The Best Content Strategy To Build An Online Business

When it comes to content, there— it's really like two variables. It's you should do as much as possible in as many places as possible across as many different formats as possible, and in the context of what do you have the bandwidth to do. So, so a lot of times when, when people ask this type of question, they ask it in this context of almost as if they have unlimited time and resource, you know? So it's like, what should I do? Well, if you had unlimited time and resource, I would say you should do everything all the time forever, right? But that's not really how you make that decision. How you make the decision is going, okay, I have 1 hour a day that I can allocate to content. So then it becomes a question of, all right, I have 100 things I could do. What are the highest leverage things that I can do in that hour? And you're only going to be able to pick so many things because you only have an hour. So that, that's really the question is like, it's always yes, do more, but in what context? How much time and resource do you actually have? I remember what, what honestly taught me that was my first job out of college. I was a like an entry-level content writer at this ad agency, and I would be responsible for writing social content for like 5 different brands at any given time. And when we would start working with a client, the first thing that we would do is we would put together a content strategy for them. And I remember we would work for like a month. It was always the most taxing part of working with a client. And I was like 24 years old. I didn't, I was, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just learning. And we would spend a month putting together this really robust content strategy for these companies. We would be like, you should post, you know, twice a day, every day, 7 days a week on Facebook. You should do the same thing on Instagram, but the content should be different. And you should also post Snapchats. Snapchat Stories, because Snapchat Stories were blowing up, and then you could also do mini-Vines. We came up with 100 things to do. Does anyone want to guess, drop in the chat, how many of those things the client ended up actually doing? Yeah, like maybe one of them. It ended up teaching me a really important lesson, which is when you're coming up with what to do, there is no shortage of things to do. We could go to a client and go, here's 50 things that you should go do. But that entire list is worthless if they don't have the time for it, they don't have the team members for it, they don't have the capacity for it, they don't have the skill sets for it. Like, I'd be putting together these docs being like, you should post really high quality— like, we worked with this big restaurant group at one point, and I was like, you should post really high quality photos of food twice a day on Instagram because that style was very new. This was like 2014, like every foodies were just blowing up on Instagram and I was like, you should do this. They're like, great, that's a great idea. The reason they didn't do it is because they literally did not employ a photographer. How are you going to go do this thing if you don't have the resource for it? I can tell you it's a great idea, but if you don't have the team member, if you don't have the resource, if you don't have the time, if you don't have the priority, What is the point of me telling you to go do that, right? And so when you're coming up with what are all the different things that I can do, the very first question is what's my constraint? How much time do I actually have to allocate to this? 'Cause the thing that everyone loves to do is they love sitting there going I'm gonna spend the next 2 hours building a really robust strategy. I'm gonna make a list of all the things that I can do. That's very fun. That feels very productive. But then when it comes time to execute on the list, you're like, wait a second, I made a list of 50 things, but the reality is I only have 30 minutes a day. Well, you can't do all 50 things in 30 minutes a day, right? Or some things that you want to do maybe require additional resource, they require additional costs, they require additional skills. If you don't have those things, then put, you know, making a list of all the things that you can do is worthless. And so that's, that's fundamentally why it's, it's, it's funny because like the most common question people ask in all of content on the internet is like, should I do X or Y? What are all the things that I can do? But the reality is that that answer is gonna be different for every single person. And the way that you make that decision comes down to what's the constraint? How much resource do you actually have? Which is why, going back to the very beginning, I am such a big believer in— I don't overcomplicate it. You have 100 options, but every person here, you should just pick one social platform, drive somewhere that you collect emails, and sell one thing. And you should do that until you have achieved some level of financial success with that. Everybody forgets when we started Ship 30, Ship 30 was an extraordinarily simple business. This is the entire business of Ship 30. Write on Twitter, send people to startwritingonline.com, which was a 5-day educational email course, market the next Ship 30 cohort. This is quite literally all we did for the first, like, 18 months of running that business, and we did over $1 million in our first year. That, that's all it needs to be. Most businesses are a very simple combination of drive traffic, collect emails, sell something. Drive traffic, collect emails, provide a service. Drive traffic, collect emails, sell a digital product. Write online, collect emails, offer consulting. Like, that's every business. I actually, this past weekend, I went to a fiction writing mastermind in Charlotte. It was really cool. And we were talking, one of the days we were talking about like the business of writing fiction as an indie author on Amazon. You want to know what they told me? They're like, yeah, Cole, it's actually a pretty simple business. You write books, you publish the book, you talk about the book, you market it. And then what do you do again? You write another book, you publish the book, and then you market it. And then what do you do again? You write a book and then you publish it and then you market it. Like, we love to overcomplicate business, but it's, it's really not that complicated. And You know, I'm 10 years into building businesses and I've built a handful of them, and even I need to be reminded of that. So when you're choosing things to do, you want to kind of come back to, okay, there's 3 fundamental steps. The 3 steps are: drive traffic, collect emails, sell something. Those are the 3 steps. And so when you say, what should I do? You're just, you're just plugging in different options here. It's like drive traffic. Could I write on Substack? Yeah, that's a traffic source. Could I write on X? Yep, that's a traffic source. Could I create content on LinkedIn? Yep, that's a traffic source. Could I create short videos on Instagram or TikTok? Yep, that's a traffic source. All of those are different right answers, which goes back to why I said the right answer is whichever one gets you to take action. Whichever one you are most likely to do, whichever one you are most likely to stay consistent with, that is the right answer for you, right? Whichever one you are most likely to do in the constraint of I only have so much time per day or I only have so many resources to allocate to this. And then collecting emails. It's like, should I send people to a newsletter? Yeah, that's one way of collecting emails. Should I send people to an opt-in? Yeah, that's another right answer. Should I send people to an educational email course? Yeah, that's another right answer. These are all right answers, but the right answer for you is which one are you most likely to do? Which one are you most likely to build? Which one are you most likely to be consistent with for longer than 3 days in a row? That's the right answer for you. And then sell something. Can I sell a service? Yeah. Could you sell a digital product? Yeah. It's just a different business. Could you sell books? Yeah, it's just a different business. Could you sell a paid newsletter? Yeah, it's just a different business. That was, by the way, that was the inspiration for writing this book. This book was, was essentially the result of me having generated over $1 million in 8 different business models and realizing myself, like, these all work. For the past 10 years, I've been like everybody else and I'm like, oh, I bet one is better than the other. No. Ship 30 had very different pros and cons than PGA. PGA has very different pros and cons than Write with AI, which is a paid newsletter. Write with AI has very different pros and cons than selling standalone digital products. Standalone digital products have very different pros and cons than providing services. But they all work. And so, again, it's like going back to the fundamentals. If they all work, then that means the right answer is whichever one you are most likely to take action on. If you're most likely to take action on services, you will make more money providing services. If you're more likely to take action selling digital products, you're going to make more money doing that thing because you're taking more action. So it's, it's really important to understand, like, all of business is those 3 steps: drive traffic, collect emails, sell something. And the right answer for each of them is different for each person. But the way you discover the right answer is by going, what are my constraints? And within those constraints, which action am I most likely to take action on. Real quick, if you want to write online but aren't sure where to start, click the link in the description of this video and check out startwritingonline.com. This is a free masterclass I put together sharing all of our most helpful frameworks for beginners, like proven hooks to capture your target reader's attention, where to write online to get the most distribution on your work, and little growth hacking tips to build your social audience and email list faster. Over 100,000 writers have gone through this free masterclass, and many even send us emails afterwards thanking us for sharing such valuable information for free. So click the link below this video to check it out and make this year the year you start seeing success from your writing online.