CREATING A STRATEGY

“Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment – would you capture it? Or just let it slip?”

Jump in blindly and who knows what’s going to happen.

No, if you want to capture that opportunity, you need a strategy.

Content should never be produced for content’s sake – it’s absolutely pointless and just wastes your time and money. When it’s produced as part of a wider marketing strategy that’s driving to something bigger, you’re going to see it deliver a return for your business.

It might seem counter-intuitive but start at the end. Ask yourself: “What does success look like?”

Then work it back:

• What do I need to ‘sell’ to get there?
• Why would someone choose me?
• How am I going to deliver that product/service?
• Who is going to buy-in to what I’m offering?
• Where can I find them?

With your strategy starting to come together you’ll naturally start to identify pieces of content that you need to create for your business.

But that’s still not enough to seize everything.

If you want to win, you need to start getting more strategic in planning your content too because if you leave it to chance, or think “I’ll just post something every week”, it’s never going to happen.

Grab yourself a blank sheet of paper
In the centre write the name of the product/service/theme. Then start to brainstorm anything and everything to do with it. Make sure you cover every angle, no matter how random because at this stage there are no wrong answers.

Write your working titles
Next, start to hone your list down into a shortlist of the content your audience is going to find most

interesting/relevant/useful and generate some working titles.

Schedule
Schedule these working titles onto a content calendar to give them a deadline and make them a priority – fail to do this step, and again, your content is never going to happen because marketing always falls off the ‘to do’ list when there’s client work to be done.

Start writing
In “Fortune Cookie Principle” it talks about how your words are your front line. They are so important to your success so if you don’t have the time, resource or skillset to give your content the love, care and attention it deserves, hire someone.

Time is of the essence, so identifying your weaknesses upfront and outsourcing to someone who specialises in this field will save you missing the opportunity.