What IS Content Marketing? Your Ultimate Guide To Content Marketing in 2021!

I'm not making money based on the amount of subscribers. I'm making multiple six figures in my business because of the content that I'm creating that's then converting viewers into my business. I take this YouTube video, do a little tweaking to it, put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram, put it on LinkedIn, and since all of those social platforms algorithm loves video, my content now rises to the top. When you start a business or if you currently have a business, clients and customers just aren't going to magically appear. If they did, more people will be doing this whole business thing, right? So to actually start making money in your business and to get more people to know who you are and what you're all about, you need to be creating content and you need to have a content marketing strategy in place because this is what's going to build, know, like and trust with people so that they will feel comfortable handing money over to you. But you need to understand not all content is created equally in this online world. And you don't want to be just creating content to create content because then you're going to be on this everlasting content creation hamster wheel. But I've really figured out a way to create the right kind of content that will generate revenue in your business. Because while you may look at my YouTube channel and at this current time it's around 30,000 subscribers, I'm not making money based on the amount of subscribers. I'm making multiple six figures in my business because of the content that I'm creating that's then converting viewers into my business. For four years straight, I have doubled my revenue in my business by using content marketing. So I want to walk you through the different types of content marketing you can be doing for your business and what I think your content marketing strategy should be going into 2021. My name is Trina. If you are new here and if you like learning about getting your content organized and planned out so you can make more money in your business, make sure you subscribe to my channel because that's my jam. What's so great about living in 2021 is gone are the days of conventional so the billboards, the newspaper, even I would say conventional TV ads. Why that is so great is because for smaller business owners like me and you, we are able to reach more people without having to spend loads of money on advertising. All we need now to get clients into our business and generate revenue is a content marketing plan and this thing right here because people are watching these, they're not looking at the billboards as much anymore. They're not watching conventional TV as much anymore or reading newspapers. But this is where you need to be creating content for if you're going to start using this thing for good in your business, how should you get started? Like I said, content is going to be the best way to start building that community for you by having a community of people who are following you, enjoying your content, sharing your content that is built in clients and customers for you. Kind of step one in this whole thing is understanding how to create content that that's going to help you build a community. Because the more you build a community, the more you grow this loyal following or your biggest fan club, right? And they are the people that are going to do all the free advertising for you, recommending your stuff, sharing your stuff. This is your key. With this community in mind, you need to be thinking about what you can do to educate them. Why are they going to be following you? They're not going to be following you just to see what your kid did that day. Although that is an additional piece of content marketing we're going to talk about. They need to know what they're coming to your Instagram, Instagram, your YouTube, your LinkedIn, your TikTok for. What are you educating them on? This is ultimately going to help you when you do open more client spots or you do decide to launch an online course. But like I said earlier, it's all about creating that content marketing plan so you can build up the anticipation that leads into these big announcements and it makes sure that people are anticipating this and excited and ready to hit buy when you tell them you it's open. Another thing you need to do, even if you're not having a launch, is talk about the things that you do. I know personally this has been a huge mistake for me because I get so wrapped up in the work that I do, I forget to talk about it. I forget to shout out my client success stories. I forget to shout out all the amazing things that my students inside of Video Strategy Academy are accomplishing. And so what that means is those that follow me, maybe you here on YouTube or on Facebook or in Instagram, don't even know. I have a agency that will manage your entire YouTube strategy for you, you or that. I have a group coaching program that has not only course content in it, but weekly calls with me to help you build your YouTube strategy that leads to more revenue in your business. When I started talking about that agency back in October of last year, I had five new people reach out to me in less than 24 hours because they didn't even know that I offered that and they wanted it. When you're thinking about your content marketing strategy, also think about how you can incorporate posts or stories or videos talking about the things that you do offer so your community knows what you have available. Now I want to talk about the major pieces of content that I personally create that start to fill out my content marketing strategy and what I think is enough content, especially if you're just a team of one trying to run your business and stick to your content marketing plan. So that first piece of content I think you should be creating every single week, if possible, is a YouTube video. Go figure. A YouTube strategist telling you to create a weekly YouTube video. And I know you're probably thinking, trina, no way. I just don't have the time to manage that right now. Hear me out real quick. First of all, YouTube is a search engine and YouTube is owned by Google. So if you want to be able to reach people in an evergreen format, meaning whenever they're searching their problem, you could show up in their search results at any time. YouTube is what you need to be creating because as of right Now, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn are not search engines. So really YouTube and Google are the newspapers and the billboards of this time. Second reason creating YouTube videos are free. So you can create content that shows up on the two largest search engines in the world to be able to reach more people for free. Another reason why I really think you should be focused on creating a weekly YouTube video is because video content in general is preferred across the board on all social platforms, which I'm going to dive into more here in a second. But if you are creating YouTube videos, I have a secret formula to easily repurpose this video into multiple videos across all the social platforms. That means I'm working smarter, not harder when it comes to my content marketing plan. I'm able to reach more eyes because I take this YouTube video, do a little tweaking to it, put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram, put it on LinkedIn. And since all of those social platforms algorithm loves video, my content now rises to the top. And not only am I getting views here on YouTube, but I'm getting views on LinkedIn, I'm getting views on Facebook and Instagram to help grow my visibility, to build my community. I know we all want views here on YouTube, but with a business model behind you, it's actually more important to have more eyes on your content than to have subscribers and followers. All right, so we Talked about that YouTube video as one piece of content in my content marketing plan. And I dropped this video every single Wednesday. The second piece in my plan is social media. So it's really important to have some type of social media content Strategy because over 3.6 billion people are on these social media platforms. As business owners, we need to be able to use some of these platforms to grow our reach because not everybody is on every single platform. The top two priority platforms that I started out in my business was YouTube and Pinterest. Surprise, right? Actually, when I got started on my YouTube channel, I was very heavily focused on Pinterest as well, because I knew my particular audience was on Pinterest and I knew Pinterest was a search engine as well. So in that first two years of my YouTube channel, Pinterest drove me so much traffic to my channel because I was creating pins specifically for Pinterest that send people to my YouTube videos. And now Pinterest is my top traffic source outside of Google for my website. So obviously Google is the top traffic source of my website. But Pinterest, Pinterest is number two. So if you're sleeping on Pinterest, you might be missing out on a huge opportunity. Another platform that I have been focusing on in the past couple of years is Instagram. And now I use Instagram two different ways. I will take these YouTube videos and repurpose them on Instagram for educational content. I want people to know what it is that I do, what is my expertise. I want to teach them to be able to do things on their own, building that trust with them. But I also use Instagram as a way to build that like factor. Because I share more behind the scenes on Instagram so I may share stressing to get the kids out the door so that I can work or my schedules change because school shut down because there is a case of COVID Right. I really like using Instagram for two different strategies in my content plan. The educational side and kind of the behind the scenes like side. In 2021, as we slowly add layers of social media into our content strategy plan, we will be focusing more on LinkedIn because for me, my agency style clients will be those people on LinkedIn. So we're going to get more serious with our LinkedIn strategy as well. All right, hold up though. Before you get stressed out about fig out how you're going to manage all these social media platforms and actually having time to sleep, I'm going to tell you how you can Start repurposing. And don't worry, you don't need to be on every single thing that I mentioned because you want to add layers. You want to start where you can. Once you have the time and the help, you can start adding layers of social media platforms to your content strategy. Like I said, when I first got started five years ago, I only focused on YouTube and Pinterest. You need to remember that running and building a business here is a marathon, not a sprint. So you don't have to sprint out to be on all of these platforms and be successful. Okay, so let me just run through how I repurpose my content. I will film this YouTube video and I will have a YouTube specific ending. Then I will shoot an additional Instagram specific ending to use for an Instagram TV episode. Then I will shoot an additional Facebook ending so I can use that on Facebook. Then we will take different clips of this video to use on the Instagram feed. We will take different clips to use on Instagram stories. We've also been splicing together clips to create an Instagram reel. We'll also take the thumbnail and use that for LinkedIn. We're also going to be testing putting little clips of this video in LinkedIn as well. So that's really why I say let's focus on creating this one pillar piece of content each week, your YouTube video, and start splicing it up and divvying it out in as many places as possible. So far I talked about the content that I've created was for one YouTube and two different social media platforms. The third piece of content that I'm going to talk about is kind of a divisive topic. And that's a blog. Some people say blogging isn't worth it. Other people say it is the lifeline to their business. But I still blog to this day. And let me tell you why I do that. Blogs are actually a great piece of content to get you to show up on Google. So hear me out. If you create a blog and embed your YouTube video to it, not only could you have your blog show up on that front page of Google Search, but you could also have your YouTube video show up. So that's two hits of your content for just one piece of content, right? So your video and your blog, your blog post that has that YouTube video. And because Google actually rises video content to the top, and if your blog has video content in it, it's going to rise to the top. Now, I do blog, so to speak, but what we do is we basically just create a blog based on what I talk about in this video. So what we've done before is got the transcripts and turn them into blog posts. I also have an assistant who turns these into blog posts as well. Take the rev captions and just, just tweak it a bit to make it really stand out in a conversational way on my blog. Because people like different types of content. Some people love video content, some people love to read. So the more versions of your content that you can create, the more you're going to reach those people that want to work with you or want to buy from you. So should you be blogging? Well, again, I really like to look at working smarter, not harder. If you have the capacity to turn your video transcripts into a blog, I highly recommend doing that and embedding your video in that blog post because again, you're going to show up in search engines, you're going to show up in Google, whereas as of right now, Facebook and Instagram don't have a way to search your content. Now, I know this is a lot to take in, but I've got a couple more pieces of content you can think about in incorporating in your content strategy. But I want to hear from you real quick. Can you let me know in the comments below what kind of content you're currently creating? Is it any of the ones I mentioned? YouTube, social media, blogs? Or have I left something else so far? I'd love to hear in the comments. Let me know what kind of content you're creating. All right, this next piece of content is something that I have in zoomed zero experience with, but that's podcasting. I've been on a lot of podcasts and interviewed for a lot of podcasts. And in fact, I've thought about starting my own podcast too. But podcasts have really exploded in the last two years. In fact, a study in 2020 found that 37% of U.S. households had listened to a podcast that month. And the reason why podcasts are a really great piece of content is because it allows people to take your content on the go. So whether they are commuting, whether they are walking, working out, you can be in their ears at all times. And you're able to build that friendship with them through audio content. That's an option too for you. Again, I have not started using that one yet. It's something we're thinking about tossing around. Maybe a goal for 2021. We aren't sure yet, but that is something. If you can't create Anything else. A podcast could be a great piece in your content marketing strategy. Now I'm going to share one more piece of content that you could create for your business before I share with you what I think your content marketing plan should look like this year. Paid ads like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and even Google Ads can really expand your reach to new people and do it a lot faster. The downside is it is expensive and if you are trying to do it on your own and you're not sure what you're doing, you could lose a lot of money. That's not a gamble that I'm willing to take. So that's an option as well if you have that disposable income to do that. Again, a quick, fast way to grow your reach. Now let's talk about how we should take all of these pieces of content and create this sustainable strategy for you. So in 2021, your content marketing strategy needs to have one thing it has got to have some piece of video content. Video will not be going anywhere soon and if you sleep on this, you could really be missing out on a lot of opportunities. This doesn't mean you need to come out of the gate doing full blown YouTube videos, although I highly recommend it if you can and I've got lots of resources to help you. But you can get started with Instagram stories if you aren't doing them. Facebook lives, Instagram lives, Instagram Reels, TikToks even pick a piece of video content that feels good for you and doable and stick with it. I'm actually going to be hosting a virtual summit in February called the Video Reframe Summit where we're going to be talking about all the types of video content to get you started. We actually already have a wait list ready for you, so if that sounds like something you want to learn more about, and learn about all the different types of video content you can be creating, go to the link in the description box to get on that wait list so you can hear when we open the doors for you to get your free ticket to the Video Reframe Summit. The next thing I think your content marketing plan should have in 2021 is a repurposed strategy. Look, whether you're creating video content, a blog that is a lot of work, find a system or a process where you could create one big piece of content every single week, like a YouTube video or a blog. In find ways to repurpose it into 2, 3, 4, 5 more pieces of content like an Instagram post, LinkedIn article, Facebook post. Don't keep recreating this content wheel. Use what you have and use it wisely. Now if you want to see how I create my 90 day content marketing plan, watch the video that's on your screen right now because I show you my entire process for getting my content organized and planned out in advance. Click on that video and I'll see you over there.