MBA2342 How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy in 2023 + Free Ride Friday

0:00This episode of the$100 MBA show is brought to you by This is Small Business Next Generation, A new docu-series from Amazon. Hosts Andrea Marquez and Mitch Gilbert are a dynamic duo who hosts the show. I listened to episode one and it was refreshingly honest. I'll share a little bit about episode one later in the episode. This is Small Business Next Generation is out now. Go listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts.

0:34Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show. Powerful business lessons you can count on to help build your business. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Free Riot Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to our$100 MBA program, our six-part course on helping you become a better entrepreneur, 100 % guaranteed. If you want to win a free ride to the$100 MBA, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review, and you'll enter our weekly random draw.

1:05Listen in on Friday, just like today, to see if you won. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. In today's lesson, you will learn how to create your content marketing strategy in 2023. Content marketing is more important than ever. Now that it's becoming so crowded, so noisy, so distracting online, you need to stand out with great content. Content marketing is also one of the best long-term strategies you can build for your business so that you work on something, you build something, you create great content that will serve you for years to come. But the key word here is strategy.

1:41You can't just throw spaghetti on the wall and hope it sticks. And this is where today's episode comes in. We're going to carve out a strategy for you. So you can track your ideal clients to your website so you can turn them into customers. But your job is to implement, is to stick it through. And I'll give you some tips on how to stay consistent with your content marketing strategy as well. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. If you've been following me for some time, you know that I'm a huge, huge fan and promoter of content marketing. I think content marketing is the best way to invest in your business when it comes to marketing.

2:19The reason why is because content information is power. It's your way to show people that you have value that you can provide. whether you're providing your product as a service or a software or a coaching program or whatever it might be. Great content is a great way to build trust and rapport with your audience. But just having great content is not enough. You have to have a strategy to deploy that content and market it so that people actually turn into customers. We're going to talk about how to create your content, what medium to use, and then how to promote that content. And what's the whole goal for all of this?

2:57Where are you trying to take your customers? Where do you want to drive that traffic from the content? So let's talk about the content itself. There are a few options you have here when it comes to content marketing. If you like to write, then writing a killer blog on a consistent basis every week or twice a week or whatever it might be, might be the best way for you to leverage what you enjoy and what you're good at. Now, I mention enjoy because you're going to have to do this consistently over and over, day after day, week after week. So if you don't love it, it's going to be hard for you to be consistent.

3:32If you love video, then YouTube is a great option where you create a YouTube channel, you publish videos regularly, and you grow your channel. If you love audio like me, then you may want to start a podcast. And there are a lot of other different options out there, but these are the three main options that really do a great job when it comes to content marketing. Now, when it comes to your strategy, I highly recommend you choose one medium and one channel to really do well. You can then expand later on. What do I mean by this? If you're great at writing, then focus on writing the best content for your blog.

4:09Yes, you can guest post. Yes, you can write for different publications and be well known. But right now, you got to focus on making sure your blog, your website is killer and is successful. And the reason why I say this is because you want to focus your efforts and your energy as much as possible on one platform. So say, for example, you love creating videos, then go all in on YouTube. Some people want to publish on Vimeo as well and Vidyard and all these other platforms. Just dominate that channel, YouTube. I did the same with podcasting. When I started out on podcasting, I just wanted to be one of the best business podcasts out there and I just focused actually only on Apple Podcasts.

4:50I wanted to be well-known, well-ranked in Apple. Once I've established myself and I had success and traction and years of wins on Apple Podcasts, I then started to expand beyond Apple Podcasts and really try to grow my presence and my audience on Spotify, on Overcast, on Podcast Addicts, other channels. But you got to first win on one channel. Now you might be thinking, Omar, what about Instagram and TikTok and Twitter and this new threads thing? That's fantastic. All these channels are great, but that's not where your content lives. That's where you promote the content. What do I mean by that?

5:29So say, for example, you all have a new YouTube channel. You're growing the channel. You're publishing regularly. You have these great videos. They're informative. They're helpful. People are loving it. You want to drive traffic to your YouTube channel. And you do that by marketing on social media. It's called social media marketing, right? So you might take some teasers and some clips from your video and throw them on Instagram and tease them to go and watch the whole video on YouTube. Same thing with TikTok. You may do the same on Facebook. You might have some behind the scenes footage or bloopers or whatever it might be.

6:01The point here is that you use social media to your advantage. Social media is not a platform to build your content on. It's a platform to promote your content on, whether it's your blog, your YouTube channel, your podcast, whatever it might be. What's the difference? Well, the difference is that these platforms, whether it's your blog or YouTube or whatever it might be, they have your best interest in mind. Meaning if you succeed, they succeed. YouTube succeeds when you have a successful channel. They get to run ads and make money. So building your content on those types of platforms gives you some insurances.

6:35Use the other platforms, the social media platforms that are fickle and change algorithm all the time and are not really paying creators like YouTube does to promote the content, to actually get people to YouTube. So what is this all for? Well, your job as a business owner is to create great content because the end game here is for them to know, like, and trust you and then head on over to your website. This is where business gets done. What do we do on our website? Well, we want to capture their emails. So you want to find ways to get people to join your email list, whether it's your newsletter, whether it's a cheat sheet or workbook that goes along with the content, whatever it might be, you want people to opt in and get on your newsletter.

7:16Why? Because your email list is basically your own social media platform. It's your way to be able to market to them and build that relationship over and over. So you write an epic blog post. At the bottom of the blog post, you should have something to incentivize them to join your email list. Once they're on your email list, you can start building a relationship, giving them more and more value, and make offers for your products, your services, whatever you offer. That's how content marketing works amazingly. This creates this machine that helps you drive traffic to your website, get you new email subscribers, build that relationship through email, and then make offers on a regular basis.

7:57This gives you a steady flow of new customers for your content. And this compounds over time. Every day, every week, every month, every year, you build that content. This machine keeps getting fed and you get more and more leads and more customers. It's a beautiful thing. And the best thing about it is that you're in full control of the whole process. This episode of the$100 MBA show is brought to you by This Is Small Business Next Generation, a new docuseries from Amazon. I've jumped in and listened to a bunch of these episodes of this series, and I want to share with you a bit about episode one, where host Andrea Marquez meets her new host, Mitch Gilbert, who is the founder of OYA Femtech Apparel, who's also a former winner of the Rice University Business Plan Competition, and is one of the first 200 black women to raise a million dollars in venture capital.

8:49Andrea and Mitch walk you through the journey of raising capital, pitching to investors, and how to polish up your business plan so that you can get the best value for your business. This is Small Business. Next Generation is out now. Go listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Now, creating your content marketing system is one thing. Staying consistent is another. I got to tell you, this is the hardest part of content marketing. I've been running this podcast for nearly nine years, since 2014. August to be exact. So, consistency is difficult, but it's also your secret weapon. Let me tell you why.

9:28The longer you're consistent, meaning that you just keep on publishing, you keep on building your content, you keep feeding your audience this great information, the better you get at it. The better you become as a writer, as a podcaster, as a YouTuber, whatever it might be, your content gets better and better over time because you're getting so many reps. Number two, you outlast the competition. While others quit and die along the way, you're still around. This allows you to have a competitive advantage. This is huge. Do not overlook this. This is actually quite important. Sometimes by just being consistent and just getting better incrementally, you will outlast your competition.

10:06You'll just win because you survived. You're still standing at the end of the bout, right? Lastly, consistency is important because without consistency, you lose momentum. Momentum's the name of the game when it comes to content marketing. You've got to compound the reps, compound the content, compound the episodes, whatever it is, the videos, the blog posts. This is where the secret sauce of content marketing really shines. So how do you stay consistent? Well, you've got to commit. Commitment is very important. And you've got to carve out the time. You can't just expect to have the time. Put it in the calendar.

10:42Make sure you make time for this content like you're making an appointment. right? Like you have to do a meeting every week or you have to go to the doctors or whatever it might be. You have to carve it out and make sure this is important. This is critical. I have to meet this obligation every day, every week, whatever it might be. This is what I've done with the podcast. The time I have to record the podcast and plan and get the content all set up, this is sacred time for me. I have to do this. This is priority number one because I know it's the backbone of my business. It's how I market. It's how I grow.

11:14It's how I can stay sustainable. The good news is that as you become more consistent, the better you get at the craft, the better you get at whatever you do, the more you enjoy it. Success is very much underrated, meaning the more success you have, the more you'll love it. That's just the facts. And just like anything in life, at the start, it's a bit tough, but you got to stay the course. The longer you are consistent, the easier it gets. It's actually harder for you to stop being consistent than it is to be consistent at some point. So commit, carve out the time in your calendar, take it seriously, make sure you make that appointment with yourself to do the content that you have to do, and at least commit to 12 months of this content marketing system.

11:5412 months is a start for you to see results, to start seeing some wins, and also for you to start feeling comfortable with the consistency. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 MBA show. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. The winner is Steve Farrell. Steve Farrell says, the podcast that delivers its promise, five stars. The$100 BA Show is an excellent podcast for entrepreneurs and small business owners. We're seeking actionable advice. The show covers a broad range of topics relating to entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, leadership, productivity, and more.

12:28Each episode is unique and engaging, a must listen. Thank you so much, Steve. Love this review, and you are our Freeride Friday winner. Go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net so we can hook you up with the lifetime membership to the$100 MBA program, our six-part program, showing you how to become a better entrepreneur, 100 % guaranteed over at 100mba.net. Thanks everybody for listening to today's episode. Before I go, I wanna leave you with this. It's very hard to find somebody who's successful in life and in business that is not consistent. Consistency is your friend, get used to it.

13:03People that jump around from one strategy to another, from one idea to another, they don't really last because they don't give themselves enough of a chance to see some wins. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you on Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

13:38Thank you.