7 Success Factors for Authentic Content Marketing

If you would like to reach more people with your message and make a deeper impact on your audience and ultimately grow your business more, that's what this video is about. Because I will be talking about the seven success factors for content marketing, particularly what I call authentic content marketing. So first of all, I just have to share this first. I was supposed to go live on this video half an hour ago, but my wife was using my home office for meeting with a client and we tried to share this office sometimes, it's usually mine. But then today she had a special client appointment and I let her use this. I didn't clarify with her that I usually do my Facebook lives. People are expecting me at 12 noon on Fridays. I didn't clarify that. So she went long and didn't realize it. Now she feels bad and I feel bad because I feel like you, I let you down. So a lesson learned, you know, clarify things, you know, clarify when you need a space. And also another lesson learned is even though I'm feeling bad right now and feeling a little frustrated with my wife, but it's not really her fault because she didn't know. Just those kind of bad feelings all around. Right now I'm still here, I'm still doing this video and it's not going to be perfect. It's going to be with my frustrated feelings. But I'm letting that pass and I'm allowing myself to show up anyway. Show up consistently. Think about you instead of think about me. You know, think about you instead and how I can really help you and share this information that I've been pondering out about now for a couple of weeks. So let's get going. So I'm going to share these seven factors and these seven things are not necessarily in this order, although I will share in the order because I think it's more, maybe a more poetic ordering and you don't have to do all seven. But even if you just do any one of these and do it really, really well, you will tend to grow your audience and have your message be seen by more people. Now, I've taken some notes here, so I'm going to be referring to my notes as I do this video. In case you're wondering where I'm looking, I'm not looking at the camera. Another lesson, when you're doing a video, look at the camera lens rather than looking at yourself on the screen because you can tell if I'm looking at myself, I'm not looking you right? Little small tip, but I'm going to be looking at My notes here. So the first factor I want to talk about is caring. Care, right. Caring means if, you know, if you're doing your message just authentically and just for your own interest and for your own soul's expression, that's a wonderful thing. That's a great place to start. I would rather you start there than worry about an audience. However, when you want to grow your reach, when you want to impact people more deeply, when you want to grow a business, you need and you want to do it authentically, you need to care about your audience, not just about your profits, not just about making a sale, not just about growing an audience. But you need to care for people. The people that you actually want to impact. Do you really understand them? If you care enough for them, it means that you care enough to get to know them rather than just be in your own closet, be in your own office doing your own thing, you know. Now you don't literally have to leave your house to care for people because as you all know, I build my business completely virtually. I'm kind of a hermit physically, but I meet a lot of you virtually. So I will sometimes reach out to you one to one. I know a lot of you haven't gotten my message about reaching out one to one, but I have reached out to a lot of you one to one over time especially I'm focusing first. Here's another lesson learned. Who should you reach out to in your audience for a one to one meet and greet? You've got to prioritize obviously. So start, you know, start well, you're probably meeting your clients already or those already, but reach out to the people who buy your courses. So I prioritize the people who bought my courses and giving me feedback on my courses. I reach out to them first for a one to one meet and greet and after that I'll reach out to people who have commented on my postings consistently. Some of you are, are going to hear from me before too long. Hopefully I still have a long queue, but you know, so course participants who get feedback first, I still have a lot of people there to reach out to and then I'll reach out to the people who share my postings or reach, you know, comment a lot, one to one. And then after that I'll reach out to my email list subscribers. So have a tier, have a kind of an ordering, a prioritization of who you reach out to. If you don't have any buyers yet, if you don't have any clients yet, then you go right to your email List subscribers. If you don't have that yet, reach out to anybody who has clicked, like on your Facebook post. So you kind of have a prioritization, but reach out. Do what I call fan interviews, which are basically half an hour. You can do an hour if you have time, or 90 minutes if you. And they both have time. But even just half an hour, you can get a lot of important information for your marketing. So what do you ask in that half an hour? You split that time in half and half the time you're going to be asking them basically what they are buying in the realm of your business. If you are a coach, what kind of coaching are they buying? If you sell online courses, what kind of online courses are they buying? If you, you know, whatever it is, whatever it is you sell, where are they spending their money in these kinds of products and services? Now, of course you don't just start, hi, you know, what are you buying in terms of coaching? I mean, you ease into it and you show that you care enough to want to talk to them because you truly want to understand what they're seeking out in their life to improve in the areas that your business helps them with. Does that make sense? So find out where they're spending their money, because where they're spending their money is basically where they're voting. They're voting for that product or that service or the way of marketing. Some of you are not voting very wisely because you're spending money on pressure driven marketing tactics that none of us should be supporting. But I know it gets to you and you fall for it. But just now that you're aware of it, you don't have to fall for those things. You don't have to spend money and vote for those kinds of tactics in the world. But anyway, you find out basically what are they wanting to buy and hire for? Okay? And then the second half of the call you say, hey, I just want to be available to you to answer any questions. How can I help you? What are you struggling with? Let's talk through it. Here's a technique that I, you know, whatever it is you do with your clients, you try to do with them in that short time. Again, 30 minutes is a very short period. If you can do it for 60 minutes, if they have time, you had time, that's great. But even if 30 minutes, it's very valuable to understand your audience. So care enough to reach out to your audience one to one. Okay? As many as you, as you're able to, as you have time for with the Prioritization in mind. Okay, so what else do I have here in the notes? And another way of greatness, way of understanding them is to notice what they are sharing on social media. So whatever. For example, if I go to your profile and I notice that you are sharing something on social media, obviously whatever you're sharing is your vote for what you really care about, right? So if I can notice what you're sharing, maybe I should be creating more of the stuff that you're sharing because then maybe you'll share my stuff too. Right? Because I can't expect you to share my stuff if I'm not doing something you care about and doing in a way that you care about. We'll talk about that next. So notice what your audience is sharing and what kind of stuff they're sharing, what style and what topics, so that you can see if you resonate with that style and topic as well. And if you do make more of that stuff. And finally, if you've already been creating a lot of content, then you can care for your audience by noticing. Noticing what? Of your content they care about, by what kind of content they like. They comment on they share of yours so that you can make more of that stuff. A lot of us don't do this. A lot of us just make content and we don't notice what our audience is liking, commenting and sharing. Be objective, be a scientist and notice the numbers so you can make more of what your audience cares about. Okay, so that's the first factor. The second factor is topic. I don't care how skillful of a writer you are. I don't care how beautiful you look on video. If you're not creating content on the topic that your topics rather, and the subtopics that your ideal audience cares about, they won't care enough to watch at all. They won't care enough to read it at all. And certainly, therefore, you won't get any comments, any likes, any shares. So the topic matters a great deal. Here's kind of a. Not a silly example, but it's a very obvious example. Even if you're a bad writer, you can write anything about Trump, right? President Trump. You can write anything about President Trump and it will go viral, right? Almost. Or at least it'll get more of a reaction than anything else you write about. Now, I don't want to give, you know, I don't want to give him any more airspace and any more time. So I don't write about him or I don't talk about him. And even some people who don't like him. Don't even say his name right. They just say 45 or whatever. But that's kind of a silly, but a very obvious example. That's why you notice every single news channel, they try to say Trump as often as possible because they know people will watch. The topic matters a lot. So what about in your area of expertise? What is the trump for your area? Okay, what's the trump for your. For example, for my area of expertise, marketing and business. If I start the video by saying, watch this video and you will get a lot more clients, you'll almost certainly watch the video. Do you see what I mean? So get more clients is my trump in my area of expertise? I know it's a terrible, I mean, whatever topic, I don't know, you know, cats, kittens, puppies, whatever. But what is your puppies or what is your kittens in your area of expertise? What's the what's. And you please comment below and let's get some examples going. So think about your area and the thing you talk about that people will almost certainly like. Even if you're a bad writer, even if you're a bad video producer, let us know what that is, okay? And let me know, have you heard me? What are my topics that you just can't help but watch? You can't help but read? So tell me what, what do you think are my Trump topics? Or what are my puppies and kittens? Okay, so, okay, one way, of course, you can figure out what, like I said, what the topics are is look at your audience, right? Look at what they're sharing on social media and what of all the things they share. List them out. And what of those things are relevant to your area of expertise? Well, do more of that stuff. So the topic matters a whole lot. And if you get the topic right, it's almost like you don't have to be good at. You don't have to, you know, you can. You don't have to be good at anything. You just get the topic right and people will engage. They will buy from you. The topic is the savior. Truly, the topic is the savior. And also keyword research is really, is another way of figuring out what topics people really care about. And I will put a link in the article when I post the article later. That'll give you some resources on keyword research. Okay, third factor. Third factor is style. Style, some people elevate to be like the number one thing. Basically what I mean by style, some people call it branding, some people call it attractiveness. But basically it's how you communicate, whether video or in writing. Writing has a style, too, right? Or the kinds of. Yeah, just the kind of. The way you communicate and the thing not to do. Okay, I'll think in terms of style. What not to do is to copy somebody else just because you think that's supposed to work. What I want you to do is I want you to experiment enough. Experiment enough to find your own authentic style and then just keep. Keep on becoming better and better at that style. So, for example, you know, one communicator who's very effective right now on YouTube is Gary Vaynerchuk. His style, he cusses. He's like this. He's like, so hustle and like, so, like, you know, intense. If I were to be like him, and sometimes I think I fall into emulating him a little bit because I do respect him a lot. What's another style? Let me see, what's another obvious style? You know, there are certain spiritual teachers whose style is very calm and they speak. Oh, okay, here's another. Not a spiritual teacher, but Barack Obama has a certain style. You know, it goes like this, and, you know, it goes like that. I don't want to make fun of him because I respect him a lot, but he has a certain style that people have come to sometimes satirize, but people appreciate it. You know, he's very thoughtful in the way he speaks, and he has a pause, but he speaks very eloquently, obviously, and people. He's very successful. Right. But extremely different style than Gary Vaynerchuk. Right. Come on, let's brainstorm here. Comment below. What's another thought leader that you really respect? And what's their style, whether in writing or whether in, you know, ee. Cummins is a popular poet. I'm not a. I don't read poetry. So that's like the first one that comes to mind. And his style is extremely minimalistic and sparse. Or John. John Steinbeck. He's terrible with literature, even though I have a degree in it. I've kind of put set that all aside. But yeah. So comment below on some style in terms of writing or in terms of speaking that is very distinct, distinctive. And that's their style. But what about yours? You don't have to be funny. Some of you are naturally funny, and you need to own up to that. Right. If you're witty and funny, like among your. So how do you discover. Let me. Let me just kind of pause and say, well, how do you even discover yourself? How do you even Notice what your authentic style is. When you are with somebody who loves you as you are and you're excited to be with them, how are you at that point? So it could be a friend who's unconditionally accepting of you, unconditionally loving. You know, you notice you were certain people where you're just a certain way now. Not necessarily that you're always funny or you always whatever, but. But when you're with them and you're trying to communicate a message, how are you naturally. How are you naturally. Okay. How are you in a way that you can't do any. Any wrong in that person's eyes? Okay? Imagine you can't do any wrong in that person's eyes and you're writing them an email and you're trying to communicate your message, how would you write. If you're trying to say something to them, trying to communicate your message, your core message, how would you communicate that is your authentic style. Okay? So I am grateful that I've now built an audience where I do feel like a lot of you accept me unconditionally and love me unconditionally. So I feel like I have kind of found my authentic style in terms of speaking. As you can see, I'm not perfect. I go around in circles a lot. But that's my authentic style, and that's what you like me as. And I know I can get better at it. And we'll talk about it next. So the next thing is format. Format is also super important, which is some of you are naturally good writers. Naturally. And I know Captain, I see your comment here. Captain is naturally a good writer, and I'm sure Captain has worked on it for years. But writing is obviously a format that he should go full force into because he. I can tell he's really good at it, objectively. And how do you know you're good at a particular format? Well, you can ask people who can give you an objective opinion who aren't going to just praise you because, you know, they don't. They want to get on your good side. But people who maybe understand the market or have read a lot of writing or have, you know, whatever it is. Some of you are really good on video, and some of you aren't. Right. Some of you aren't good writers. Right. But something is natural to you. Now, by the way, I shouldn't say good or not good. There is no such thing as good or not good. There is only what you're better at and what you're not as good at compared to the other things you do, comparing the things you could do. Some of you are really good at posting. Some of you are better at posting images than you are at writing. Some of you. For me, posting images is. I'm much better at speaking and at writing than I'm at posting images. Now, if you were to talk to me three or four years ago, I was much better at speaking than I was at writing because even before 2015, I had writer's block my entire life. Believe it or not, I hated writing. Before 2015, I would not ever want to write. And because if you've read my story, you know that 2015 changed my life. I dedicated to 100 days of writing, and I just did it consistently. And I started very casually on my phone, so there was no pressure. And I wasn't trying to please anybody. I was just, you know, tapping away on my phone. And eventually I was able to finally write on the screen because previously I was too intimidated to write on the computer. I can only write on my phone, like text messages or emails whatever whatever. So 2015 changed my life when I committed to do it consistently. And now writing is actually one of my strengths. And here's the weird thing. People who don't know me like my writing a lot better than they like my videos. So, ironically, video used to be my strength. Actually, even before 2012, you can't find any of my videos. I hated doing videos. And so 20, I would say about 20. 2014. Really? 2014 was the year that I came out on video and I practiced until I got comfortable. And now you can't make. Can't get me off video. And then 2015 was the year that I got comfortable with writing, and now my writing is better than my videos. So format. You pick the one that you're better than the others Right now for you, what's better than the others for you? Start with that one, get strong in that one, and then you may want to add another format and become strong with that as well. But the growth mindset, that you can be strong at anything you want to be, that you dedicate yourself consistently to, you can be better at it. Okay? And you could probably be above average at it if you dedicate yourself to it for long enough. So that's the growth mindset. Super important. It's true. So don't believe that. Oh, I'm just naturally not a good writer. Fine. But you can become just like me. You can become a great writer. I'm not a great writer, but I've written three books now. So I'm not bad, right? Probably above average, right? I used to be terrible on video. Now I'm not bad. Probably above average, maybe, right? So. And images. Maybe one day, if I dedicate myself to it, I will become above average as well. Right now I'm terrible at it. We'll see what happens. Format. Okay. Choose the format you're naturally better at than the others and start there. Skill is the next one. I've already talked about this with any. Okay. Any skill that you want to become great at, you will become good at it much faster if you do it consistently than if you only do it when you feel inspired, when you feel in the flow. I was not in the flow to do this video. Trust me. Like I said in the beginning, I didn't want to do. I wanted to, you know, go and sulk or go and have a conversation with my wife. You know, heart to heart talk. Like, what happened here? Like, I'm feeling frustrated right now. I didn't want to do this video. I'm not inspired right now. But I just press, go live. And I have to speak and I have to go. But now I'm used to doing this. I'm used to ignoring. And people say, george, are you suppressing your feelings? No, I'm not suppressing my feelings. I'm saving them to process later. Seriously. Right? Like any meeting, if you have an important client right now, you have to meet with an important client, but you just had a difficult conversation with your spouse or with your friend, or you just had a memory come up that was traumatic for you, and the client's right there. You know what? You're my favorite client, my best client. You could pay me a lot of money, but I'm just not feeling up for meeting right now. So can we just do this later? No. With a client that's paying you a lot of money, as important to you, of course you're going to show up. And so let me process my traumatic memories later. Let me process this difficult conversation I had my spouse or my friend later, you know? Right. You say that for later, and you show up. You show up, and that's how you grow by. By. By saving those negative things to process later. By ignoring your fears to process later. Whatever. I don't even want to process my fears because I've noticed that if I ignore them enough, they go away and I just keep showing up. Negative feelings, frustrations and anger and sadness. That kind of stuff probably needs to be processed. Go see a coach. Go see a. You know, my wife can Help you with that. She's a life coach, She's a holistic counselor. She helps people with that. But, you know, find somebody, find a friend, you know, that you can talk to or journal, you know, process those things later. Show up consistently when you say you're going to show up, okay? That's what develops skill. Because you'll never feel like writing, you know, if you don't do it consistently. All the great writers have told us that they don't. They just have a schedule for writing. All the great comedians, stand up comedy, right? Jerry Seinfeld famously told us. Jerry Seinfeld, the famous stand up comedian. And you know, famously said, here is how you become great at stand up comedy. You get a calendar, you know, one of those month calendars with, you know, 30, 31 days right up right on one page. And every single day you must write some jokes every single day, okay? So every day when you've written some jokes, put an X for that day on the calendar. The next day you write some jokes, you put another X for that day on the calendar. And you will notice after some time that you have a series of X's. You know, day by day by day you have a chain of X's. And here is your number one job as a comedian. Never let that chain die. You keep that chain going forever. Write jokes every single day and you will become a world class comedian. That's what Jerry Seinfeld told us, okay? Whether it's writing or comedy or running or violin or becoming a great business person, become a great, you know, well, becoming a great father or mother. I mean, you have to show up every day, right? Your kids require that of you. So it's like your kids are forcing you to practice a skill of parenting. So just like that, you got to show up for whatever skill you want to become great at every single day. Not necessarily every day. When I was writing in 2015, I was becoming great at it. I was doing Monday through Friday. So consistency happens better. When you're doing it every day, you can take the weekend off, or a particular day you can take off, that's fine. But you got to have some kind of chain going. In fact, if I wrote every single day, seven days a week, I'm sure I would be even better of a writer than I am today. So skill, that's the next factor for great authentic content marketing. The next factor after this is reach. Reach. You know, you can become a really great writer. You can choose the right topic, you can care for your audience, but you might still be just talking to 10 people or you might just be writing to your five clients or your one client. Right? You might just be talking to very small people until you learn the skill of reach. And there's a lot of ways to do the reach for your content marketing. Here are my favorite ways. One, my favorite way, hands down, Facebook ads. If you've been following my content for a little bit, you know that I'm building a side business right now. It's a secret because I want to give a real experiment in building a brand new audience without them knowing who I am and without you knowing what that is so that you don't go and follow that thing. I'm building it without people any knowing who I am. And with that brand new audience, I don't even have a website. All I have is a Facebook business page and I'm just running Facebook ads with my new content there. So take a page from what I'm literally doing myself branding and Facebook ads. So that's the easiest way of doing it is learning Facebook ads. I do have an online course where I teach my entire strategies of Facebook ads. It's pretty affordable for an online course on Facebook ad. So you might want to take it if you're interested in that. So that's my favorite way. Second favorite way is partnerships. Content partnerships can be complex. The simplest way of doing is this. Find somebody, find a peer who has a similar type of audience that you have and you want to build and they have a similar audience size as you. You have a hundred Facebook fans, they have 150 close enough. You have 300 Facebook fans, they have 200 close enough. Okay, so similar audience size, similar audience and you simply. And if you like each other, okay, you like their content, okay. Then you reach out to them and say, really? I really am digging your content. This particular post, I really like that one and I would like to share it. I would like to do a simple content partnership with you if you're up for it. I would love to share this post with my audience and boost it for $5 to my Facebook fans. If you also find one of my posts that you love, here are a couple options that you might really resonate with. If not, then don't worry about it. Of course we don't have to do this. But if you like one of these posts and want to share with your audience, let's do a trade. Let's do a trade. Simplest way, it's a win, win. Everybody wins. You'll have more audience members as a result. They'll have more audience members. Both audiences will be grateful that you were big hearted enough. Big hearted enough, collaborative enough to share each other posts. Right. Because then everybody wins. Truly. Because audience members love getting to know other people. Wow, that's a resource I didn't know was. Audiences love that. So anyway, so third way is influencer marketing. And I'll put a link in the article how to do influencer marketing for free. Okay, so I'll put a link in there when I post the article. Anyway, there's lots of other ways. SEO, Google Ads, Instagram ads, guest blogging, speaking on podcasts, Amazon ads, etc. But my favorite ways are Facebook ads, partnerships and influencer marketing. So you might want to start with those. Okay. Finally, the seventh factor for authentic content marketing and making it work really well is cost. Cost. Now you might say cost. What do I mean by that? I mean the barrier of entry for your audience into your piece of content. So basically time is the cost when we think about content. So a 30 minute video like this has a relatively high cost for my audience. Okay. But those of you who are willing to sit through a 30 minute video, I've engaged with you a lot more than if you only watch a three minute video from me. So it's kind of like a trade off, right? Low cost, low time means that you'll get a lot more people willing to watch your video, short writing, a lot more people willing to read it. But longer things, right? Longer videos or longer writings filter out the less by the time you've watched. To this point, you are much more of an ideal audience member for me than somebody who couldn't, didn't have the patience or didn't like how I look to watch more than 10 seconds or watch more than 30 seconds. Does that make sense? So I really should call it, you know, length. It's really about length or the cost also. Not just length, but also the pleasantness of, you know, like for example, if I write an article and it was all one single paragraph article because I was too lazy to format it to look nice, right? Then the cost of entry is quite high. It's hard to consume that piece of content. It costs you a lot of energy and mind to consume that. But if I make the article easy to read by very short paragraphs, that's another tip. Please write in short paragraphs when you're doing online content. Not nothing longer than three to five lines. I try to keep my content three lines to five lines at the most. And then another paragraph that makes it easier to read when it comes to videos, right? Again, longer means it costs more, but also your style is part of the cost factor. You know, if you're entertaining, it costs them less energy to watch it, right? So that's, that's it. So anyway, seven factors. I know this is a lot. This could be the entire course and Monday it might be a whole book for me. But let me just kind of run them through again. And you don't have to be excellent at all seven. But if you even worked on two of these, you will be farther ahead than most content producers, because most content producers don't understand these seven. Or maybe the good ones have an intuitive sense of these seven. But now you can consciously, intentionally work on these seven, or at least two or three of these seven, and you will become better and better. So let's run them through again. Care how much you show your audience that you care by communicating with them and therefore how much you understand them. So care is the first one. Second one is topic. Keep working on topics that your audience actually cares about. Third one is style. Keep working on, keep experimenting and figuring out what your authentic style is. And then go really into that. Become known for that style. Fourth one is format. Choose the format you're naturally better at than others and start there and then build more formats as you have time and energy. 5 is skill. Consistency produces skill. So know that without skill, without being, becoming a great writer, your writings will never really go that far. Without becoming a great speaker, your videos will never really go that far. Okay, so skill is really, really important. And of course that's a journey. Number six is reach. Reach. You know, without reach, well, you'll just be Talking to your 10 fans or your hundred fans. But learning the strategies of reach will let you have the opportunity to talk to a lot more people. Of course, the other factors all matter as well, right? And finally, the cost. The cost of that piece of content. The shorter, the more audiences you'll tend to reach. But then the. The less ideal they tend to be and the greater the cost, the more ideal they tend to be and the fewer people you'll reach, but the more ideal they intend to be. Okay, so anyway, that's a lot to consume. High cost piece of content. Thank you for sticking through with me. I hope this is valuable and I want to thank those who were able to join me live here. I see Gujran and Ross, Cheryl, Hilal, Ian, thanks for showing up and being here. Captain, thank you for your comment there. And yeah, so yeah, Gudrun says it looks so easy but yeah, you know, with skill comes the appearance of ease. Okay, so that's what happens when you keep practicing. It starts to look easy. Alex, My friend Alex is here as well, so thanks, Alex. So anyway, blessings to you. If anything that you want me to write about or speak about any topics that you care about, feel free to let me know, either comment below or privately message me, and I'll definitely put that in the queue. So have a great rest of your day and I wish you continued growth and success in following these seven content factors. Be well.