This is the Final Day of a 10 Day Course on how to create killer content. Visit Day One to get the full mojo.
You’ve surfed the web for ideas in the subject matter you love.
You’ve been working on your editorial calendar.
You’ve posted a few blogs.
The engine is starting to hum and you’re ready to hit the ground running on Monday of next week. You’re going to be a content creating machine.
Perfect.
But as much as I like talking about creating content for yourself, let’s be real: there’s always vanity. We like people to see what we create, what we’re up to, how perfectly brilliant we truly are. We want feedback. We want to be part of a bigger conversation.
In the old world it used to work something like this:
- You create a product. A bike, maybe. Or a DVD. Producers fall in this category.
- You find a distribution channel. Let’s say a cool bike shop or Target. Salespeople fall into this category, and their job was to find shelf-space for whatever needs to be sold.
- You come up with a marketing plan; you’ve got to move those units off the floor so you embark on a strategy to tell people what it’s all about. Marketing Directors and ad agencies fall squarely here.
This is a simple breakdown of the olf distribution chain to consumers - the holy trinity that could make or break a product.
But that’s all gone now. The same people that are creating product are also finding distribution channels and marketing themselves, a compression in the chain due in large part to the internet. Salespeople and large marketing teams are being made obsolete by faster and sleeker ways of communicating with people. TV? It will always be around. Radio. Sure. Papers? They’re printed on nostalgia and fading quick. All diminished by our ability to talk to people - right now - who are interested in exactly what we’re selling. Or what were writing. Or making videos about.
So really - we’ve become the power.
Sounds so easy, doesn’t it? It’s not. It requires good hard work like everything else. A lot of time, a learning curve, patience, and often less than satisfactory results mixed in with all the other millions of blogs out there. You’ve heard about all the tools: Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, email, even the old fashioned banner (how quaint). How about SEO and SEM? There’s a lot to learn.
So though I do feel like I’ve got the Content Development Engine humming on this blog (eight weeks old now) the next phase for me is to really turn the marketing wheel to get traffic flowing. To grab eyeballs. To get people talking. I may be successful, I may not, but I’ll share my experiences here.
Don’t forget though: Content is King. You can’t sell what you don’ t have. Keep building it. Keep blogging it. If you made it this far in the 10 Day course, I thank you.
Go.
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