and add any other relevant information (like where you plan on posting the content) to the description.
TASK TITLE: Content Creation Call from Leverage Blog
Click here to submit your task now!
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