RSS 78: 100 Content Marketing Tips You Can Steal Today

0:00Today we're going to get really tactical. I'm going to give you 100 content marketing tips for you to steal. And my goal is for this episode to be one of those things that you can come back to time and time again and say, holy smokes, I got a lot of value out of that. I'm going to use it. I'm going to share it and I'm going to bookmark it. So let's get into it. 100 content marketing tips, tools, ideas, strategies, concepts that you can steal and start to implement today. If you're playing the long game, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Ross Simmons Show.

0:46All right, the first thing that you have to do, my first tip, is to develop a content marketing strategy. You have to identify your goals and objectives, your target audience, your distribution plans, the different ways in which you're going to allocate your budgets, and you're going to use this to set yourself up for success. I start with this tip because it's very easy to get in a cycle where you just create, create, create, create, create, and you don't pause and reflect on why you're creating and what those things you're creating are actually doing. So my tip is simple. Take the time quarterly to actually plan what content you're going to produce, what experiments you're going to run, how you're going to shift your paid media strategy, how you're going to improve your return on ad spend, how you're going to improve the actual conversions happening on your landing pages, your blog posts, and how you might react to both product changes and market changes.

1:42Develop a strategy rooted in your organization's goals and hold yourself accountable to quarterly shifts and changes to meet those goals. Tip number two, leverage AI tools. We're living in a golden age as marketers. You can use AI to read documents in a matter of seconds and get a summary on what it means, to review a report, to do an in-depth analysis of the SERP, Search Engine Results page, to better understand what content optimizations you need to make in a blog post, based off of the data around what's ranking today for keywords. The world today is a cheat code for you. if you tap into AI.

2:25So what do I mean by leveraging AI? You can use tools like Phrase. Phrase is a tool that will automatically scan the SERP for keywords. You can go into this tool and you can say, I want to rank for Casio watches or Timex watches, whatever it might be that you're interested in. And in a matter of seconds, it's going to scan the internet, essentially Google. You can select the location so it's geo-based as well. And it will tell you, all right, if you want to rank for this phrase, this is the content format. This is the brief that you should develop and it will give you that insight and it will tell you how much traffic these keywords are getting, all that stuff right there.

3:03There's a tool called Content Shake from SEMrush that does a very similar thing. There's a tool called Jasper that also does similar efforts around the creation side. It doesn't connect to the AI piece, but it's a great tool for doing the content creation. Now, let's say you've created some content with these efforts, right? You've created some blog posts, some landing pages, all of this stuff. Now you might be wondering, what do I do with it from here? We have to spread that content. That's where you can use tools like HubSpot. You can use tools like distribution.ai to spread your stories like wildfire through all of the different channels and give that content more reach and more visibility.

3:41All right, focus on quality. That's another tip. Focus on quality over quantity. Now, it has never been easier to create content because of AI. And because it is easier than ever to create content with AI, means the quality needs to go up if you want to be great. If you want to stand out, you have to create highly unscalable content. What do I mean by that? If you create content that everybody else can create, if you create content that is average, right, then everybody else can do that too. So what I always encourage writers, creators, marketers to think through as they develop these pieces is what could we do to make this piece so good that people have no choice but to share?

4:31They would read this piece and they'd say to themselves, how did they get permission from everybody in their company to give away so many secrets, to give away so much value? That's the question to ask yourself. and I would encourage you, the next time you get a piece from somebody on your team, a writer, a creator, say to them, is there anything we could have done to make this piece remarkable? And I steal this idea from Seth Godin. Seth Godin always had this quote where he would say, remarkable is content that is worth making a remark about. And if we can't create content that is worth making a remark about, then what are we doing?

5:09Ask yourself, can you create content that good? because that is difficult for an AI to replicate. The fourth one, optimize your content for generative engine optimization, voice search, and all of the above. You need to be ready for an era in which search happens everywhere. People are using Perplexity. People are using ChatGPT. People are using Voice and Siri. All of the things are being used now to get answers to questions that typically all went to Google. Start to optimize your content for these best practices. There's an article that we publish on foundationinc.co. If you go to Google and you type in generative engine optimization, you will find a ton of insights around how to optimize your content for this.

5:57Pro tip. This is another tip. Embrace the idea of double eat. Experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Ensure that the content that you're creating has those elements within it. So when you're going to the market and you're talking about something, you're not just regurgitating what everyone else said. You're speaking to your own experience. You're speaking to your own authority. When I developed this research, when I went and worked with this brand, I found that X, Y, and Z happened. That is experience. That gives you authority. And that's what Google wants to see. Another tip, create interactive content.

6:38Have you seen some of the videos showing what can be done with AI today from a development lens? You know those calculators back in the day that used to take tons of dev time to create? You can now create calculators using AI tools in the matter of minutes. 30, 40, 50 minutes to produce these things. And if you have budget, outsource it. Everything that you've ever dreamed of wanting to create from a development lens can now be accelerated. accelerated. I'm not here to say that developers are going out of style. I'm not saying that at all. But any developer worth their weight in gold is tapping into AI and they're able to produce more outputs, more assets, more resources, more things than ever before.

7:24So tap into it. Utilize video marketing. Video is the last frontier of AI. I go on LinkedIn. I go on X. I go in my inbox and I see emails from people who are sales leads. I see emails from my own colleagues, from my peers, from friends. And I think my brain might be broken a bit, but like, I think everything's written in AI, right? Like the only person whose content hits me and I don't think it's written by AI is my mom and dad, right? Everybody else, if you're writing me, you've got to do something to make me think it's not written by AI because my brain is broken to believe everything I see is written by AI.

8:10And some of it is. Don't get me wrong, some of it's not. But some of it is. And video is the final frontier. If you want me to truly think that you've done this, you've created this, video is the most authentic way to come across, in my opinion. You can't fake a video yet with AI. Not well, right? And I know that there's tools like HeyGen. I have a review on that if you're interested. Google Rossmann's HeyGen, H-E-Y-G-E-N, and you'll find it. I know there's tools like Loom that are now incorporating AI Descript, allowing you to change your voice, the things that you say. All of this is possible now.

8:49But I got to say, folks, video is the final frontier. I'm creating a video with this podcast episode because I want to upload it, because I want people to see me. Video content is still the final frontier. You can use an AI, and I'm going to run these experiments. You can use an AI to create a synthetic version of yourself and have it say things. But is it perfect yet? No, it's not even close to perfect. And that is why I say video is the frontier, the final frontier. So folks, create video content. I talked about it earlier, how I took this course called Cup 30. I encourage you to check that out as well.

9:27I'll include a link in the show notes where it talked through some of the best practices for short form video content. I learned a lot from that episode from that course that I took. All right. What else can you do? Implement a content repurposing strategy. You have likely produced, published a bunch of content. And what I want you to do is not just sit back and let that content collect dust, but instead create that thing once and distribute it forever. I wrote the book. It is my mantra. It's my idea for life. Folks, do not sleep on great content that you've already produced. How do you think Disney continues to make a rain on the back of IP from like literally 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago?

10:13Because they repurpose old content. Lion King continues to be a hit. Why? Because now they're producing Lion King, but it's a real life story, right? With like Pixar style, right? Or you look at Toy Story. I think they're going to come up with another one, like Toy Story 6. Are we on 6 yet? Right? Like, same IP, same story, just repurposed, right? You look at Rapunzel. There's a whole new character called Brave or something with Rapunzel. All my, like, you're starting to catch on. Like, I know this stuff because I'm a dad and I've got, like, three littles who love the Disney World lifestyle. So, I see all these movies and I'm like, these are the same movies, same books, just like with new characters, a little bit of a slightly twist.

10:58Like even the most popular one of them all, Frozen, is the Snow Queen book from back in the day, just like remixed, right? So repurpose your old hits. You probably had them. Remember in 2023 when you created that ebook or that blog post that went viral and it generated a bunch of leads for you? Why didn't you keep promoting it? Because, you know, it still solves the problem that people have today. But for some reason, we stopped amplifying it. Let's go and do an audit of our old content that worked and repurpose it in the future. All right. Another tip, invest in personalized content. This one's a little difficult, but there's tools like Singulate, which integrate directly with HubSpot that give you the ability to tailor your emails directly to individual preferences, right?

11:50Personalization, I think, is going to become ridiculously important because a lot of people's brains are broken just like mine and they think everything's AI. So if you can personalize your content and you can use AI to even do it better, that's how you win. Another thing, create data-driven insights. I was writing a piece a few days ago and I collaborated with my colleague Ethan on this asset that we developed for Foundation Labs, where we talk about how one of the most highly linked to assets that a company can create are research pieces, right? So if you have research, a rounded topic, a niche, an interesting subject or story, people will link to that content.

12:37And if people link to that content, it increases your domain authority. And if your domain authority goes up, it means you're going to have more mentions. If you have more mentions, it means you're going to have more press, more coverage, right? I saw a great tweet from Brittany Mueller earlier this week, and it said, backlinks are on the way out and mentions are on the way in, some variation of that. And what I think is going to become crystal clear is two things. One, I think she's right, because Google is now going to be tracking how often somebody is talked about. And if you're talked about frequently, then you are going to be seen as more authoritative, more credible.

13:13So you want to increase your number of mentions on the internet. And one of the best ways to do that is to create data-driven assets that get a lot of press, coverage, and buzz. All right, 10th tip, consistency with your posting schedule, folks. I know that some of you are going to hear this episode and you're going to get so excited. You're going to share content for seven days straight. Then you're going to get busy. You're not going to share anything again. You need to be regular. You need to create content regularly. But Ross, how much should we create? As much as you can. As much as you can, right?

13:49I know that there's a fine line between create, create, create, create, create and distribute and break. But you have to be on. Your people are always on. The people you're trying to connect with are on right now. They might be on LinkedIn. They might be on X. They might be on Facebook. They might be on Reddit. They might be on Quora. They might be listening to a podcast. They might be on YouTube. They might be at an event. But your people are doing things and every single time you press publish, every single time you press share, every single time you tweet, you post, you repost, you comment, you like, you email is a touch point and you need more touch points now than ever before.

14:25So what I would advise you to do is be consistent. Regular updates to your blog, consistency on your social channels. Do not be afraid to hit publish. Incorporate storytelling. selling. Folks, one of the hardest things in marketing is to tell a story. When I was a little kid, I started a book. I wrote this book and it was about the Roman Empire. And you might be thinking, men really do only think about the Roman Empire. That's that meme that's gone around a bunch of times. Like ask your husband, your partner, how often they think about the Roman Empire. And some of them will say every day. When I was a kid, I thought about it every day because I was in love with this game called Age of Empires.

15:07So I started to write a book about it. And I loved writing this story. But what I enjoyed the most was reading the narratives that I had developed about these characters who I connected with within that story. Now, that story was written when I was young. So we didn't have like Google Docs. It couldn't get saved to the cloud. So it's gone missing. It's gone forever. My parents surprised me with a new computer. They brought in took out the old brought in the new thinking i'd be super excited and i was like you got rid of my story i can remember like it was yesterday i was crying um why am i telling you this i'm telling you this because it's a story about a story and people resonate with stories people connect with stories if you can tell a story it's more likely to stick with somebody than an anecdote than a fact.

15:58So tell stories, incorporate them into your writing, your content, your messaging. Content should have stories. Now, here's another tip. Optimize your efforts for mobile. Make sure that the images in your blog posts can be seen on a mobile phone and they are readable. I am guilty of this 100%. I'm not going to pretend that I'm holier than thou and that this isn't a mistake that I make. I've made this mistake. I've gone to the market with content on my blog, on my website, where it'll be a visual, and I think it's great, but nobody can see it because the vast majority of my traffic is coming from mobile.

16:37Huge mistake, right? So make sure it's mobile friendly. All right, another tip. This one kind of builds on the last one, but the user experience is actually important. Ensure that you have a user experience that is easy to navigate and don't get cute with it, right? Don't get cute with it. I go on so many websites, especially of early stage companies who are trying to get so cute with their design, not realizing that it's just complex. It's not even that it's not nice. They're nice. They're just not usable. And if your content and your experience is not usable, then you think people are going to stay?

17:19No, they're going to bounce right so make sure that your user experience is tight another tip leverage social leverage social folks tap in to tools like distribution.ai tap into tools like hubspot and the content remix platform they built out to distribute your content across channels where your audience is if my audience is on linkedin and i'm spending all of my time on pinterest i'm making a massive mistake, especially if Pinterest isn't driving leads for me. All that said, if Pinterest is where my people are, then that's where I should be. If Reddit's where my people are, that's where I should be.

17:57So be active on these social channels where your audience is spending time. All right. 15th tip. Contribute. Scratch that. Empower. Scratch that. tap into the power of influencers collaborate with influencers partner with influencers don't let don't let your bias stop you from collaborating with people who already have the ears of the people you want to connect with right now there's a newsletter there's somebody on instagram there's probably somebody on X. There's probably somebody on LinkedIn who your audience looks at as like, this person is the GOAT. What does that mean? The greatest of all time.

18:46It's an acronym. Sorry. And they're consuming that person's content thinking every single day, wow, thank you so much for creating this. I love what this person produces. I love the stories they share, the ideas they contribute to the industry. They're so great, right? This is the stuff they deliver regularly and you have the opportunity to collaborate with them. So slide in the DM, send that email and find budget to collaborate with influencers who are going to take their audience and give you exposure to them. Collaborate with influencers and don't step on their toes. Let them be great. The best partnerships that you'll have are with influencers who know their audience well, who understand taste, understand the voice, understand what they care about, and they'll create content that they know their people are going to care about and resonate with.

19:32and they don't need your feedback on how to create for them. They know what to create, so let them create, all right? Implement SEO best practices. So many times I go on Instagram or LinkedIn, and I see these gurus talking about how SEO is dead. SEO doesn't matter. Stop worrying about SEO. Two years from now, SEO is going to be dead. Listen, SEO is built on the back of the internet. And the internet is kind of built on the back of SEO. What are you saying, Ross? If you look at the vast majority of the people in the world, they start their experiences online with Google. That's where they start.

20:13It's literally the browser that they start with, vast majority of the world. And what do they do next? They type in a phrase, they type in a keyword. Some of them don't even go to the browser and type in facebook.com or instagram.com. They go to Google and they Google it. And then they get to it through a click. So when I hear people say, search is dead, SEO is dead, I can't help but think like, this is just a situation in which people don't understand the magnitude of the prevalence that search has in our behaviors as humans. Millions of people are using Google every single hour. Like tens of millions, right?

20:51Maybe hundreds of millions. Every hour. And that number might be showing a little bit of cracks, right? But for the cracks to get to a point where it's dead, we're talking like 10 years, folks. It's not going to evaporate that quickly. No, I take it back. It's more than 10 years because if you think about it, the people who are using Google today, let's assume that they are 60 plus. Let's assume some of them are 60 plus. I don't know about you, but I'm already not moving over to new channels as frequently as I used to because I'm kind of getting stuck in my ways, right? Like I'm not moving over to blue sky.

21:34I'm sorry. I love all of my friends who are using it, but like, I don't have time for that. Not yet. Like maybe in a few months, but I'm not, I'm not there yet. All right. So you think someone who's 60, who knows how to browse the internet using Google is going to start shifting their behavior to something like chattypt or clod or perplexity, it's not happening, right? Somebody 50, probably not either. So we got like 20 years before the full change happens. And then even below that, those people aren't all moving, not that quickly. So my point is this, people will tell you that SEO is dead, but here's the other reality.

22:11All of those things that all the gurus are saying that the people are moving to, to do their search are built on the back of SEO content. go to OpenAI, go to ChatTPT and type in what are the best places that I should eat in Canada, in New York, in Philly, wherever. Where should I get the best cheesesteak? Guess what it's going to use? It's going to use the same engine that runs search to figure out what it should say back to you. So instead of thinking, yeah, I'm going to be so smart and say no more SEO, recognize that if you want to optimize for generative engine optimization, you have to do a lot of the things that are done in search, which is why my next tip is create pillar content and topic clusters today so you can reap the benefits in 2030.

23:02What does that mean? Create ridiculously valuable, insightful guides supported by related articles that link back to that key pillar piece to establish authority for your brand in a way that people will say, this company really gets X. This company really is the best at Y. Do it. Use it. And link to that main piece. If you're in a higher ed institution, it's the same thing, right? This would be what I would consider a low-hanging fruit in higher ed. Think about your degrees, your areas of focus, and then all of the stories that can go around it. Create those pieces. Link to the main one and watch it rise through the cert.

23:44utilize user generated content. This one I've got a few ideas on. So when it comes to user generated content, encourage and share content that your audience is creating. If somebody is talking about your brand, retweet it, especially if it's positive. If somebody created a great video of your hotel, your restaurant, your Airbnb, re-share it on your story, download it, upload it to YouTube Shorts, create a video about it. Of course, you have to send them a DM to make sure that you can use the content and all that good stuff, but do that. Also though, you can now create UGC with AI. I know it's kind of wild to think of, but there's this tool called Arcads, A-R-C-A-D, I think, and you can have it like create UGC on your behalf.

24:24It's absolutely wild. I would encourage you to check that out as well. All right, 19th tip, conduct regular content audits. Continuously evaluate what you've done in the past to figure out what you should do in the future. Don't make the mistake of just creating, creating, creating, creating. Make sure that you're taking the time to see what content in the past needs to be optimized for search, what content needs to be optimized for conversion, what content needs to be optimized for usability, what content needs to be optimized for repurpose ability, all of those things. So that's something that I would encourage you to do is build a culture where content audits is a regular thing.

25:00And if you are unsure of what to even look for, tap into consultants as a part of this. Consultants can be a cheat code for creating audits that are valuable for you, your org, your company. All right. 20th tip. Implement a content distribution plan. You need to strategize the ways in which your story should be spread. And it's not enough, folks, to just share it on LinkedIn, and share it on Facebook, share it on X, and call it a day. Have a plan. Where are your people spending time? Do the work to figure out what I call channel user fit. These are the channels in which your users are spending time, your customers are spending time, the people you're trying to reach are spending time.

25:41Please find them and then spread that story, spread that content regularly. You all tap into something amazing if you do that. All right, 21st tip, headline, headline, headline. Write four of them before you press publish. Craft attention grabbing headlines to increase your click-through rates, but also create headlines that are intended to rank. Right, yes, you want to remember the long tail. Every day people are doing search queries for things that you folks do and related to this topic that you're creating. So make sure that you have content that are speaking to those keywords. 22nd tip, add imagery to your content.

26:23Infographics. charts, graphics, visuals, it doesn't matter. Include all of that in your blog content. It's so, so powerful when you scroll through a blog post and you see illustrations, images, and graphs and charts to supplement the text. Because again, if you're just walking into a block of text, unless I'm reading a essay from somebody who's like an authority in a market, somebody who I know well as a thought leader, I want to kind of have a more instructional experience with that content. So don't be afraid to incorporate visuals into your assets. Now, I talked about being consistent a lot earlier, and you might be thinking, how do I do all this?

27:07Well, the best thing that you can do is you create that strategy up front, and then you build out a content calendar. You have to know when certain things are going to go live. And when you do that, you're going to set yourself up for success. But most importantly, you'll set yourself up for success if some of these pieces that you're going to create are evergreen. What does it mean to create evergreen pieces? Evergreen pieces of content are pieces of content that are intended to be around for a very long time. So you want to have evergreen assets, pieces that last forever. So you can schedule those content to be shared at any point in the time, right?

27:41Like it doesn't matter if they go live in February or March or April or May. They're just great pieces that you have to press publish on. That's evergreen. Develop a content calendar around that with the flexibility to say, hey, we just rolled a new product and you all need to create something about it so you can spin that up and put it into your calendar, into your mix. There's a lot of great calendar tools, but my favorite is Google Sheets. I know, basic, but it's great. All right, engage with your audience. Folks, one of the biggest mistakes that I see a lot of gurus make is that we post and then we don't respond when people engage.

28:17It's called social media for a reason, folks. Your brand isn't on social media just to like blast the internet and take, take, take, take, take. Your brand is on the internet to build connections, to deepen its connection, to sell, to convert and to close. And you do that by engaging and entertaining and educating your audience. So respond to comments. Be a part of the community. Don't just be a brand that thinks you are the community. Contribute. Leverage email marketing. It's the most underrated tip of them all. I know it's boring. Everybody gets sleepy when you talk about email, but folks, build a newsletter.

28:55Build that newsletter list because you all saw what happened to TikTok. TikTok was gone for like three days. There was people crying, crying, tears, tears, tears about TikTok being gone. And because of that, I hope a lot of people woke up to the fact that you're building on rented soil if you start creating it exclusively for YouTube, for LinkedIn, for X. All these channels are great, but your email is forever. Your email list is forever. So take ownership of your community and own that newsletter experience. Incorporate long form content into the mix as well. I see this often with D2C brands and I get it.

29:34Like they're in a sexier industry than B2Bs and people might not want to read that much, but they are reading when it comes to like decision-making content, right? What do I mean by that? if I'm going to buy a mattress, if I'm going to buy glasses, if I'm going to buy a computer chair, it's very likely that I'm going to be willing to spend time reading about those topics. I'm not going to just like see a reel and be like, cool, I'm buying that. Well, I might for the chair, but I'm probably not going to do that with glasses. I'm not going to do that with expensive headphones. I'm not going to do that with a nice watch, right?

30:11I'm going to read about that thing. I'm going to consume content about that thing. And then from there, I'll make a decision. If I'm buying a mattress, I'm going to read what goes in the mattress. Is there toxins in it? Is it going to be like a comfy mattress? Is it firm? Is it soft? Is it going to be filled with feathers or stuffing? I don't know. But I'm going to look into all those things, right? And all of those things are going to help me make a decision on that mattress. And it's going to be a long form content. So create long form content. it. 28th tip, use analytics tools. You have to keep track of whether or not the things you are doing are moving the needle.

30:48Track your results. The second one, the 29th one, make sure that your content is loading fast, right? Reach out to your developer, run that test directly into Google and see like, what is your loading time for your content? Is it loading fast or is it taking forever? You want it to be fast because the faster your content can load, the better the user or experience for your customers and you want that, right? The 30th thing, and this one gets a lot of heat, but I think it needs to be said. Gate your content strategically. That's right, I said it. I'm not a believer in giving it all away. Give away your best for sure.

31:27Like add a little bit of extra something to your best that is worth giving an email for. What do I mean? If you created a list of 100 things that you should do as a first-time recruiter, then somebody reads that whole piece and then they say, hey, I want to also get 10 more tips. You can say for 10 more tips, download here, gated, right? So you don't want to just give it all away, but some of it can be gated. I think that's a great play. Leverage podcasts. There's something special about audio. If you have a podcast, I want you to spend some time thinking about what you've built. Because we oftentimes sleep on the power of literally being in someone's ears through their headphones and connecting with them one-to-one.

32:18The development of a relationship is so much stronger when you are hearing someone's voice. If you are hearing my voice right now, then you are connecting with me. And I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for listening, right? If you do not have a podcast, consider it. Consider how you can turn your content into podcasts. Consider how you can turn your blog post into podcasts, right? And if you have a podcast, consider how you can distribute it even further. And if you can't even do any of those, if you don't want to be the creator of a podcast, how can you get on podcasts so you can share your story a little bit further?

32:53My 32nd tip, create content for different stages of the buyer's journey. Create content that is going to connect with people at the awareness level, the consideration level, and the decision level. and if you don't know what you should create, then start by taking a step back and asking yourself, if somebody was not aware yet that we existed, what would they look for? If they were considering us, what would they type into Google? And if they were making a decision, what type of content would they use to facilitate that decision, right? That's the 30 second tip. And here's a pro tip on top of that one.

33:26Build some case studies. Case studies give you credibility and they help that bottom of funnel, that last decision stage, come to life, where you're able to build credibility and really move them across the finish line. Another tip on that bottom of funnel, 34th tip, is use testimonials. Leverage testimonials and reviews as a part of it, right? That's again, decision stage. People want to see a testimonial. 35th tip, get reviews. Get people to actually leave you reviews online. 35th tip. Don't just do reviews or 36 tip evergreen content that's at the top of the funnel, right? So create that evergreen content that we talked about before.

34:06And then in the middle there, 37th tip would be address customer pain points, address the pain points of your customers through your landing pages and through your storytelling. And if you're not sure which way you should go with this stuff, my next step is A-B testing, right? Run some A-B tests to really take this the next stage. Create strong call to actions throughout all of your content. Don't play it passive. A lot of people play it very passive. I'm going to write 20 blog posts and I'm not going to tell anybody to do anything about anything anywhere. And they're going to just like find you.

34:42They're just going to reach out. They're going to subscribe. They're going to reach out to learn more about your product, your service? No, they're going to get your content, get your info, and then they're going to leave. So tell people what you want them to do. And make it strong. Make a strong call to action, right? Syndicate your content. Now, some of you are probably saying, oh, Ross, you're getting old school here. Syndication doesn't work anymore. You're right, it doesn't work the same way. Instead of viewing syndicating your content as like uploading it to a feed that automatically repurposes it, or it doesn't even repurpose it, just repost it to a bunch of sites, guess what?

35:17Reach out to influencers, industry newsletters, industry publications, and ask them if you can contribute to their site. If you bring any type of value to that exchange, then you're probably going to get a yes. If you don't bring value, if it's just like, oh, yes, I'm going to fill out my content calendar with some mediocre piece of content that you probably wrote with ChatGPT, then you're probably going to get a no. But if you say, I just did this amazing research and I think your audience is going to love it, what do you think is going to happen? they're going to eat it up, right? Incorporate humor into your content too.

35:50Memes are taken off and for some reason a lot of brands still think that memes aren't cool. They still think that memes are like corny. They're not. Leverage them. Tap into memes, right? Use storytelling and data to make your content a little bit more engaging. Make sure that your content's accessible for screen readers. Leverage content curation. For years I preached at the top of my lungs about like curating content for other people. And I still think it's a great play. Newsletters are built on the back of it where you go and you find the best content in a certain niche, a certain industry, and you deliver it back to people.

36:23People eat that up. I also encourage you to have like a process around how you approve content. You don't want to press publish on bad stuff. Nobody should. But if you let your approval process go to the wayside, then you might. And it can tarnish your brand. So make sure that you have editorial processes set up that are going to ensure that your content is strong and great. And while you're doing that, make sure that that content is emotionally engaging, connects with people on an emotional level that is high value and interesting to the people that you speak to. In addition, you need to recognize that one of the most important things when it comes to content is that you are providing content that's valuable, right?

37:09And a great way to do that is to answer questions that people have. So one of the things that I always advise is that you embrace the idea of an FAQ, right? You can use a ton of different tools today to better understand the questions that your audience is asking. You can go to Google and type in the beginning of a question and start to see people also ask, right? Take those and use those as a part of the story that you're telling and create content that answers the FAQs. And include, if you're developing a pillar asset, FAQs directly in it. What I mean is, if you're creating a piece that defines what is alkanine water or whatever it may be, have an FAQ at the end of that piece that breaks down everything that people could ask on that topic.

37:52Leverage that to increase the likelihood that your content is going to be valuable and that your content is going to show up in the surf. utilize content personalization. So there's some great tools out there like Singulate that make it easy for you to really personalize your content today. And I would encourage you to use that. Do research on a regular basis and curate it for your audience. One of the coolest things that I've seen recently, and I haven't built it yet, but I think is a major opportunity for someone to build and kind of leverage is if you can use AI to scrape the internet for the most recent news and summarize that for you, specifically around your industry and your niche, and then have it automatically formatted into a newsletter format, I think you could streamline and automate a pretty powerful and valuable newsletter that people would subscribe to, right?

38:42When you look at tools like DeepSeek and like what they've built, imagine you use DeepSeek to scrape the internet, identify all of the topics surrounding waste management, surrounding alkaline water or CRM sales, whatever it is in your space, and then every single day you send that newsletter to your audience, people would eat that up. And you could call it like waste management daily, some variation of that. You also want to collaborate with micro influencers, right? So micro influencers can be a very powerful play on a different, on a wide range of different channels. If you're in D2C, you might want to leverage micro influencers on Instagram.

39:19If you're in B2B, you might want to do it on LinkedIn. in. You might even want to tap in and build your own network of influencers and then seed them with the content that you've produced to get them to like, comment and share. That could also be a play. Another content tip that I encourage folks to do is host virtual events. I've seen some businesses that have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the matter of just a few hours, creating events where they invited a bunch of great people to have conversations about marketing, about business, about a certain niche or a topic. And they have these people show up for this live event and then they have others buy tickets and then they go and they get sponsorship.

40:02And there's no overhead costs. You're not paying for a venue or anything like that. You're not paying for a speaker's travel. They're calling in from their home and you send them some swag and they're feeling good, right? You give them permission to sell on stage a little bit and they're making money on the back of it. And you're making money because it's brought to you by your brand. And you in fact are going to have some of the people on your team speaking at this event. Live events, virtual events are still a massive play, even in a world that is post COVID. it. Lean into your unique voice.

40:40So many brands as they scale and as they grow, start to water down the story that made them loved by many. Don't do it. Lean into it. Own that voice. Own that message at large. Sponsor and collaborate with unique innovations. Whether it's the homepage on Roku or it's inside of a VR game or a video game, look for unique sponsorship opportunities. We worked with a brand a few years ago that was in the video game space and they were having their partners like sponsoring inside of Madden and stuff like that. Like there's so many unique, interesting sponsorship opportunities. You just have to be willing to ask for it.

41:20Create how-to content that is not just written word. So many people learn how to do things from video. Take the time to create how-to content that is video focused and show people how to do things. If you go to my YouTube channel, Ross Simmons TV, you'll start to find more and more how-to content. And it's because I'm realizing that people want to see and watch people do things. So leverage it. Experiment with AI-generated art. Tools like MidJourney make it so easy now to scale your content production efforts. I've produced and replicated famous advertisements that have been developed with famous creative directors, famous photographers and stuff like that.

42:02and I've recreated them with AI in the fraction of the time in a matter of seconds. And it blows my mind that people still sleep on this technology. If I wanted to create an ad today that literally was myself with inside of an F1 vehicle, I could do it, right? You can mock that up today, but people are still sleeping on the power of this. I was chatting with a creative director friend. He said that he's using AI every single day to do mock-ups for clients, right? Every single day. So don't sleep on this tech, folks. I would also encourage you to build brand partnerships. There's something special about two brands that you don't expect coming together to collaborate on something, right?

42:45I seen a collaboration a few weeks ago where I think it was a food company collaborating with an underwear company or something like that. and they brought out like these new underwear that smelled like this cereal. And I was like, that's so weird. But they had so much traction, so much conversation. Folks, don't be afraid to do these unique collabs. Run content contests as well. Encourage people to like share and like and throw their hat in the ring if they engage with your content to be a part of a winning opportunity. You see these on Instagram all the time, like you put up a post on Instagram.

43:26If you comment and share on this post before December 1st, then you're going to be entered to win ABCDEFG. Those are great ways to drive engagement on your account. Test interactive emails. Did you know that you can embed polls, quizzes, right in your email campaigns? Try it out. Experiment with that. Show behind the scenes content. People want to know who is behind the brand. So take them behind the scenes to better understand your world, your culture, your team, the people that are building your products. give them a glimpse behind the scenes. One of my favorite tips is right now LinkedIn articles are gold folks.

44:02Google loves LinkedIn URLs. So if you're creating pieces of content on LinkedIn, you can rank quite well as long as that content is optimized for search. Another piece of tip that I would give you is to repurpose your webinars into blog posts and infographics. And if you're not sure how you can do this, then I would check out distribution.ai. Great solution for this. You can tap in and start to take your content and repurpose it there. Amazing opportunity. One of the ideas that I got from Cut30, which I took a few months back, is create episodic content. So like content that is like a series. Mr.

44:41Beast does this very well, where you like create a theme that you come back to time and time again. So every Thursday, we're going to do a certain money Thursday where we're going to have a money expert on to talk about ABCDEFG, right? You bring in people to do a certain thing only, or you have a series of episodes. Like this series, we're going to dive into the full funnel. And then you start with top of funnel, then middle and then bottom, right? And that could be an interesting series of content that you produce over time that keeps people hooked and wanting more. Highlight user success stories.

45:18Don't sleep Keep on the power of a compelling case study, folks. Embrace the idea of taking that case study and turning it into something special. Record a video. Create blog posts about it. Create a newsletter about it. Include it in the PS on your sales team's emails. Distribute it like wildfire. Make that great. Offer templates. It's never been easier to create a template. You can use AI to create templates today. So start creating them and offering them to your audience. Test different posting times. Leverage social proof across your website with awards, certifications, all that stuff. Make sure that that's referenced.

45:50If you're HIPAA compliant, put that all over your content. Create a blog post about why we decided to go HIPAA compliant, whatever it might be, right? Create a series of content with influencers in your space, right? Like reach out to a bunch of influencers and get them to talk to you about their expertise and make it recurring if you can. Do real-time polls. Polls are popping off on LinkedIn right now as well. Like if you do a poll on LinkedIn, it's getting lots of engagement. Be strategic with your hashtags. Like don't hashtag everything, but like be strategic with it. Launch your own brand podcast where you are talking regularly about the things that your audience cares about.

46:30Leverage paid social to promote your content. Like don't just let your content collect dust. Promote it and remarket the people who are visiting content that is similar to it. Invest in like deeper tools that you can create and establish that are given away from free. Foundation did some research on tools and we found that they generate more backlinks than any other type of content. So if you can create and give away free tools, it can be an amazing win. Write contrarian thought pieces. So try to create pieces of content that are contrarian to what most people believe. Challenge conventional wisdom.

47:04This way you're going to stand out amongst the competitors and the people that you're up against. Integrate chatbots into your content suggestions and the things that you're developing. So don't just have a website experience where people are visiting your site and then they're reading your content, like have a chatbot that says, hey, you might be interested in this piece of content that we produce. You might be interested in this asset, this idea, that type of thing. Offer free courses or certifications as well. Like if you can at scale produce courses that help people become an expert in a certain thing, they're gonna be more inclined to share it.

47:40If you want a prime example of this, look at LinkedIn Learning, right? It's an amazing platform and I also have courses on there. so shameless plug, go check those out. But you can have these courses that people take and they learn from you. And then they're going to share the fact that they are now certified in learning about this thing with their audience. They might even put it on their LinkedIn. They might put it on their website. So how can you produce courses and materials that people are going to have as a part of their growth plans, as a part of their development and their own growth within a company is a great opportunity there.

48:14Use gamification in your content as well. Like don't be afraid to have a quiz directly built into one of your blog posts. And after they fill out that quiz, subscribe them to a newsletter that is specific to the things that they filled out in that quiz, right? If somebody fills out a quiz to figure out like what type of marketer they are, if they're quantitative or qualitative, or if they're a social marketer or an SEO or a CRO, like where should they be? Use a quiz to inform them and then subscribe them to a newsletter that aligns with the data that they just gave you, right? You can also then collaborate with experts to produce assets that these people will find interesting and then upsell them to go through your free course and then maybe through a paid course.

48:59Another thing that I would encourage you to do is collaborate with universities. Great opportunity for brands. Collaborate with universities to press publish on papers. We recently just produced a blog post where we talked about how journals are generating tons of backlinks for AI companies. Strongly recommend you do that as well. Create hyper local content at scale. AI makes this way easier now, but like create content that is specific to communities all the way down to like the smallest local level you can think possible. Maybe not street level, but city, town level, locality can be very powerful, right?

49:39Create content that is that specific. Folks, I think I covered 100 tips. If I haven't given you 100 tips, my apologies. But I really do think that in this episode, we got through 100 plus tips. I dropped a lot of little ideas, little concepts, little story strategies that I hope you can take and run with. and if you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend. I gotta go get some water. That was a lot of talking. I hope you're well and I hope to see you on the internet.