What is Content Marketing | Your Ultimate Guide To Content Marketing in 2021!

When you start a business, or if you have a business... clients or sales aren't just going to magically appear ... if they did MORE people would be doing this business thing.

So to start making money in your business and to get more people to know who you are and what you are all about you need to be creating content the reach people in a way that builds your know like and trust with them... thus they will be MUCH more willing to buy from you right

I'm going to walk you through the different types of content marketing you could start implementing this year and what I think your content marketing strategy should be for 2021!

Here's the deal, gone are the days of billboards, newspaper ads, and even conventional tv ads. 

The first reason why - these are all expensive and if you are a business just trying to get started, you don't have a lot of money to spend on them

Second - these ways of grabbing people's attention just doesn't do it anymore... because we are all looking at this thing!

This does level the playing field a little for all of us though because most of us have access to a smart phone, right.

So if we are going to use this thing for good, why do we, as business owners need to be focusing on content marketing? Why is it so important?

Your content is the best way to start building a community. The reason why you need a community behind you is because these are the amazing people who are going to support your business - buying your courses, booking to work with you, and more importantly tell their following all about you. This is what people in the biz call FREE ADVERTISING right!

When you have this community behind you and you are creating content that educates them on the products and services you offer, you are going to see much higher conversion rates than just deciding to launch a course or offer a service. You need to have the right content marketing plan leading into this announcement to make sure people are excited to buy.
I know from the mistakes of my own - when you don't talk about the things you have to offer - you aren't going to sell it! I've had a YouTube production agency for the better part of 2020 that I never talked about and when people found out this was even available they wanted to know how to sign up ASAP! Had I actually been talking about it and creating content around it...

Now let's talk about the major types of content I have created and what I think is good enough, especially if you are a team of one trying to run your business and stick to a content marketing plan.

YouTube - As a YouTube strategist YouTube is my favorite and because you think no way it's TOO MUCH work hear me out a minute on this one.

First of all, YouTube is a search engine AND YouTube videos show up on Google search - therefore you are IMMEDIATELY on two of the world's LARGEST search engines. This can help you grow a community faster when your content is searchable. This is called organic traffic - when people find you without you spending any money on advertising.

Second - Video content is preferred on ALL social media platforms, which we are going to talk about next BUT if you are creating YouTube videos I have a secret formula to easily repurpose your YouTube videos to any social platform you want to be on... this means you are working smarter when it comes to content creation, not HARDER.. and you will be able to get more eyes on your video content since social platforms push video content to the top of the algorithm. 

Social Media Content Marketing - there are well over 3.6 billion global social media users so yes, as business owners we are going to need to take some time to incorporate these platforms into our content marketing plan. The top 2 that I currently use a Pinterest (yes, if you are sleeping on Pinterest, it's honestly HUGE for me!) and Instagram. For 2021 we have a plan to use more LinkedIn and of course, there's always Facebook.

Now before you get stressed out about being on ALL of these and actually having time to sleep, like I said, repurpose your Youtube videos to these platforms. And don't worry about being an ALL of them. When I first got started 5 years ago I focused on YouTube and Pinterest, then I started to add Instagram in more and now this year we are going to add more Linked in. Remember, running a business is a marathon here, not a sprint. Do what you can and don't stress about being EVERYwhere.

Blogs are a great piece of content that can get you showing up in Google search just like YouTube videos. If you plan your blogs and do your Google SEO research, blogs could really explode the traffic your website sees... thus potentially getting more client inquires or course sales. 

While I do "blog" so to speak, we will use our YouTube video scripts as our outlines for our blogs and I have an assistant you then "Spruces" it up. We also embed our YouTube videos because this provides the blog even more SEO power when you have a video embedded with a blog post.

Should you blog? If you can - like I said its searchable - unlike Instagram content and Facebook content. I'm all for working smarter not harder so maybe focus on writing a blog post and repurposing that content for Instagram or Facebook posts... don't recreate the wheel with your content!

I've got a few more types of content marketing I want to share with you but before I do, can you let me know in the comments, what kind of content are you currently creating? Any of the ones I mentioned or have I not mentioned the types of content you are creating let? I'd love to hear what you are creating!

The next piece of content marketing is Podcasts! These have really exploded in the last 2 years and in 2020 a survey found that 37% of US households listened to a podcast within the last month! So podcast allows your audience to take your content on the go - commuting when that was a think - walking - working out - cleaning. You can be in their ear and build that friendship with them.

I'm going to share one more piece of content marketing before I share with you what I think your content marketing strategy should be for 2021!

Paid Ad content marketing is the last piece. And paid ads like Facebook ads, Instagram ads even google ads can really help you scale your reach a lot faster. The downside with paid ads is if you don't know what you are doing and you try to figure it out on your own, you could end up losing quite a bit of money!

So what do I think your content marketing strategy should be for 2021!

100% you need some type of video content plan for your content marketing strategy. Video will not be going anywhere and if you sleep on this opportunity you are really going to be missing out.

This doesn't mean you need to come out of the gate doing full blown YouTube content (although I highly recommend it and have lots of resources to help you get started), but you could get started with IG stories if you aren't doing them, Facebook lives, Instagram reels... Tik Tok EXPLODED last year and yep it was video.

Pick a piece of video content that feels good, that feels doable for you. I'm actually going to be hosting a free online summit in February called the Video Reframed Summit where we are going to be breaking down ALL the pieces to getting started with video marketing! You can get on the waitlist right here to be the first to hear when you can get your free ticket!

The next thing I think your content marketing plan should be in 2021 is repurposed! Look creating content whether video or a blog post is a lot of work. Find a system or a process where you can create one BIG piece of content like a Youtube video or a blog post and repurpose it with 2 - 3 Instagram posts or a LinkedIn article or do an IG story for it. Don't keep recreating the wheel with your content - work smarter NOT harder!