Chapter index / Previous chapter / Next chapter
You’ve created a workshop and filmed it, made blog posts, uploaded mini tutorials on YouTube, designed awesome infographics and posted valuable tips on Facebook posts. One year on from that first workshop you did to start establishing yourself as an authority in your industry, you really have exhausted all of your content possibilities.
So, what do you do now?
Rather than forgetting all about your content strategy, now is more important than ever to keep up with the momentum. You’ve probably learnt a great deal over the past wee while, which means all you need to do now is rinse and repeat. And since you’ve become a little bit wiser, it’s time to systemise things a bit better and even outsource a lot of the work so that you can get on with doing the more important business stuff.
If you’re a little unsure what we are talking about, go back and read some of our previous blog posts where we share incredibly valuable chapters from Authority Content by David Jenyns. You’ll get up to speed with what David is going to talk about in this chapter we are sharing with you today, which is all about playing the long game when it comes to content for your business.
Let’s take a look.
Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint so… Warning! Shampoo marketing cliché alert!
That’s right. Once you’ve completely exhausted every possible avenue of content creation from your workshop, simply rinse and repeat.
You could aim to run a workshop once every 12 months, slightly increasing the ambition of your production each time, but always using the results to power your marketing for the rest of the year. If you have the energy and the resources, you could even conduct your workshop twice per year.
Whatever schedule you decide upon, it’s important that you repeat this process on a regular basis. Each time you do it you’ll get a little bit better at the production, a little more fluid in creating content and you’ll be building on the foundation of great content that you put out the last time.
This is how you Google-proof your business, turn on a flood of traffic, triple your conversions and establish long-term customer loyalty.
Every year that you’re still around, still producing informative and valuable content, your status as an expert will continue to grow, your ability to attract new business will continue to improve, and your position in the industry will be unshakeable.
If I can give you one final piece of advice going forward, particularly on your second time through the Authority Content process, it would be to systemise and document the process as much as you possibly can. Outsource the “Product” and “Promote” phases or pass it down the line to members of your team who are capable of learning the process and managing it without needing you to handhold them.
We use a platform called www.systemHUB.com to organise and improve our checklists, processes and standard operating procedures (SOPs). This is critical because the systems within your business, outlining the way you do things, are the most valuable assets you own.
How about this for an idea: hire a marketing graduate to read this book, document and manage the entire project from start to finish. It could be the best $30,000 you ever spend. Or even better, for more established businesses, have my team implement the entire Authority Content process for you: www.authoritycontent.com/done-for-you
Long-term, this is the best strategy for you. SEO and online marketing is important work but it’s not the best use of your time. Your involvement in the process should be creating and delivering an amazing workshop and then, after that, everything else should be handled by your team or outsourcers.
Does Authority Content take a lot of time and effort to get off the ground?
Yes – although if you follow my advice to keep your first attempt as simple as possible, the rewards far outweigh the costs. Heck, deep down you know everything worthwhile takes time and effort.
Never lose sight of the goal we set out to achieve at the beginning of this book – to create a solution for growing AND marketing your business that isn’t tied to the whims of whatever online platforms are currently popular.
Authority Content, by its very design, refreshes your marketing every year, without needing to massively overhaul your approach and without requiring you to nuke all your previous marketing assets.
* * *
It’s pure hubris but I have this fantasy that you’re actually reading this in the year 2100. The entire world is unimaginably different from how it was when I was alive, yet Authority Content, thanks to its ability to shape and adapt to its surroundings, is still powering businesses all around the world.
I sincerely hope that yours is one of them.
Just because you run out of content, doesn’t mean that you need to stop worrying about your content strategy. When you’ve done all of what you can do with what you have, get on to organising another workshop so you create more content that you can use. You’ll probably find by now that your business has been growing so much, that you might need to find a bigger venue!