Failure is natural, it happens to everyone, and sometimes you can’t avoid it. What matters most is how you adjust your mindset to avoid failure, because your mind is where it all begins.  I contemplate this all the time. This is not strictly a content marketing topic - it's a topic that matters to everybody. Let me elaborate...

The question is “how much time and money should you invest in your personal brand… if your goal is to build (and ultimately sell) your company?” The answer is going to vary from person to person and company to company.  It also varies depending on the platform. 

The other day I was talking to a company with sales of $30 million per year.  They've been in the industry for about 29 years and they're one of the most trusted companies in their industry.  They produce content.  Regular content. They do lots of videos and podcasts and articles.  What they do NOT have an email capture mechanism on their website.  So my advice was simple...

How do you get people’s attention in a world where we people bounce off your page within seconds? Good question! So let me tell you about a company that reached out to us recently... and the advice I gave them. 

One of the hallmarks of truly outstanding content is laser like relevancy. It needs to feel like you’re reading your audience’s mind.  It’s not easy to do though.  But it’s worth it. 

Only GREAT content is king.  Just the other day I was reading an article on Medium.  The author made some good points about the future of content. He brought into question the challenges that Facebook and YouTube had in 2018 regarding trust.

In my company’s case, we have a basic reposting schedule… … if a piece of content goes on any social platform today, it gets automatically reposted in 30 days and 180 days.  … if an email has an open rate of 30% or higher, it is automatically broadcasted again 6 months later.  Result: one article can yield 80 or 90 repurposed pieces over the next 6 months.

We have an ecommerce client that runs a lot of traffic from Facebook. He recently sent us a report of some of his results from our content.  Turns out that he’s getting about a 22:1 return on investment.  To put that into context, for every $1000 investment he’s getting back $22,000 in sales.  Pretty amazing.

I will tell you one undeniable fact… Someone who has interacted with even a few pieces of content is a MUCH better lead than someone who knows nothing about you.  This means your sales conversion will go up. It also means your sales cycle will shorten.

So, you are monitoring KPIs. That’s great.  But it’s also a danger… because you need to see passed the numbers, too.  Not all KPIs are directly observable or measurable. And these may be the crucial ones for your business. So, how do you know what to measure? Let me tell you a story… 

Great content that does not get published is pointless content… And I see this happen all the time.  Let me tell you about a client...

Do you struggle to kick off your content marketing each week or month? If so, you might find this tip useful. It’s what I use to create 150 or so content pieces per month.