Whether your media expert platform involves a blog, a book, producing videos, webinars, podcasts, articles, press releases, a digital magazine or some other type of consistent digital marketing content, you want to guard against focusing it on only your own accomplishments, wants and needs.
I encourage you to adjust your thinking and take the “ME” out of your media to grow your audience. Instead, position yourself as an educator and advocate for your clients.
WHO CARES?
The truth is your readers, viewers or listeners don’t really care about you. They care about what YOU can do for THEM!
Even if you are creating content that explains or shows how you do something, make it about the steps and how they could do it.
LOOK, MA! NO ADS!
Content marketing is not about making commercials. In fact, one of its core principals is NO DIRECT SELLING.
We are all bombarded everywhere every day with advertising, commercials and sales pitches. Ads are an irritating interruption and most of the time, we simply tune them out.
To “sell without selling,” share useful, high quality information that educates and delights your target audience.
Create media that presents actionable education in a fun way. Base the stories you tell and the examples you show on the systems and solutions you know can produce the results they want. Include a call-to-action to get them to take a next logical step with you such as download a template or checklist, attend a training webinar, join your FB group, etc. so you can interact with them more. Research shows it takes 7-12 “touches” to make a sale.
“Sell something and you make a customer. Help someone and you make a customer for life.”
~ Jay Baer, Author of YOUtility
The key to getting what YOU want is to provide value to help others get what THEY want.
IT’S FREE
It’s okay to give away your best stuff. Give them the whole enchilada, not a teaser. You want your audience to feel empowered and confident they can do it themselves…but here’s the secret…they won’t want to!
After all, you’re the expert with the media platform. You wrote the book, produced the videos, led the workshop, hosted the podcast, ran the webinar, was quoted in the media, etc. You’ve proven you are a whiz at this stuff. They’ll want to work with you!
MEDIA MATTERS
When you know what your audience wants and give them insights, tools and resources to be better and do better, people will want more of you = SALES.
The final step is to build TRUST in your authority and expertise with a two-pronged approach:
- Syndicate the content you create for the “I see you everywhere” effect
- Leverage media exposure to get implied 3rd party endorsement
My team and I can help you accomplish both. Schedule a free discovery session here.
BOOK NOTE: I received a good response to my post about podcasting a few weeks ago and wanted to recommend another book. What I like about this little Kindle is the focus on scripting which you can use to develop effective audio or video CONTENT.