How To Use Content Marketing To Grow Your Online Business

I want to share with you how to use content marketing to grow your online business.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as, “A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience, with the objective of driving profitable customer action”.

Content marketing is not a new concept, but it is more important than ever before. Content is king; it is one of the best ways to attract people to your brand online.

In my business, I spend the majority of my time creating content. This has been the most powerful way to attract traffic to my website and to add value to people.

Watch the video below:

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

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It's never been easier to produce content online. The Internet affords anybody the opportunity to share content, anywhere in the world  You don’t have to be an expert to do so. When I started creating content in 2012, I had a small digital camera that I put on a stack of books, and I shared my journey, my daily rituals, and my goals with the world.

Today I have a lot of fancy camera equipment, but the reality is that my most-watched YouTube video, to-date, was from back in 2012. There is a misconception that you cannot create content if you are not an expert, or if you are not a good writer. None of this matters.

All that matters is that you decide to get started.  If you are consistent with it, you will get better, as time goes on. Content comes in many different forms – video, article, images, quotes, etc., and there are many different free platforms available for you to create and publish content on – Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.

You have to identify the best type of content that will be the most relevant for the audience that you are trying to attract, based on the niche and market that you are in. Robert Rose, the Chief Strategist from The Content Marketing Institute once said, “Marketing is telling the world you are a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world that you are one”.

High-quality content is the key to marketing success.  If you create an amazing piece of content in your market or niche, and someone consumes it and receives value from it, then ideally, they will want to subscribe to you. This is what has allowed me to build my brand and become so successful online.   When I release or share a product, people know that they will receive value from me.

They trust me, and in turn, I am able to develop long-term relationships with them. When you are first starting out, Google analytics and YouTube statistics can help you determine which topics to focus on the most. In turn, you will be able to create more engaging content, and target your audience, in the niche or market that you are in.

Once you have a following, then you can listen to your subscribers and find out what they want. You can also research what other bloggers or You Tubers are doing, follow them, and look to see what topics their viewers are resonating with.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to be consistent with your content. It’s not enough to publish something one time. Once a week is great to start off with, but if you can do more, the better. In my business, I try to publish content 5 days a week.  If you can post every 3 hours on social media, you will have more organic reach.

It’s all about leveraging and repurposing yourself so that you can create more content on multiple different platforms. If you can create content around a niche or topic that you have a passion for, you will have an incredible advantage. The process of content creation is so enjoyable for me because it’s my passion. I get paid to journal online.

The process of sharing what I have learned and mastered, and create content out of it, has allowed me to integrate it much deeper in my life. Build your content marketing plan and watch your online business grow. Your audience is waiting for you!

Video transcript

Hey everyone!  This is Stefan, from ProjectLifeMastery.  In this video, I want to share with you about the power of content marketing – how to use it in your online business to attract people to you, get traffic, and build your brand.  I'm going to share a few tips with you that can help you utilize content marketing in a very effective way.

Content is one of the best ways to build your brand online. It's one of the best ways to attract people to you. In fact, if you look at Project Life Mastery, creating content is what I spend the majority of my time doing in my business.  It has been the most powerful way to get traffic to me, and also to add value to people as well.  Content comes in many different forms. Content can come in the form of a video, a piece of content that hopefully adds value to you and benefits you in some way.

It can come in the form of an article that someone might read on a blog. It can come in the form of an image that you might find on Facebook or Instagram, or a quote that is interesting or informative. There are many different types and forms of content. It could even be interviewing someone.  

Identify the best type of content

I want you to understand there are many different types of content, and you've got to identify the best type of content that is going to be most relevant for your audience, for the market or niche that you're in, or the people that you're trying to attract.  Every niche or market is going to be totally different in terms of what they want and what kind of content that they're going to want to consume from you.  There are many different platforms available, for free, for you to be able to create and publish content on.

That's the amazing thing about the Internet. Facebook is free. Instagram is free. Twitter is free. Periscope, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube – they're all free. Anybody can sign up, set up an account, and start creating content.  These days, creating content has never been as easy.  To record a video, you can literally just do it with your iPhone, or any phone that you have.  Most phones now have cameras on them.  You can use that to record yourself and create content that you can then upload onto the Internet.

If you've got a laptop or a computer, most of them have webcams built into them or you can just find a webcam inexpensively and set that up with your computer and record videos that way. Anybody can write their own content these days.  The Internet is a place where anybody can share their experiences. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to be a know-it-all, or an authority on a subject. 

Anybody can share things they might have learned or things that they feel can help other people.  That's the beautiful thing about it. Anybody can do it, anywhere in the world and, of course, from there, you can attract people to you.

Just do it

When I started creating content in 2012 for Project Life Mastery, I just had a little digital camera that I put on a stack of books.  I didn't have any audio equipment or anything like that, and I just spoke in front of the camera.  I shared things that I learned; my journey, my goals, and my fitness progress.  I was able to attract people that way. In fact, today, I've got all this great camera equipment, but my most watched YouTube video is one from back in 2012 from that little digital camera that I had.

The camera even fell over in that video and I dropped my pen.  Sure enough, that's my most popular video.  I think there's a misconception from people who think, “I can't create content because I'm not an expert. I don't have the right camera equipment. I'm not the best writer”.  None of those things matter, guys. All that matters is that you just decide to get started and, ideally, the sooner the better.

The sooner that you start creating content and you're consistent with it, what is going to happen is that you are going to get better as time goes on.  I look back on the the content that I created back in 2012 and I'm like, “Oh my god. That content was horrible,” and that's only because I've gotten better. Anything that you do enough of you're going to get better at.  Nobody is great at something the first time they do it.

Everybody sucks the first time that they do something, but if you have a growth mentality and you're just committed to getting better and better at it as time goes on then, eventually, you're going to get much better at creating content.

Outsourcing your content

You can outsource content. I've got a friend, Caleb, who built a brand called Young and Raw, with his girlfriend Sheleana. It's all about raw food and healthy living. They built that brand by having guest contributors contribute content to their website.  They had health experts and nutritionists submit articles to their website. That's how they built their brand, and sure enough, they've been able to monetize that through affiliate marketing and through their own products.

You don't necessarily have to create content yourself. You could find other people that contribute to you. You can hire writers and content producers that can create content for you, and then you just have to provide the platform, where other people can submit their content to.  There are many ways of doing it, but content is by far one of the most powerful ways of getting exposure online. Content is also great, because if you create a piece of content in your market based on what people want and someone consumes that content, they receive some great value from that and they're like, “Wow.  You know what? This is great. I learned so much great information. I got some good tips,”.  Ideally, what's going to happen is they're going to want to subscribe to you. That's what has allowed me to build my brand.  Somebody might watch this video and be like, “Wow. You know what, this is really useful. I really enjoyed this video. I enjoy this person. He's got some great tips.  I'm going to subscribe to his YouTube channel or I'm going to subscribe to his email list or like him on Facebook,” or whatever it is so that I can receive more value from that person.  Quality content is key.

It has to be quality content

If you publish quality then people are going to like, follow you, and want more from that, which in turn gives you the ability to build a relationship with that person over time, to add more value to them, and strengthen that relationship. Also, what happens is that when someone receives benefit and value from you, then all of a sudden, they're going to develop a relationship with you.

They will trust you or develop some good will where they feel like, “Wow.  This is great. I owe you one. Thanks. That was a great tip”.  Sure enough, the law of reciprocity kicks in.  When you give to someone then they're going to want to give back to you.  I've found that, in doing so, I've actually had people that have offered to give me money, which I'm definitely very flattered.  If you have your own product or service or maybe you're doing affiliate marketing, then that person is going to be more likely to buy it from you, as opposed to from anyone else because they like, know, and trust you.

You've already given value to them and they're going to much rather do business with you, as opposed to someone that they don't even know.  That is the challenge with a lot of forms of marketing, is that when you're marketing to cold traffic, people that have no idea who you are, they're going to be a lot less likely to buy, as opposed to from someone that likes you, knows you and trusts you, because they've already received benefit and value from you.

That's what has really allowed me to do well online, because I've spent so much time providing content that a lot of people love, so that when I release a product, or I recommend or share a product, people know that they're going to receive value and benefit from me.  Maybe not everyone but, for the most part, my tribe and the followers have bought my products and done business with me, which is really great.

The key to quality content and consistency

Make sure that the content that you're publishing is relevant to the market or the audience, that you're trying to attract.  You've got to make sure that you create content based on what other people want, rather than what you want.  When you're first starting out, you're going to try to get that data by looking at the analytics and the stats of Google, YouTube and some of these other platforms.  These platforms will tell you what people are searching for, which can give you ideas of what to create content on.

Once you get subscribers and followers, then you can listen to them. You can find out what they want. For me, people are always  asking me, “Stefan, can you share this? Can you share that?” That gives me great ideas that I can create content on that I know that people are interested in. You can also look to see what other bloggers or YouTuber's on social media in the niche or market that you're in are doing.  You could follow them and look to see what pieces of content or topics that people are resonating with. 

That is a really great indicator for you of what you should create content on.  The other key to creating content is consistency. It's not enough just to publish something one time and then never publish anything ever again.  You want to have a consistent schedule of publishing. Whether that's once a week, once every three days, or every day. It doesn't matter.

If you could do once a week, I've found that to be key. I wouldn't do less than that.  Publish content once a week, whether that's a blog post, a video, or a podcast.  If you can do more, the better.  The more the better, because that will give you more exposure. For me, in my business, I try to publish at least five days a week, although sometimes I publish content every day.  Just try to make sure that you're as consistent as possible.

Social media content

When it comes to social media, you are going to want to post even more consistently. If you can  post every three hours on social media, like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, the better, because the more frequent that you are, the more organic reach that you're going to have on those platforms.  You get rewarded for that, which is why consistency is very important.

You can do some of the social media stuff  yourself. You could outsource it.  I did a great video that went into my content creation machine.  Hopefully you watched that because it shares more about how I turn a ten-minute video into multiple sources of content that I publish online.  It's about leveraging and re-purposing yourself so that you can create more content on all of these different platforms.

If you can create content around a niche or a topic that you have an interest in, or even a passion for, you're going to have an incredible advantage.  For me, I don't have to spend time researching my content because my research involves reading books, going to seminars, having coaches, and going through courses and programs.

I'm learning so much because I stand on shoulders of giants.  I'm learning from other people, which allows me to share what it is that I'm learning and doing with you guys on my YouTube channel, in a blog post, or whatever it might be.  For me, the process of content creation is so enjoyable and fun, for me.  I basically get paid to journal online; to share things that I learn.  By sharing things that have benefited me in my life, it helps me learn it even more.

I think reading books is great, going to seminars is great, going through courses, and having coaches is great, but you've got to make sure that you master what it is that you learn. For me, the process of sharing this and being able to put it out there online and create content out of it, has helped me to integrate it much deeper in my life.  The process of creating content is something that I would do anyways. I think everybody should do it, because it is a very enjoyable and beneficial process.

Conclusion

To give you an idea, even seminars that I go to, at the end of that day, I'm writing out the things that I had learned from it, in order to reinforce and go over everything in my notes. It just so happens that I do that on my blog and on my videos, and it becomes content that I can share with other people as well. So, if you're in the fitness market, the self-development market, the gardening market, the spirituality market, the habit market, the dog training market, or whatever market that you're in, you should be interested in the topic that you're building your business around, so that you can research, learn and be able to have ideas that you can create content off of.

Those are some tips for you. I don't want to make this video too long, but hopefully you received some benefit and value from this. If you did, hit the thumbs up button. Make sure to subscribe for more videos like this, and leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well. I could talk all day and all night about content. It's one of my favorite subjects and it's been my favorite way to build my business.

It's free to do it. Anybody can sign up for Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. You can set up a website with a domain name for $10/year. Hosting is about $5/month.  It is very inexpensive to start a blog and a website to share that content on.  Just get started with it. If you want to know more information about how I've built my business, how I use content, how I make money from my content, and how I do affiliate marketing, then I've got a great course and a free video series on affiliate marketing mastery.

You can go to Affiliate Marketing Mastery, or click the link in the description below. Head on over there. You will receive four free videos from me. Check that out if you want to learn more. Thanks for watching.