Smart content is content that works for you around the clock on several platforms.
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I want you to forget everything you know (or everything you thought you did) and work backward.
Step 1: Start with “long form” content
Long form content is often your freemium. This needs to be the best possible version of yourself and what you know from start to finish.
Example: My book
Step 2: Create a blog with excerpts from your long form freebie/tripwire/offer
I often take excerpts of the long form content I put out there and put it elsewhere on the web (using some of the links I presented earlier) with a call to action for someone to visit our site and download the longer content for free, or for a nominal fee as I move through offers each quarter.
Step 3: Integrate your CRM
We use Get Response to manage email contacts. So, all I do is a create a quick landing page using Origin Builder or Visual Bakery on WordPress and then add my subscribe form for whatever free offer I am promoting elsewhere. That’s what synchs up with the call to action on each and every site.
So here is what this looks like:
Long form content/offer —–>
Cut this into smaller sections of 300 – 400 word blogs and post those on several sites with a call to action —–>
Each blog ends with a call to action that sends someone back to the leadpage —–>
Get subscribers to my list ——–>
Knowing that each subscriber to my email list is worth approximately $1 in passive income each month, the incentive to grow your list to 10,000+ should definitely be there!
But that will never happen unless you are posting in several venues, using all of your content wisely and putting that call to action at the bottom of each one!
Step 4: Use your email marketing campaigns for upsells
Email marketing is going to account for approximately 40% of your business. So it’s important that when you craft this campaign that you run an email campaign congruent with your upsells.
Example/Secret Sauce: I used a free book as a promotion on our website. I also put it up for sale on Amazon and a few other places online. The hook? Get people to go to my site and sign up to get the free book, for a limited time. The email upsells? A course that accompanies this book, priced at $49 for my personal visitors (see, again with the discount by coming direct to me) and $97 for people who get it on Udemy. Then? Group coaching for $297 per person or one on one coaching for $1,000 a month.
I get people into my list or funnel using a free offer, then strategically move them through the next phase of the buying process via follow up emails I have written in advanced and programmed to go out on Get Response before even launching the free product.
This works for me two fold. I can add people to my list, wherein I can send automatic weekly updates of my RSS feed (blog) via Get Response, send out additional product recommendations via email blasts for things I launch or sites I am affiliated with and continue to move people through the buying process based on what they are interested in. The anatomy for this type of campaign (while seemingly complex) is the simplest version of the anatomy of smart content creation I am going to continue to walk you through in the rest of this chapter, but the results will be the same: Long form content promotion leading to a landing page that plugs into your CRM and follow up emails to go along with that. Now, here is are a few other ways to repurpose your content that you can use in emails, on blogs and in your social media campaigns.
Other ways to repurpose your content (yes, that same long-form content you already did:
Explainer videos – Explainer videos are HUGE draws for content, and having whiteboard videos that explain some of your products or services are a must. Before some of the products that I became aware of over the years, I spent hours upon hours being, what my husband likes to call, a Powerpoint Ranger. I would spend hours and sometimes days creating slide shows, animating powerpoints and transitions, adding music and still feeling like it wasn’t a professional looking as I would like it. However, with the help of a couple tools, I was able to create awesome looking videos in seconds, without having to shell out big bucks to video pros. Here are a couple of the products I have used, quite successfully, that I highly recommend.
Video Maker FX
Explainadoo
Video Motion Pro
Video Profit FX
Here is the anatomy of the video flow — and how it ties into everything else.
Take your product, or an affiliate product or service and create a video showing people how to use it, demonstrating it or telling people about the stats of the product or service, and at the end of the video, create a call to action for people to subscribe to you on YouTube and also to go to your offer page so they can buy the product. If the seller (and most do) have an offer page, all you need to do is include your unique affiliate link as the call to action to direct that hot traffic to the seller’s offer page, where they buy and you earn a commission. This is the less labor intensive of putting offers ou in the great world wide web, but is still effective.
If you have your own offer, it’s vital that you use a program like Clickfunnels that can nurture them through the buying process, using some rather stellar drag and drop technology — so your 3-year-old can build you landing pages while they are taking a nap, it’s THAT easy.
The goal here is simple: get people on your list, or connected with you on social media (both options are best) so you can continually market to them in different ways. The goal, of course, always being that you want to show people demonstrable examples with zest and enthusiasm and then educate and train them on ways to make their lives better, faster and easier. At the end of the day, when you are giving people great content for free, they learn to trust you far more quickly, and are far more apt to buy from you or to refer others to buy from you, especially if you are selling services (products, not quite as much). So focusing on creating great content is always vital, regardless of the delivery method.
Screenshot heavy blogs – Another fantastic way to market to the masses is social proof. Take screenshots of what you have earned, where you have earned it, testimonials from elsewhere on the web and use those screenshots as part of a blog or blog series. Your readers, subscribers and even cold traffic react far better to something tangible or something you can simplify so they feel like they can replicate it.
Easy tool to make this happen? Skitch. We use it. It’s easy and free. Take screenshots of your entire screen, or even just a portion of it. Then? Save those photos to be used in blogs, videos and even social media posts later.
Of course, the anatomy here needs to be the same across the board. End each blog, email, video or piece of content with a call to action to subscribe to your list and a reminder to follow you on social media as well. Never, ever, ever, ever (and did I mention ever?) end a piece of content without some sort of call to action.
Webinars – Webinars remain a fantastic way to educate people live or even in an evergreen format. After you produce a webinar, where you successfully educate the masses on a product, service or how they can save time and money using your methods, you can put that webinar on replay and allow it to sit there (for as long as it is relevant) so that traffic to your site can watch it on demand, or as you choose to advertise it.
If you use the long form content you have already created and then craft an informative webinar from this, you can plug in all of your added offers and upsells in that webinar from now until you need to retool/revamp it. And, as an extra incentive to watch you “live” offer up free giveaways and incentives to everyone who gets on the webinar with you during its launch. This will create urgency for the rest of the folks on your list for your next webinar.
Webinars are also a great way for you to add people to your list. But, what tools?
Webinar jam is great, if you can afford $500 a year.
Go to Webinar is great if you can afford $1,000 a year.
Ever Webinar is my personal favorite, at a price tag of $297 annually, and you can schedule a few webinars a day, then plug that webinar link on to social media and into an ad and watch the registrants roll in.
They take your webinar, sign up for your offers and you’ve got new customers, leads and even a few potential new customers out of this on a recurring basis daily.
Okay, it’s time for a side bar again. When you start out doing webinars, it’s okay to put a couple of your slide presentations up on Slide Share to generate leads, and it’s okay to chop the video down so people can get a sense of what they will learn in your webinar. What you don’t want to do is what I did: put the webinar up on YouTube, available for all to see. If you do put it on YouTube, only do that as an embedded link to an “Unlisted” video — you can set this in the permissions. This way, you won’t get traffic to the link that doesn’t subscribe to you first. Then? Take the link and embed it on your page, or use it as an Ever Webinar post with Ever Webinar acting as your “gate keeper” — collecting that precious client data along the way.
While driving traffic to offers and promotions on YouTube worked for me, and worked rather well, I missed a TON of opportunity to add people to my mailing list.
DOH!
So here is what you do. Have your webinar announcement in a blog, with a link to the registration page. Then? Once the webinar is concluded do another blog and announcement on your site with a link to the replay. Either way the prospect has to register on your blog and with your mailing list before they get access to your content. And, if you use Ever Webinar, there is no technical expertise required for this, it’s done for you. All you have to do? Provide kick ass content.
That said, it’s also completely acceptable to push your replay link out to the folks who attended and registered but couldn’t make it, but avoid giving away the farm before someone gives you their contact information first.
This is not to say that you won’t get bogus registrations from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, complete with phoney emails, but the majority of people will give you their information if they feel like you are providing value.
Do you see a recurring theme in what I am saying? Provide value. Always. That is goal number one. If you get into internet marketing or pushing out content with the goal of “selling” someone, you are likely to fall flat on your face. If you approach it with the mindset of providing value, people will appreciate with that and respond a lot more favorably to anything and everything you have to offer.
People don’t care what you know, unless they know that you care.
Make sense?
Great.
Now, let’s move on from webinars and get into videos that showcase you….or you knowledge (if you’re camera shy).
Videos showcasing you – For this, I use ScreenCastOMatic ($15 a year) for video conferencing and being able to share my screen with someone in a pre-recorded format. I also use OBS Studio which is free live streaming software if you want to broadcast on Facebook live — which you need to do as well, at LEAST once a week.
Let me explain the importance of this, and how you can repurpose your content with this method.
Take a portion of your long form content and do a quick (no more than five minute) video tutorial demonstrating something you teach in your webinar, in your online course, in your book, etc. Push that out on YouTube and then embed that in your blog with a…?
You guessed it. With a call to action.
Then, take some time to broadcast live and interact with folks on your Facebook page. Even if no one shows up to your first few broadcasts, it’s okay, those broadcasts will be saved and will be how many prospects decide if they want to attend your next live broadcast.
Think of it as your virtual handshake. The second reason for this is that your fans and friends will get a notification when you are live, which puts you back on their radar, if you’ve fallen off.
Use live video to discuss recent client experiences, successes, failures, things you have learned since you released your book, videos, courses, etc. Live videos should still be educational, but they also need to be conversational.
Think of these like an impromptu webinar, without being quite as formal, but still do not forget to add in that call to action.
Never forget the call to action.
Side note: Start paying attention to the larger players in your space and see what they are doing. STUDY IT. And I mean REALLY study it. Pay attention to when they post, what they post, how often they post and the software they use. Replicate their successes, but also implement your own unique voice and flavor to your videos. If no one in your space is doing video, it’s the perfect opportunity for you to get their first. And whoever owns a space first, gets a disproportionate share of business. That is the nature of the beast. So? Don’t be afraid to try something new!
Course creation – Know how to do something better than anyone else? Than teach someone how to be better! There are hundreds of platforms out there that will allow you to take your long form content and put it into a course. (Heck, we did it.) And you SHOULD! Depending on the length and depth of your long form content, it will take you approximately 14 – 60 days to create a solid online 10 – 15 hour course in most cases, unless you are a guru and can keep up with a break neck pace, in which you might be able to accomplish this in half the time.
And here is the great news, you can create multi-purpose courses around this! Sign up with Lynda to be a “basic” instructor, sign up to teach on Udemy (like we do) and even put your courses on your site where you control the pricing using software like we purchased to plug into our WordPress, like Courseify Pro.
Creating an online course requires much the same software as I have mentioned before inasmuch as Screen Cast o Matic, or even using Power Point to create a video and include screenshots and narration. It doesn’t take a tech whiz, but if you feel like you need some help, you can take our course on all of this, or even hire someone on some of the sites we mentioned earlier to help you create a course around this.
You can also (if you are a people person) opt to create real, in person live workshops and find sponsors who will pay to rent the space for you, bring refreshments and even help with tech set up for your presentation. Or, you can do it yourself, and choose to make your workshop “free” or charge $25 in advance or $30 at the door if you use things like Event Brite or Meet Up to promote your courses.
If you are good at something, there is absolutely no shame in charing other folks a fee to learn what you know, but I can say that having the walk through help of online facilitators like Udemy in your course creation journey will really help you craft a great course both online and in person (should you opt for that), making it a very good resource to help you learn how to draft your own courses.
And the better your free online content, the more people will be drawn to your online or in person lessons.
Granted, there is a little more to promoting all of this (as if you thought there wouldn’t be) than meets the eye, but this chapter is all about content creation, not traffic hacking. We’ll get to that later.
Infographics – Infographics are a wonderful way to take your five tips or 10 ideas and turn them into a useful, actionable infographic. Me? I’m not the most creative at this, so I will leverage templates, free tools on Canva or hire someone on Fiverr to translate my words into an infographic for $5 to $20 a pop.
I have found a bunch of great templates on Infographics for just about any industry that you can even open up and edit in Powerpoint and some you need Photoshop to brand to you, but there are done for you graphics out there, many of them already for sale, so it’s a cinch to customize them if you are just looking to push out content.
And, of course, I have some tools for this, to make your life easier — because if you haven’t figured it out by now, I am all about saving you time and saving you money! (I remember how hard it was to bootstrap when I was starting out, so don’t think I forget my roots — I don’t).
Graphic Sling
Instant Infographic Creator
Otherwise, if you’re not a graphics person (like I am not), it’s usually wise to hire someone.
Tip: Sometimes, you can create a contest on Freelancer.com and get several concepts for a really good price — right around $20 bucks or so. Then, simply pick the one you like best. Otherwise, be sure to evaluate the work on Fiverr before plunking down cash to get your infographic up and running.
Mobile app – I see you making that face again. I know, I know, you have no idea how to build a mobile app and you don’t have thousands of bucks to plunk down on creating one. Still? No sweat. You can create your own using these software options, and they are so easy you could even start a side business creating mobile apps for other people! Seriously. You do not have to be a guru in this day and age to get basic, entry level content created or apps designed. It’s a lot easier than you think.
Here are some great tools that you can use to literally drag and drop your way into app heaven:
Zapable
Ultimate App Maker
Today, it’s all about finding the right tools and then learning how to use them, or at least being able to connect with the right people to help you complete the right tasks to grow your business. Either way, I want to get you to thinking bigger. Now. Because thinking bigger now pays off later.
The great thing is that it all begins with ONE (just ONE) piece of content! That single piece of content is the launchpad from which you will launch all of these different products and services in perpetuity. And, from experience, I will say that one of the best ways to get your first piece of long form content is to sit down and write a book or ebook first. Not only will this get your creative juices flowing, but it will help you publish smaller pieces of content along the way. If you don’t get in the habit of doing it every day, you won’t do it — again, I say this from experience.
What do YOU think? Leave some thoughts in the comments below!
The post Smart Content: How to Make Your Content Work For You appeared first on Valkeryie | Supercharged Social Media Results.