Your virtual freedom is about more than trying to work fewer hours each day, week, or month. It’s about leveraging that freedom in order to create more building blocks for your business—and here in the twenty-first century, there’s no better way to build your business than to create and market content online.
In this section, we’ll go over the reasons you need to create online content. We’ll also focus on
• producing online content consistently
• what makes “good” content
• why all online content is not created equally
• the P2P (people-to-people) philosophy
• injecting yourself into your content
• step-by-step content processes for your virtual team
Keep in mind that when I say “content,” I’m not talking about boring corporate websites that use 2,000 words to outline a mission statement or a company that features a montage of Jackass-style stunts on YouTube.
What I’m talking about is the type of content that delivers
• a clear, concise message
• education and solutions that solve problems
• inspiration that spurs people to take action instead of focusing on entertainment
Those are a few of the qualities of good content—and good content is hard to find. These days, the first stop for almost anyone looking to solve a problem is the Internet. As providers of products or services, problem-solving is exactly what we should be focusing on. Here are just a few of the problems that drive people to the Internet to look for answers—where hopefully, once they’re online, they’ll discover high-quality content.
• Health issues: Obesity is no longer just an American problem. There are now six other countries in which 20 percent of the population is medically obese. So where do people turn when they have questions about their cholesterol or when they need advice about nutrition, exercise programs, and exercise equipment? If your business provides meal plans, workout supplies, or other solutions to health problems, people will turn to you.
• Financial questions: Where should a couple invest for their child’s education? What should people know about identity theft? If you faced financial stress, hardship, or uncertainty, where would you turn for information to get your life back on track? If your blog and podcast tackle these problems, people are going to start turning to you.
• Career issues: Where does a college graduate or recently unemployed middle manager look for work? How do people stay informed and up to date with the most desirable skills in today’s marketplace? If someone is tired of the job search and wants to become an entrepreneur instead, where should he or she start? If your web show or e-mail newsletter offers tips and tactics to people in these situations, they’ll be tuning in to watch you or signing up for your e-mail list.
• Business communication questions: How does a small, family-owned business stay relevant in a world driven by social media? How do experienced business owners communicate and connect with today’s consumers? If your online courses and live workshops show them how, these small business owners will become instant fans and customers for life!
People are looking for answers, and they’re looking for them right now. But what if the best answers aren’t available? What if your business has the solution to someone’s problem, but you haven’t put it out there so that it can be found? If someone has a business that’s equipped to answer common questions, shouldn’t he or she have content available in the most popular place that people search for answers?
Perhaps business owners don’t focus on producing content because they lack the tools to do so. Perhaps computers, cameras, and Internet access are too hard to find. No—that doesn’t seem right. Could it be cost? Maybe it simply costs too much to create quality content and market it online. No—that doesn’t make sense either. Anyone can create a YouTube channel and upload a video for free. Anyone reading this book could put it down right now and publish his or her first blog post without reaching for a credit card.
So what’s the problem? If it’s not access, tools, or cost, then what is it?
The real problem is time. It takes time to research and write a high-quality blog post. It takes time to film and edit a YouTube video that engages audience members while also presenting a clear message and call to action. It takes time to create a powerful webinar that presents life- and business-changing information in an entertaining manner that keeps attendees from being distracted or leaving early.
I’m sure right now there’s a large pool of potential content on your iPad, on your laptop, or in your head, just sitting there and waiting to be sorted out, produced, published, and released into the digital world.
Consider how many times you have said
• “I should share one of my clients’ stories as a case study.”
• “I need to write a book about________.”
• “I really should shoot a YouTube video about________.”
• “This month, I’m going to create my________.”
• “I need a website.”
The list goes on, and all of this amazing content is just sitting around, collecting dust and quickly becoming irrelevant when it could be out there helping people, building your brand, and making an impact. That’s the reason why I’m writing this chapter and this book. I know you’re busy, and I know you probably don’t have time to do any of the things I listed here.
This is about helping qualified people get free from the tasks that are holding them back so they can return to the most important parts of their businesses—leading and selling.
Why Your Business Needs to Produce Online Content Consistently
When you last encountered a piece of content that made a positive impact on your personal life or business, I’m sure you were happy someone had created it. However, have you ever asked yourself what it takes to produce that type of content? As I see it there are two requirements to producing great content: experience and skill.
Part 1: The Experience
The content creator must be an expert who has had—and continues to have—consistent success in a particular area that qualifies him or her to teach. This experience could have been acquired under someone else’s mentorship or it could be self-taught.
Part 2: Technical and Creative Skill
Armed with experience, the expert decides to share it. He or she might share the experience through blog posts, YouTube videos, a newsletter, or even a podcast. However, not only will the expert need an understanding of digital content creation—or a team behind him or her that does—but he or she will also need to make the content engaging and easy to follow in order to hold onto the audience’s attention.
Who has time for all of that? Does an expert who’s successful and presently engaged in his or her craft really have the time to produce content that entertains and instructs? Probably not. Even experts who have dedicated themselves to full-time teaching and learning can quickly become overwhelmed with the amount of work and detail that goes into researching, syndicating, and promoting content.
But people are searching for solutions to their problems online. I’m sure people are searching for questions right now that you could answer, so what can you do? Do you have the time to create content that can be easily found and shared?
You might have time at first, but you’ll soon find that it’s impossible to do all of this by yourself. No one can be his or her own production company—trust me. I’ve tried and failed miserably. You’ll need help; that’s where your team of VAs can play a vital role—assisting you in researching, producing, and marketing quality content.
I’m not talking about producing content every day, because that’s excessive. Frequency is less important than producing content that’s genuinely engaging and has a message that can positively impact lives. You are providing a service to those who need or want it, and it serves no one if you get burnt out because you’re trying to churn out too much content.
Additionally, content—especially for the web—can (and in many cases should) be brief. People are searching online for quick solutions or answers. A solution might be as simple as a video showing how to upload a blog post to WordPress or a checklist outlining tasks you can outsource to your first virtual assistant. (You can find my personal checklist at ChrisDucker.com/101.)
Before we get into how to incorporate your VAs into the production process, let’s discuss why you should consider content creation at all. We just spoke about some of the problems our world is facing today and considered that people are turning to the Internet to find solutions. That should be enough for anyone with a business in today’s economy to start planning his or her content creation strategy. The simple fact is that if you’re not in the digital loop, you’re missing out on enormous opportunities as a business owner.
What about small, local businesses—do they still need to think about content creation? Maybe you’ve got a small bookkeeping company, pet day-care center, or health spa, and you’re wondering why you should concern yourself with digital content.
Here are some common excuses I hear from business owners as to why they are not creating content, and my rebuttals to them:
• My business doesn’t sell products online. We want people to visit our stores to make purchases. Did you know that 94 percent of smartphone users use their mobile devices to search for information about local businesses? They’re not looking to buy products online—they’re looking for reviews, pictures, location information, and anything else that will help them decide whether or not to visit your business. Whenever I’m in the United States and looking for restaurants, hotels, or other types of local businesses, I personally do this by using Yelp’s mobile app. If that’s not enough to get your attention, consider this simple fact: 61 percent of local searches result in a phone call to a business.
• We’ve been getting along fine for years without online content. Why start now? Today’s consumer relies on digital content and influence from online social circles to guide his or her buying decisions. How we use the Internet and how much we use it is evolving at a lightning-fast pace, especially now, with the advent of smartphones, because people take the Internet with them everywhere they go. Something like a blog post or Facebook fan page that may seem small to you can make a huge difference in the eyes of your local market. In fact, it could be the very thing that makes customers realize you exist in the first place.
• We have die-hard customers who bring us business by referral. Why not give these fans something digital to promote? It’s a lot easier for someone to “like” the Facebook fan page of your business than to call all 300 of his or her Facebook friends.
• We already have a website and professional video on our homepage. That’s great—but is that video also on your YouTube channel? Do you even know why that’s important? What are you doing to make it easier for customers to find this website of yours? Are you using the website as a lead-generation device?
Here are a few examples of the most valuable types of content for brick-and-mortar business owners:
• Video: Create a brief video that highlights your company’s unique qualities, showing your prospective and existing customers how things look on “the inside” is a great way to inject that P2P philosophy into the relationship with your customers. Don’t be scared to peel back the curtain a little, as it’ll separate you from your competitors.
• Press releases: Every now and then, a local business does something press-worthy Highlight your achievements by submitting a press release to local and national media outlets.
• Blog posts: If your business is in an advisory role like financial planning, law, fitness training, or psychology, blog posts could bring in online search traffic when people turn to the Internet for answers to simple questions.
• Facebook fan pages: Social media is about more than getting people to “like” your page—it’s about connecting with your audience. There are more than one billion Facebook users worldwide, and the average American spends at least a couple hours glued to Facebook each day. It’s clearly in your best interest to be there, too. This will also allow you to start ongoing relationships with future customers.
• Reviews: A quick word of caution here—don’t buy fake reviews. While you should encourage your customers to write reviews (reading positive reviews from other customers is a major selling strategy, especially online), make sure you’re also monitoring those reviews so that you can respond to negative comments. You can also have your VA handle this by monitoring the reviews weekly and sending the negative comments to you. Of course, be sure not to let negative comments get you down. It seems that negative people have more time to spare than positive people do!
Now, I’m not saying that you need to get involved with all of these types of tasks. Your virtual team can certainly handle them all, but ultimately, they might not fit your business model or your target industry.
It’s great to try a little of everything, and you can use tools such as Facebook’s Page Insights and Google Analytics to get clear data on which types of content are creating the most buzz for your business. An SEO VA is the perfect team member to help you evaluate this information.
The digital world is already full of content. Unfortunately, most of it is just clutter and pretty distractions.
Let’s start by looking at some of the content that keeps you plugged into your private life:
• Every few minutes, your phone vibrates with a text message.
• Right now, your Facebook friends are posting status updates that you’ll read later, about thoughts they’re having or places they’re visiting.
• Your personal e-mail is slowly filling up with “one-time offers” from every retail store that has ever asked for your e-mail address when you made a purchase.
All of that is content—and much of it will get your attention. Now let’s consider the content you engage with on a professional level:
• You search through LinkedIn to connect with people you just met at a networking event, clicking through to their profiles and websites to learn more about them.
• Your work e-mail is copied in on an important conversation that someone thought you should be involved in.
• You attend a webinar highlighting critical information that will affect your industry or help you win new business.
• You download a white paper to learn more about a topic that you believe will help your business or position within a company.
Finally, let’s consider the type of content you purposefully seek out. Answer these questions to discover what content is actually enriching your life:
• Who do you really follow online? These are the people you actively seek out by visiting their blogs, searching their social media posts, and making it a point to watch, listen to, or read the content they release.
• When was the last time you had a personal or professional problem you went online to solve by digesting a piece of content?
• When was the last time you took action on a piece of content that moved your business forward?
Good content might be a free, fifty-page e-book you received for opting in on a website that shows you how to build a blog to grow your business. Or it might be a five-page white paper you download that offers incredible insights on your target market so that you can approach potential customers more successfully. It could be a ten-part video series that teaches you how to create, launch, and promote a podcast, or the infographic you discovered on Pinterest that offers productivity-boosting tips for entrepreneurs who work from home.
All of these examples are considered evergreen content, which means they will transcend time because of their high quality and enduring relevancy. Evergreen content should be able to solve problems and identify new opportunities, while at the same time being able to stand the test of time. As a result, it will be consumed, remembered, and shared regularly.
Just because a blog post shows up on the first page of a Google search doesn’t mean it has the answers you need. Likewise, just because your website has a high ranking on Google doesn’t mean it will translate into enduring traffic for your site or increased sales.
Too many people think the phrase “content is king” means the website with the most blog posts and videos wins—but that’s just not true. It’s the online portal with the most high-quality, commented on, and shared content that really wins.
It’s easy to produce poor content; for example:
• Content that is simply created for the sake of producing something. Writing or talking about something primarily because you feel obligated to do so rarely leads to good content.
• Content that has no real point—it’s just someone rambling while holding a video camera out in front of his or her face.
• Videos with poor sound quality. There’s just no excuse for that.
• Anything that has been “spun” through a software program for the sake of search-engine optimization. Black-hat tactics like this are being wiped out by algorithm changes in search engines.
• Outdated material. Please note that this does not include material on your site that is outdated simply because it was created a long time ago. This refers to material that was created recently by someone who hasn’t stayed in touch with his or her industry and is teaching outdated information.
• Hype. I hate hype—it’s the drug we use to anesthetize our audiences and ourselves when there’s no real meat to deliver.
Too many people have hopped on the content bandwagon without any thought as to where they’re headed or if anyone is really following them. After all, isn’t the whole point of leadership supposed to be about having some followers?
What makes crappy content even worse is that it costs business owners time and money to produce—and it’s a waste of both. Content should not be viewed as something you “do” as if it were on a long checklist of items on your daily agenda. Instead, content should be viewed as something you get to do. It’s a privilege.
I believe that if your content isn’t genuinely solving a problem, entertaining your audience, or motivating the consumer to take positive action, it’s not content. It’s just clutter. It’s this mentality that makes it so important for you to know who you’re targeting the content toward. Today, it’s probably not who you think it is!
The P2P (People-to-People) Philosophy
I’m an old-school guy who comes from a corporate background. Every job I’ve ever worked, no matter what position I held, had a B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer) focus. But now that I’m a business owner starting, marketing, and building businesses in today’s environment, I’ve shifted my mindset. Now, I prefer to focus on a P2P (people-to-people) philosophy grounded in the awareness that people want to do business with other people.
Despite all the time and money that goes into corporate branding, people don’t choose to do business with a company because of a logo design or a mission statement. They choose to do business with a particular brand because of personal experiences with the products or services—and just as importantly, because of the people who represent those products and services.
Your customers want to be your friends. They want to get to know the authority figure behind the business that’s taking their money. Most importantly, they want to be treated like real human beings instead of like faceless names on invoices. If a customer tweets at a company with a question, he or she wants to get a reply in real time from a real person. The fact that such an interaction is possible is the beauty of online content platforms today.
James Wedmore is a marketing authority who teaches people how to leverage YouTube to brand themselves and their products or services at his blog JamesWedmore.com. James has experienced the phenomenon of P2P through his YouTube videos.
Once James creates a video, uploads it to YouTube, and promotes it to his mailing list, he moves onto his next project (which is usually another video). Meanwhile, the video he’s just uploaded is still sitting there in cyberspace, waiting to interact with anyone who chooses to click on it.
Let’s say you watch one of James’s videos and you like it. What would you do next? You’d probably watch another. After watching several of these videos, you would probably feel like you knew James if you saw him speaking at a live event because he does such a great job of showcasing his genuine self through his content.
Joshua Van Den Broek, Principal Exercise Physiologist
Joshua Van Den Broek is one of those guys (we’ve all seen them before) who just can’t resist helping others. Don’t hold it against him—it’s just part of his nature. He created Fitco Health Technologies (Fitco.net.au) straight after completing his university degree in Exercise Physiology so that he could do just that—help others.
I first met Joshua through a members-only business group for which I had previously been a conference speaker. Upon hearing that I was due to undergo invasive spinal fusion surgery in April 2012, Joshua contacted me to give me some advice about what I could do to improve my rate of recovery post surgery.
After my surgery, I got in touch with Joshua to speak with him about how we could fast-track my recovery. Joshua is used to working with his clients in person at his facility, but because of the distance between us, we did a full assessment over Skype and I submitted some photos so he could analyze my posture more closely. He prescribed a tailor-made program with specific exercises for me to perform and checked in with me a few times along the way to keep me on track.
It worked. My recovery was faster than I expected. Since then, Joshua and I have become friends, and he finally got around to telling me about his VAs and how he works with them.
Why Virtual Staffing?
When Joshua first heard about virtual staffing, he was a solopreneur and had experienced both the highs and lows of running a local small business. He decided that he could no longer perform all the roles necessary to allow his business to be profitable and provide the flexibility and freedom that he ultimately desired.
He knew he needed to build a team in order to achieve his vision, but he had a shoestring budget. Hiring a virtual staff was the only logical choice for him, as he could have access to a solid team at a reduced rate.
He started with outsourcing specific one-off tasks such as website development and graphic design for print marketing materials before hiring additional VAs on a more permanent basis for roles that entailed repetitive tasks.
The time Joshua freed up by hiring these virtual team members allowed him to grow his local team and expand the number of his clinics in Sydney, Australia. It also allowed him to focus on additional projects that he was passionate about, such as content creation and marketing for his blog at MyExercisePhysiologist.com.
Without the growth of his virtual team to support his local team, Joshua would not have been able to systemize Fitco Health Technologies to the extent that he has. Today, all aspects of his business are documented and reside as a fluid resource on an intranet, where all team members can access and update them.
Now that Joshua has the time to focus on growing his business rather than just running it day to day, he is considering other possibilities, such as franchising, speaking, and additional online ventures.
Joshua’s Hurdles
Joshua had a few issues when he first started out hiring virtual staff, most of them due to his own lack of recruitment skills. With a bit of trial and error, he concluded that finding a candidate that was a good fit for his company came down to two things:
• Communication. He learned that he could accelerate the screening process for interviews by asking candidates to submit a voice recording in his job posting. This not only gave a fair indication of their spoken English skills, but also weeded out the applicants who were not willing to go the extra mile.
• Infectious enthusiasm. Joshua knew that all the skills required for the roles that he was hiring for could be easily learned with good training resources. However, the personality traits of the candidates could not. His most successful hires were those with infectious enthusiasm and willingness to learn.
Another of Joshua’s own newbie mistakes proved to be a hurdle for his company. He intially had virtual staff from the Philippines take the bulk of his inbound phone calls using Skype. While the calls were handled adequately by his staff, clients often complained about the quality of the phone line (due to the virtual team members’ Internet connection speeds). Joshua experienced a notable drop in sales due to this issue. He overcame this hurdle by moving that particular task to an Australian-based phone service.
Joshua’s Best Practices
• Treat your virtual team just as you would your local team. Team members who are spread across the globe are no less important than team members who operate from your office.
• Clearly communicate with your virtual team. It is important that you articulate task objectives clearly, leaving no room for misinterpretation. This is particularly important since English may be a second language for some of your team members. Before signing off on a task brief, have them repeat back to you their understanding of the task so you can make any clarifications on the spot.
Joshua’s Tools of the Trade
Here are the top three tools Joshua utilizes when working with his virtual team:
• Skype (Skype.com): Perfect for conducting interviews, holding meetings, and receiving phone calls via Internet connection.
• Trello (Trello.com): Joshua uses this project-management tool to create lists, set tasks, store files, track project status, and receive deliverables. Best of all, it’s free!
• Google Sites (Google.com/sites): Systemize your business by creating your own company intranet where you can store all your systems and training materials for your team. Another freebie!
Joshua’s ability to see the true value of his virtual team and respect the role they play in his business has helped him to grow his business locally and has created the opportunity for him to make a global impact by helping others through his online projects. This perfect marriage of old-school business principles and a “new-school” business mindset (working with virtual staff, using blogging and social media to engage with clients, etc.) is something I feel every entrepreneur today has to incorporate sooner or later—or get left behind.
The Importance of Being Remembered
Why are you ultimately thinking about creating content? It’s to be remembered. It’s to be seen as a leader or a go-to source in your industry—someone who is trustworthy and knowledgeable. You want to be seen as the one person to whom fans, followers, and customers turn when they need answers, support, motivation, or entertainment.
There’s no better way to be remembered than as yourself—and if you focus on our P2P philosophy, your personality will clearly shine through in your content. In many ways, the P2P philosophy is the true reason that you’re creating content in the first place and working to make it as enduring and evergreen as possible.
The content required to do this must include you—your personality, your stories, and your expertise. This is the one thing you can’t outsource and the one thing you shouldn’t want to outsource. People will find you with this content, and you will make an impression on them. Ultimately, this impression will cause a reaction—or, as it’s known in the world of business, a transaction!
Even though you’re going to be injecting a lot of yourself into your content, you don’t have time to research it because you’re running a business. You also don’t have time to design it, edit it, upload it, publish it, or market it. Fortunately, this is where your virtual team steps in.
Getting Your Virtual Team to Do (Almost) All the Work for You
As we’ve established, your content ultimately needs to come from you. If it doesn’t, it will surely fall flat on its face when it tries to capitalize on the P2P philosophy that is necessary in today’s business landscape.
Once the content has been created, you’re ready to get to the part you’ve been waiting for: getting other people to do the rest of the work for you.
I know that when I say “work,” it means different things to different people—so when it comes to content creation and marketing, I’ve broken work down into the following categories:
• Research: This category involves researching potential blog posts, videos, podcast episodes, and more. Researchers should also check up on what your company’s competitors are doing.
• Creation: Everything from basic content creation to info-product (downloadable digital products sold exclusively online) creation.
• Promotion: Publish your content and then get it out there for the world to devour!
• Ongoing marketing: Once your content goes live, it’s time to make sure it is found, consumed, and shared.
We’ll now discuss tasks that fall under each of these categories and discover which members of your team will be responsible for handling the work. Even if you don’t have all of the VAs mentioned in the action plan below, the plan is still a good framework of how information needs to move. Per-project hires found on Fiverr or Craigslist can quickly fulfill tasks such as designing an e-book cover. It all depends on the level of quality you’re looking for and whether or not you’re looking to build an ongoing working relationship with someone.
Research
The following research process can be used to create blog posts, videos, podcasts, e-books, infographics, and even some information products. The objective here is to simply gather the raw material you’ll need to build on. Keep in mind that nothing about this process is etched in stone. You can tweak to your heart’s content to get the best results.
Conducting Research Before Creating Your Product |
|
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Make a list of the words, phrases, or people needed to create the content you have in mind. Then, e-mail your GVA to become the main point of contact. | you |
| Conduct research using the Google Keyword Tool (GoogleKeywordTool.com), Google Trends (Google.com/trends), and YouTube to find the most popular and relevant content. | GVA or SEO VA |
| Copy and paste links from each platform’s five most popular pieces of content into a Google Drive document. This document will be shared with you once it’s completed. | GVA or SEO VA |
| Once you’re notified of the shared document, open it and decide what kind of content you want to create. | you |
Creation and Publication
Now that you’ve completed some research, let’s see what it looks like to create various types of content from everything you’ve done so far. Keep in mind that the step-by-step actions described below to create blog posts, marketing videos, e-books, and white papers are a continuation of the research you just did.
Let’s take a look at the process you can follow to create a blog post.
| Creating a Blog Post | |
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Remember when I said you shouldn’t outsource your content creation? I was serious. Sit down and write your blog post using the research that your GVA and SEO team members put together. Then, upload it to Dropbox. | you |
| Check the blog post for grammar and spelling errors. Make sure it is laid out with subheadings and correct formatting for your approval. | content writer or GVA |
| Load blog post into WordPress as a draft and embed any necessary images, videos, or Screenshots. Complete final formatting and add URL links. | GVA |
| Publish blog post. | GVA or you |
Next you’ll find the process you can use to create a marketing video. Please note that you can also replicate this process to create podcast episodes.
| Creating a Video | |
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Create a title and video outline based on earlier research and list discussion points in a Google Drive document or by sharing a Word file with your video editor and VPM via Dropbox. | you |
| Provide feedback and make suggestions, notifying you via e-mail when the document is updated. | video editor and VPM |
| Shoot the video and send the raw HD file to the video editor. | you |
| Send you a rough cut of the edit as a low-resolution file. This should include background music, intro and outro bumpers, and any text that you want to show up on the screen. | video editor |
| Note of any changes you want to be made, indicating the time where the change should appear. For example, you can write, “1:34—add text pop ‘Free for this week!’” Send the file to your video editor so that he or she can produce a final cut. | you |
| Finish the final cut and upload the HD version to Dropbox. | video editor |
| Transcribe video in full and save it as a separate Word document so that it can be used later in places such as a blog post or YouTube description. | GVA |
Publishing an e-book is a great way to build authority and produce something a little more substantial for your online followers to get their teeth into. It’s also a perfect opt-in magnet—a piece of content you can use to build an online mailing list.
| Creating a White Paper or E-book | |
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Write a basic outline of the e-book based on the research your GVA has put together. You don’t need a title yet, but it’s always a good idea to have a working title to guide your vision for the book. Send the outline to the content writer. | you |
| Create the first draft of the e-book and make notes to suggest where images and/or charts and graphs should go. Then, send the draft to the GVA. | content writer |
| Find images via royalty-free image websites. Add the images to Dropbox. | GVA |
| Make final tweaks and share the document with the graphic designer. | content writer |
| Take the e-book and images from Dropbox and create a cover design and first draft of the complete e-book. Place the file in Dropbox for review. | graphic designer |
| Review e-book. Give final feedback to the graphic designer. | you and graphic designer |
| Upload the e-book to your servers. Add an opt-in form if it’s a freebie or a “buy now” button if you’re selling it as a digital product. | web developer |
The transcribe approach to creating an e-book or white paper is a great way to turn your live speaking events, podcasts, long-form videos, or webinars into solid pieces of content that can be used as awesome giveaways for your subscribers and customers. You can also use this approach to create a product to sell on Amazon.
This step-by-step plan doesn’t involve the research portion we discussed at the beginning of this section. Finish that before following the plan below.
| Creating a Product to Sell on Amazon | |
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Gather any recordings that you want to use to create the e-book and send them to your GVA to be transcribed. Please note that you can also use a transcription service if your GVA is busy doing other work, as this will tie him or her up for a few days. | you |
| Collate recordings and transcribe audio in full. | GVA or transcription service |
| Review the transcription and cut out any material that isn’t needed. Make notes in the transcription so the content writer knows which pieces of content correspond with the sections you want produced and finalized. | you |
| Review the outline and begin turning the transcription into a book. This does not mean simply copying and pasting. Transcribed audio reads much differently than it sounds, so the writer will need to go through and tweak the transcription to make it easier to read. Send you a rough draft to review. | content writer |
| Review the first draft. Make changes and give feedback before uploading the updated file to Dropbox. | you |
| Make necessary revisions and do a final edit to ensure grammar and punctuation are correct. Send a final version of the e-book content to the graphic designer. | content writer |
| Create a cover image and lay out the content in the internal pages. Work with the GVA to compile and insert any necessary images. Send a draft of the finished product to you for final approval. | graphic designer and GVA |
| Approve e-book. | you |
| Distribute e-book to Amazon or any other platforms you’ll use to sell it or give it away. | GVA and web developer |
Promotion
Now that you’ve created and published your content, it’s time to help the world discover it. There’s one important piece of advice I’d like to give you: how often you choose to publish content is up to you. Though you have VAs working for you now, don’t make the mistake of creating content just because you can. Quality trumps quantity.
For promoting content, I suggest creating a schedule or checklist that your team can follow every time a new piece of content is published. A promotional checklist creates consistency and helps you plan accordingly. Being able to press the autopilot button is beautiful stuff!
Take what you can from the schedule below to create a time frame for promoting your most recent content. We’ll tackle ongoing marketing in a bit, I promise!
This publishing plan can apply to almost any type of content, but I’m going to use a blog post as an example. You’re going to see just how valuable your GVA can be.
| Creating a Promotion Plan | |
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Share the content you’ve created on your personal social media accounts, such as your Facebook fan page, Twitter, and Google+. | GVA |
| Share content on your LinkedIn profile and with your LinkedIn groups. (Note: It’s a good idea to join LinkedIn groups made up of your peers and those for the market you’re trying to reach. For example, if your company helps local businesses market themselves online, you should join local marketing groups and groups with the clients you’re trying to reach, such as dentists, lawyers, and contractors. This gives your content a larger reach.) | GVA |
| Schedule tweets to go out every four to six hours for the two days following the content’s publication. Instead of just tweeting the link to your article, share a “tweetable” comment from your post instead—something that stands out. These “tweetables” are typically shared more often than simple article headlines. | GVA |
| Have the content bookmarked on sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit. | GVA or SEO VA |
| Look through your post and identify anyone you may have mentioned or linked to. Contact these people directly with an e-mail (already prewritten using a template) to notify them that you’ve mentioned them positively in a piece of content in case they would like to share it. | GVA |
| Write an e-mail notifying your mailing list about the piece of content you’ve just published. | you (for a more personal touch) |
| Share the featured image from your post on sites such as Pinterest and Flickr. | GVA |
Ongoing Marketing
This is a slightly more tactical, long-term approach to building up your company’s brand online by optimizing the content you’ve created.
| Optimizing Your Content | |
| Action | Team Member Responsible |
| Podcasts and videos: Have podcasts and videos transcribed and placed in a “blog bank” that can be used for future posts on your own website and for guest posts for others. This content can also be summarized and shared on social bookmarking sites like Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg. | GVA |
| Blog posts: Create internal links from your new content to older content that’s relevant. This will help boost natural SEO scores while also giving visitors the chance to discover some of your older evergreen content. | SEO VA or GVA |
| Blog comments: Respond to comments on your blog posts, Facebook page, or YouTube channel. This is necessary if you want to build a stronger connection with your audience, particularly on your blog. Remember the P2P philosophy? This is something I wouldn’t suggest outsourcing. | you |
| Infographics: Produce a cool infographic based on one of your videos or blog posts. This is way easier to do than most people think. Have your GVA share it on an active infographic-distribution site. | graphic designer and/or GVA |
| Slide document sharing: Convert your transcriptions into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation and share them on websites such as Docstoc and SlideShare for additional exposure. | graphic designer or GVA |
Digital Nomad
With an online brand name like the Suitcase Entrepreneur, you might expect Natalie Sisson to be homeless—and in a way, she is! Natalie’s location independence has been the key to her phenomenal success as more and more solopreneurs are aspiring to live their lives on their own terms, just like her. When she started SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com almost four years ago, Natalie wanted to make sure it wouldn’t tie her down in one place. She knew that she could manage everything from her computer because all of the central ingredients of her content marketing business—namely, blogging, podcasts, and videos–could be handled with a simple Internet connection.
The Problem
Early on in the development of her company, even though she was extremely dedicated, Natalie realized she had no clue how to run some of the necessary areas of her business, like accounting and customer support. Still, she continued to struggle along on her own; her determined, competitive nature didn’t take kindly to any sort of loss of control in her business. (Sounds a little like superhero syndrome, doesn’t it?) Ultimately she reached out for help on the eve of a two-month trip to Africa, where Internet connections would be scarce.
The Solution
Natalie went about building a dedicated team of VAs who all live in completely different countries. She has a GVA in India, a podcast editor in the Philippines, a video editor in the Netherlands, a project manager and systems analyst in Belgium, a web and tech guru in the United States, a graphic designer in the United Kingdom, and her “Chief Happiness Officer”—who handles all her customer support—also based in the United States. With her team members spread so widely across the globe, she tends to work with each of them one on one instead of bringing them all together on a regular basis. However, they do all interact together via a project-management system.
The Outcome
The most important lesson Natalie has learned from working with VAs is how to work on her business rather than in it. By hiring reliable VAs, Natalie has had the opportunity to step back from micromanaging and tedious technical work to instead focus on ways to truly grow her business. When she is off traveling and doing the things she loves, she feels confident that her employees will manage the business smoothly—as if they were clones of Natalie herself!
At a first glance, you might think that content marketing isn’t for you. If you think it sounds like an awful lot of work, you’re right. You can’t just magic up some amazing content out of the blue. Content marketing takes some planning and strategy. But before you discount it completely, remember why we looked at content as a viable way to build your brand, your customer reach, and your business in the first place.
Social media expert Amy Porterfield, who blogs at AmyPorterfield.com, is regarded as one of the most influential people in the world of Facebook marketing. She has helped thousands of small business owners navigate the difficult world of advertising on the most popular social media channel in the world. But she is also a prolific content marketer—researching, creating, and publishing some of the best blog and podcast content online in her niche. She does this all to build her brand and to educate, and she does it very well.
Content marketing is about solving problems and getting answers to questions that your customers have. It’s also about entertaining and inspiring your audience and prospective customers to take action based on something that you’ve presented to them. Taking action is addictive. Once customers act on advice that you’ve given them, you’ve got ‘em forever—as long as you are true to your word and continue to help them take action.
Typically, the strategy and the planning take more time than the actual creation of the content. Luckily for you, you’ve got your hardworking team of virtual assistants to help handle the heavy lifting.