Breathe New Life Into Your Business by Nailing Your Content Marketing

Does this sound familiar? You know your audience is on LinkedIn or Instagram, but you can’t seem to gain any traction. You may be posting a few times every week, but you feel like you’re shouting your brilliant content into the wilderness. 

Or maybe the “tossing spaghetti at the wall” method of content marketing worked well for you a couple of years ago, but now you know you need a different approach. 

The trouble is all the social media platforms have complicated algorithms that change every few months. And who has energy to chase an algorithm, anyway?

I get it. This is how I felt when I started using LinkedIn. Since then, I’ve learned that mastering LinkedIn (or any other social media platform) is more about finding a strategy that aligns with your strengths than it is about following all the “rules” the so-called gurus espouse. How often do those “rules” turn into roadblocks?

Yes, you need to create some guardrails for yourself, but the only good guardrail is a guardrail that keeps you on the road to success. So, let’s talk about how to nail your content marketing and what outcomes you can expect when you do.

How to nail your content marketing

Nailing your content marketing is all about finding the guardrails that will keep you on the road to success. And, by the way, you get to define success. Maybe it means setting up three coffee chats each month through your DMs. Maybe it means filling your online course by sharing the link once per week.

Now, in some cases, success may mean getting off of social media altogether and putting your marketing time, energy, and dollars into other types of marketing. Still, for most business owners, I think it makes sense to work a strategy with one platform. I prefer LinkedIn and believe it can work for almost any business owner in almost any industry.

One point of clarification here, when I say “nail your content marketing,” I’m talking about strategy + implementation. I’m not talking (directly) about the quality of the content you create, although this can play a role as well.

Now you might have a strategy but have trouble implementing that strategy or you might be consistently posting every day (or have someone on your team posting for you) without much of a strategy. Either way, you’re not nailing your content marketing and you may be draining the life out of your business.

So all it really takes to nail your content marketing is implementing a solid strategy. Still, as anyone who has tried it knows, this is both super simple and incredibly hard to pull off. Even if you love posting on LinkedIn, you probably know you could be benefiting so much more from the platform with the right strategy.

If you aren’t nailing your content marketing, take some time to think about what success looks like, then, with that in mind, come up with a strategy and a plan for implementation.  

What outcomes can you expect if you nail your content marketing?

Okay, sure, strategy + implementation. All of that makes sense. But what can you expect to see if you nail your content marketing? In other words, how will you know when your strategy is working? This is such a good question!

1. Networking becomes easier.

You can think of any social media platform you use as a 24/7 networking event, but there’s no more obvious online networking platform than LinkedIn. In fact, I find that LinkedIn works best when I think of it as just that (rather than a virtual billboard or place to advertise my services). So every action I take on LinkedIn is strategically designed to further my networking goals.

Even if you’re just getting started with LinkedIn and your posts aren’t getting hundreds of views or comments (yet), future prospects are likely seeing your posts and taking note. This means that when you reach out — or better yet — when they reach out to you, you’re talking to someone who already knows a lot about you.

One of my clients recently described LinkedIn as “networking for introverts” and I couldn’t agree more. If you’re the kind of person who cringes at the idea of going to a big event where hundreds of people (mostly realtors) are schmoozing and handing out business cards like candy, then you know you can accomplish more by intentionally building relationships on LinkedIn using your content as an icebreaker.

2. So much brand clarity.

We all underestimate the power of writing and rewriting our main messages. But when you nail your content marketing, you’ll experience a new level of clarity around your brand. Content marketing offers you a virtual treasure trove of data:

  • You’ll see what messages resonate with your audience.
  • You’ll see who is looking at your profile.
  • You’ll notice who is loving your content enough to engage in a conversation with you about it.

And you’ll be able to use this data to tweak your content strategy to see even stronger results. All of these insights will come to you naturally, by the way. Of course, if you’re really into playing with data, you’ve probably already created the spreadsheets in your mind. But that’s just to say, it won’t take a ton of extra work on your part to start to see where more clarity is needed.

3. Your audience automatically associates you with your brand.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of hearing about “thought leadership.” It’s becoming so overused that it has lost much of its meaning. So whenever I hear that someone wants to be a thought leader, I have to dig further into what they mean.

One thing people mean when they tell me they want to be a thought leader is that they want others to associate their name with their brand or industry. Nailing your content marketing can absolutely make this happen for you. You will start to hear from others, “my friend said she was looking for a coach and of course, I thought of you.”

So if you’ve been considering hiring a high-ticket PR firm to build your reputation as a thought leader. You may be able to save yourself a lot of money by implementing a solid content marketing strategy instead.

4. The right LEADS come your way.

I would bet that finding leads is on your list of networking goals. But if you treat all leads equally, then you’re selling yourself short. Again, go back to your idea of success with social media. This should give you some clues about the types of leads you are looking for. 

From here, nailing your content means attracting not just any lead, but the right leads. Your content marketing strategy should introduce you to leads who are ready to be nurtured. It should bring you leads who have the budget and see the value in the work you do. 

Your content marketing strategy can truly set you up to have successful sales conversations, if you implement a strategy that aligns with your vision for success. 

Nailing your content marketing is truly within your reach as well as reaping the benefits of all these outcomes and more. The first step is The LinkedIn Roadmap. The LinkedIn Roadmap is a high level audit of your profile, an action plan, and a one-on-one consultation to answer your specific questions. 

Once you set up your profile to attract your best prospects, you can start broadcasting your message through high quality content. And we can help with that too!

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