The Accidental Content Marketer

The Accidental Content Marketer
7 Steps to Get Your Content Marketing Rolling

Unless you are already a blogger or marketer, writing content for your business was not part of your game plan. Yet here you are, the ‘accidental’ content marketer, aka small business owner.

Somewhere on your way to achieving business success, the world changed, and the rules along with it. If you want to be visible on the web (and who doesn’t?), people have to know you, like you, figure out that you know what you’re talking about, and when the need arises for them or one of their friends, choose to do business with you.  That requires, among other things, the need to create content: content for your website, for social media… for cyberspace and beyond.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about my own challenges with content marketing, which seemed to resonate with a lot of people. There was an outpouring of response, which gave me many more ideas about how we, as small business people, can respond to the need to “publish or perish”.

7 steps emerged as a way to get your content marketing rolling… To get your head in the right place so you can accomplish things that you not only never thought possible, but never thought you’d enjoy doing!  This guide contains the words of wisdom from many different people that collectively will give you the support and help to move forward with a new mindset.  One that will enable you to achieve your business content marketing goals.

Here are 4 of them.
 
For those who’d like to just get into it and skip to the full post , here it is: http://goo.gl/pu9D9p

Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it increases the odds.

Gina Fiedel provided this wonderful quote, and it works perfectly with the content debate of quality vs quantity . People are often advised to go for quality.

I certainly have made that recommendation many times. But I have come to a more nuanced, balanced understanding of this argument.

The fact is, you need both.
 
You need quality for obvious reasons.  You will gain no respect, and certainly no authority, by just putting “stuff” out there. You clearly want to strive for an excellent result.

But you need quantity, also.  Without consistently producing content, be that written, audio, or visual, you will not be putting in sufficient time and practice to ever really get good at it.

You ARE an expert… a RELATIVE expert

Jimmie Lanley introduced this concept to me and it will do wonders to bolster your confidence!  Yes, you need to be an “expert”.  But expertise is measured on a continuum –  a sliding scale, not an absolute. There isn’t anyone who isn’t trying to be become more of an expert all the time.

So give yourself some credit.  Acknowledge that you are somewhere on the “expert spectrum” and that there are some things that you do know more about than others in your field – perhaps quite a few more things.  Not only that, you have your own unique way of communicating and teaching others what you’ve learned that will be of help and benefit to the people in your network.

Keep reading, keep researching, and keep growing.  But as Jimmie Lanley observed: “If you are waiting to become some kind of upper level expert before you serve people, your family will probably starve in the meantime.”

Restructure your thought process.

Wade Harman  talks about changing your thought process in “Throwing Away the Mindset of Making Money Online“ .  In order to achieve something, you have to change the way you approach it, or as he says, “rearrange your thought process.”  

In this case, try taking the thought that says content marketing is hard (or “unnecessary”, “dumb”, “a time-suck”, or whatever negative adjective rears its head), and replacing it with a positive action that you can, for sure,  take.  A small, baby step that will move you forward. Something achievable to build on. 

For example, perhaps you will decide to write/record for 10 minutes each day. It helps if it’s something that you can actually see what you’ve accomplished – be it a mind map for a post drawn in a spiral notebook, a post outline in Evernote, or a video you made with your phone.  

Give yourself a starting point… even if you’re not sure where you’re going yet.  A point from which you can start measuring growth. Remember that even a disappointment can be viewed as progress. After all, now you’ve learned something not to do.

But, I’m not a writer! May also sound like…”But I’m not that creative!”

I get it.  I feel the same way, especially in the creative department. There are plenty of other things I think I do pretty well, so it’s never really bothered me.

Until now.

Because now the world has changed.  Coming up with content that is written/produced uniquely and creatively is now really important.  So those attributes that I felt I lacked are now an issue.  If that describes you as well, some inspiration and confidence-boosting are in order.  

For those who feel your gifts do not include creativity, watch this short video, called “The Gap” by Ira Glass.  It’s only about 2 minutes long, but it will inspire you to begin/continue your creative journey.  Thanks to Eddie Austin for recommending this gem in comments.

And if you’re worrying that your writing isn’t up to snuff, don’t be.

In “Nail the Copy or Get Hammered“ , Barry Feldman contends that if you made it through school, your writing skills are plenty good enough.  But you may need to unlearn a lot of the rules that helped you previously, and learn how to write more as a copywriter.  He states flat out “If you think you can’t write, you’re wrong”. 

Are you worried that you won’t be professional or polished enough? Just try things out. Maybe they’ll be a disappointment, or maybe they’ll be better than you think. As Paul Biedermann points out in “Create Unique Content and Own Your Business Niche“ : “Some of the content that has the biggest potential for going viral isn’t necessarily the most polished, but it has a good idea and oozes originality. People love that!”

The common thread that runs through all of the above?  

The need to practice, produce, evaluate, and persevere.

And you were hoping this post was going to be a silver bullet? No such luck.

But these steps and the 3 others in the full post, will, I hope, be of help in achieving your content marketing goals and enjoy the ride on your content creation journey.

Also in the full post: (http://goo.gl/pu9D9p)

Scroll down to In their own words A section with words of advice, encouragement, and inspiration from, in no particular order:
Jimmie Lanley 
Beth Browning 
Jennifer Herndon 
Seth Godin 
Mary Iannotti 
Gina Fiedel 

And in addition to the sources cited above, links to some awesome resources from:
Mike Allton 
Stephan Hovnanian 
martin shervington 

photo credit: Ryan McGuire/pixabay

Post shared by Marilyn Moore for RightStart Websites 

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