7 Minutes to Mastering Content Marketing: Strategic Tips | Beverly Cornell

Welcome to Spark & Ignite Your Marketing, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

In this solo episode, recorded during our conversation with Kelly Clement the founder of Watermelon Math, we dive into the essentials of content marketing and offers practical advice for small business entrepreneurs. When executed strategically, content marketing can significantly enhance marketing efforts and drive business growth.

I outline the process of creating a content strategy, starting with identifying key content areas relevant to your niche. I introduce the concept of content buckets, breaking down high-level topics into subtopics to ensure comprehensive coverage and organization.

To maximize impact, I suggest structuring content like a pyramid, starting with basic information and building up to advanced content. I emphasize the importance of repurposing content effectively, transforming a single blog post into guides, worksheets, checklists, and videos to extend its reach.

I highlight using repurposed content as lead magnets to grow your email list and establish authority. And discuss integrating content with your overall business strategy and visualizing end goals, like creating comprehensive guides with practical insights.

Tune in now to learn how to develop and execute a successful content marketing strategy, and harness the power of content to grow your business.

Dare to be Wickedly Branded

Transcript

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Restream recording Apr 16, 2024 • 04:35:53 PM 0:11

Content marketing is probably one of the most powerful tools that you can use right now to help with your marketing, but you have to be strategic and thoughtful about how you execute your content marketing. That looks like a couple of things. One is you do an outline of all the different areas of content that your particular niche covers. In my world, in marketing, it's branding, storytelling, marketing strategy, it's content marketing, it's email marketing, social media marketing. So you outline all those higher level content topics. But even more so how they solve a problem. So branding and storytelling helps people understand their business, gives them clarity, gives them focus, and ultimately a filter to run every business decision through. that's the ultimate reason why we do those things, like why branding and storytelling is so important. So all the sub things that go into the branding and storytelling, so you talk about colors and fonts and logo psychology. Once you have those overarching things, and what those, that, that problem, that particular thing solves or can, the value it can create for your niche, whatever that looks like, then you start doing the sub things, and if you have enough content in all those buckets, it's pretty talented. Content buckets. That's where you start from. So I always tell my clients to think 101, 201, 301, 401. So just like we did in school, it's like really basic and then it, then build on it and build on it. So here's like the basic things you have to know. Here's one tip that can like totally change everything. Game changer. This is a one tool that you can use for that. Like again, it becomes like this. Pyramid of content, that's the content type structure, but then you have let's say I make a blog about social media basics, I make a blog basics. Then I can say, I want to make a comprehensive guide to social media. Then I can say, I want to build a worksheet for so small business owners to use, to build their social media. Then I want to create a checklist. For people to do as their, so in your business, you have to think about it, like how that plays out for you. Then I can say from this blog, this is where AI becomes really powerful. I wrote this amazing blog, create a worksheet from this blog. Cause it's your content, your thing, your whatever. Create a worksheet, create a checklist, make this a checklist. easy to follow, easy to use for small business owners checklist. Then, hey, I have this blog, AI, can you restructure it as a video script? Can you restructure it as a one minute video script, a five minute video script, and a full 45 minute workshop? So one blog, so you investing in your blog is where the most impact you can have in. And then, okay, here's the next part. So I have this blog, so I've now made it a worksheet, I've made it a checklist, which are all great lead magnets you can use to grow your email list if you're looking to do that, which every business should be doing. And then you can create like a product or content to put yourself out there to create expertise and build authority. So workshops, webinars, whatever, guides books. And then you can take that blog post too and say create 10 social media posts from this blog Using hashtags emojis, whatever or you can say create 10 facebook create 10 linkedin So that it like again, you're focusing on your target market and making it better based on the tool Do you see how it just it snowballs into, so for me even the podcast and the book are all part of that content structure. So ultimately at the end of this year or whenever I decide I have enough content, I have a quick book that sparks and ignites your marketing, right? At the end of this year, I want to take that, the quick book and every chapter essentially has become a cornerstone piece of content that I have. It's my content buckets. I want to create an ultimate guide. And even in the podcast, I'm using the case studies from the podcast to fit into each of those buckets. You talked specifically about LinkedIn or social media, also talked about branding. So your story could fit in either one of those buckets. So I can now use your story, your expertise, your experience to illustrate maybe a point or something that I'm making in the book. So all of it to me is a part of my strategy. Yeah. It's very specific for me and what I want to create. I have a vision at the end of the day of what I wanna create, the legacy that I want, what it looks like, and the value that I wanna bring to my clients. So at the end of the day, I have now this ultimate guide with a workbook, with case studies, with all the things that's much more comprehensive than the book. But I said, I lemme just try to get this book out. And let's just do like a taste and see. How this process works and all the things. And then from there, now I can build on that. And so now like even every chapter, there's a, like an action step. I have a video for every action step that's out on reels so the first one we just, for this was my, why, like what, how to find your why you do business what this is all about, all those things. And then. My actual why. So I'm also building content for my business, but I'm also helping my customers and my clients build their why as well. I'm establishing that all the way through. And then every action step now is essentially more of a full worksheet as opposed to just a little step. I really developed it out. How do I take this further and further? Which I think you talked about it, alluded in the, even our interview was, how do you like take it further into the next step? Is the same thing but content this content structure so you made a whole list of all the things that bring you happiness and joy It's the same thing all the content that brings you happiness and joy And then how do you make the sub buckets out of that and then every sub every single content topic then becomes How do I repurpose this fully? Into all the different streams of content so You investing in your time. So I spend a lot of time blogging. My assistant then spends a lot of time repurposing that content. Then once I have my hair done and, I feel like I can, then I'll do some of the video sides of it or whatever. So she like helps me organize that so that I'm just steadily creating the content that I need all based on the original content that I created. So that's my. Seven minute explanation of a content strategy that matters and that can just, it'd be an endless and fruitful path for you to create really good content for your business.