When you sit down and start typing away and creating blog posts, are you secretly annoyed, thinking to yourself, “I really should be charging for this!” or “I swear, if I give away one more thing free…!?”
Whether you’re blogging, or busying yourself with LinkedIn groups, or making your way around Twitter, I suspect that these feelings are common among business owners using content marketing.
This is one of the potential problems with content marketing (one such popular method being blogging). If you do it long enough without seeing any positive results in your business, you may begin to forget why you started in the first place. Frustration then leads to opportunities – the wrong ones.
Have a clear business plan.
A business plan will help you identify what you’re selling vs the methods you will use to bring it to market.
The question you should be asking yourself is, “What business am I in, anyway?”
It could easily be answered if you take Marlee Ward’s advice and create a one page business plan so that you know what you’re actually in the business of doing. For the great majority of small business owners, social media is NOT their business. However, it’s really, really tough these days to tell that. What happened?
Here’s my theory:
When we decide to launch our businesses, we run and buy a domain name and hosting for our blog and start blogging away, with the goal of using a blog as a marketing resource, like everybody says to do, right?
Then, when it takes a little time for money to come in, we start throwing in other possible income streams.
Poverty mentality devil on your shoulder says: Ooh, ooh! I know!! Put up some Adsense blocks. Your friend makes $30 a month doing that!
You say: Hmm. Well, at least that’s something (that’s called justifying). Maybe I’ll just add a little Adsense block here or there. Can’t hurt, right?
And when that is not enough…
Poverty mentality devil on your shoulder says: Ooh, ooh! I know!! So and so sells ebooks. Do that, too. Every little bit helps.
You say: Hmm. Okay, I think I will create an ebook and sell it for $19.95. Maybe I’ll add a little affiliate program too, to help with sales. (Poverty mentality devil grins and sighs with relief).
And when that is not enough…
Poverty mentality devil on your shoulder says: Ooh, ooh! You ought to be selling your articles, girl.
You say: Hmm, maybe I’ll use my free time (ha!!) to sell some content with Demand Studios.
And when that is not enough…
Poverty mentality devil on your shoulder says: Ooh, ooh! Your blog is awesome. Teach people how to blog.
You say: True. My blog’s not doing too badly. Maybe I’ll become a blogging consultant, also.
Now you are in the business of writing, publishing, distribution, and to top it off, consulting. And all you really wanted to do was use your blog to get some business. But of course, with all of the time you are spending trying to sell your writing, publishing, distributing, and consulting services, who has time to tend to your business!?
Have confidence in your content as a marketing tool
If, after several round of this, you determine that you aren’t really cut out for publishing or for Pete’s sake, distribution, and want to go back to doing your business – the work that makes you feel warm and fuzzy even after the comments have stopped coming and the traffic has plateaued because you went on vacation – take a deep breath, because that is actually an important revelation.
If you never intended to sell content, don’t. It’s not a last resort, and it’s not as easy as you would think. Entire careers are developed around the production, sale, and distribution of premium content.
Push the poverty mentality devil off your shoulder. Those “opportunities” are really just distractions – they are distracting you from what you’re really good at and what you should be doing.
Some might call this shiny object syndrome, but I suspect the enticement is not novelty so much as it is fear of being broke or putting too many eggs in one basket.
Have some confidence in content marketing. It can work. If it’s not working for you, don’t be quick to assume that you are doing everything right, and so it must be the idea of content marketing in general that is the problem. Consider that there may be a few strategies you are not getting quite right.
I strongly suggest downloading the Junta42 Content Marketing Playbook. It’s quite possible that your chosen content marketing tactic isn’t right for you and isn’t right for your customers. There are 42 – count it, forty-two – content marketing techniques there. Choose the handful that will work best for you.
Position yourself such that your free content demonstrates the need for YOUR solution to your customer or client’s problem.
But don’t position your free content as the solution!
Consider, for example, Indi Custom Jeans. Our style contributor PattyJ recently wrote an IndiCustom.com review for us, which you can check out.
They must have hired a great content marketing manager. Their site is full of great content – the stuff that positions Indi as the best custom jeans solution. They talk about the what, and more importantly, the why, through several content marketing techniques, including a wiki, a blog, a community, and a “how it works” page which in very simple terms makes their case.
Can you imagine if Indi started charging to access their news? Or decided that their wiki should be for paying members only? Or that to get access to their community, potential customers would need to pay $5.95 per month?
Obviously that would be ludicrous. Those things serve as marketing tools – they are not part of the product, per se. Indi is in the business of selling jeans, not subscriptions.
What is your business?
Homework: Go and download and read the Junta42 Content Marketing Playbook, and once you’ve determined that these guys know a thing or two, ask yourself if your content marketing strategy is sound and will work for you and your customers.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Great article, Tia! And great advice. It is so easy to get sucked up into tending the minimal, but important things that we leave time out to work on the productive elements that are crucial to bringing in the income. Which is why a mentor once made the comment about “working on one campaign at a time” or else you get a bunch started and non finished.
*Time to go off and draw my mind map of my blog/biz.
Hi Christine!
Right! I think it’s so important to consider what is bringing money into the business. Never have we been so busier as a society – and so much more broke! It’s a gigantic rat race. We simply want the quickest route to cash, and I think so many of these blogging-related ideas are magnetic because they get us thinking that we can have a “quick money” income stream until we get our real income stream going, and the reality is that it’s just not the case for most people.
I feel like a total pessimist today but I hate to see people spin their wheels.
When you’re selling jeans, it’s clear cut. You’re not selling the information (unless you happen to sell off certain jean patterns). You’re just using social media to promote the physical product. In the blogs about blogging community, I think the waters get a little muddy here. For people who’s goal is to teach how to blog (not me, but for those who do), it’s probably tough to know which content they should be charging for and which they should be sharing with blog readers. Don’t you think?
Hey TJ – I agree. Teaching people about blogging is a noble choice.
I do that on a consulting basis, and still I do not charge for “content.”
However, this post is not so much about the social media and blogging ‘business’ as it has become. It’s for people who do other things besides blog for a living.
I’m not sure why that became such a massive phenomenon. Perhaps because it is cheap compared to say, opening a restaurant or launching a new law firm, and because for whatever reason everyone is drawn to the idea of the 4 hour work week – although I have met only one or two people in my entire life that actually do that, and they can because (1) they are beyond frugal and (2) they work like crazy for at least half the year and then take the rest off.
Hi Tia
This post is excellent for newbies to read. So many bloggers start out without a plan. I did a biz plan and see my blog as a platform for my sourced products. Even having a definitive plan and goals set; I have still needed to be flexible as my blog has develped.
Will be going over to visit and read the posts you have recommended too. Thanks for sharing such a valuable and informative post Tia. Much appreciated.
Patricia Perth Australia
Very interesting…The little things we do can have a huge impact on the success of our blog. Being a somewhat beginner blogger myself (mine launched last August) its really easy to become swept away with trying new things. But we have to keep in mind how we would what to experience a blog. We wouldn’t appreciate being charged at every turn, just to get some interesting information.
Well put, Tia. People often forget why they started and get too caught up in the blogging/marketing aspect that they forget about their actual business. I think it’s all about striking a balance, blog for your business but you don’t neglect your business, and define goals that will help guide what you are doing.
GREAT article, Tia! It goes back to that old “business plan” or “marketing plan”, which essentially defines what do you provide and to whom? Definitely spoke to me in terms of the “theme” of the blogs and articles I produce. I love being challenged! Thank you!
Just awesome. Incidentally I did start my blogging journey having one thing in mind, developing it into an online business of some sort
Unfortunately, this was the only thing I had in mind and I did not plan anything at all. Big mistake that cost me at least six months of worthless work. Anyway, after I realized (this obviously after reading and researching like there is no other day left), I finally sat down and did what I had to do, plan, execute, monitor and everything else in between.
Can’t stress enough the importance of having a clear business plan.
Not many people start blogging just for the fun of it, not usually everyone wants (and thinks) that a blog is a great way to make money fast and easy. That is they start to fill their blog with ads and start doing loads of reviews without even dipping their toes in the helping people or providing good content niche.
I think the mirage of making money from nothing, just writing content to attract your customers, is too strong for some that is why they resort to such measures.
Like you said, people can make money without looking like a walking billboard, by presenting in their content the fact that they know the solution to their problems.
Hi Tia:
A great post as usual . It is a lot of encouragement to all bloggers. But it does take so much time to blog effectively that sometimes, I feel is it worth it. But I can see the difference in my writing, when I started blogging and now. There is a gradual improvement. So that tells me to blog all the time. As I am providing information to those who need it , my readership has increased more than10 folds, and my writing is improving that is a the benefit that I am getting out of my blog.
But other times, I feel, if I am wasting time.
You have touched a great topic. Did you sign up for the blogger’s summit. As by next year with your efforts you can be in the list of top twenty three bloggers they are presenting in the ads.
Have an awesome day
fran A
This is one great post, Tia. Thank you !
Comments on this entry are closed.