What is the one core activity your business model won’t survive without?
If you were to stop doing this one thing, your business would come to a halt?
Even if you diligently stay “busy” working on all the other “busy” things on your to-do list?
Chances are you are in an information business of sorts.
Whether it’s a parenting blog, an online bookstore, a real estate business, a pool business – you name it; information/content is the one thing that could make or break your business.
Yes, even a pool business – just read Marcus Sheridan’s Incredible Relationship Between Content Marketing and Sales.
Every time I stopped churning out regular content, my traffic and affiliate sales plummeted.
Even if I stayed active on social media.
Even if I stayed in touch with other bloggers.
Even if I stayed “busy” working on my business in some other shape or form.
Traffic Generation Café is nothing without content.
What about your business?
How to Multiply Yourself
How long does it take you to write a blog post?
30 minutes? I highly doubt it.
1-2 hours? If that’s even close, this might be the reason no one is reading your blog… ouch.
More like 4-5 hours for an average “filler” post and 8-10 hours for a post that actually gets read, shared, and talked about.
And how many times per week do you publish new posts?
2-3 times?
Sounds about right.
So let’s say it takes you about 25-30 per week to write the only kind of posts that are worth publishing.
How many hours per week do you have to work on your business to begin with?
Got a job? Kids? Family? Life?
And what about:
- social media;
- guest posting;
- SEO/backlinking;
- reading other blogs;
- commenting;
- staying on top of business trends;
- staying in touch with email list;
- creating products to sell;
- creating products because everyone says you should;
- reading ebooks;
- taking marketing courses;
- doing market research;
- responding to emails;
- blog maintenance;
- split testing;
- updating blog design;
- feeling like a failure because you just can’t do it all?
Take a deep breath.
There’s only one you.
And there’s no app in the world to change that.
If you want to build a thriving business, something’s got to give.
Actually, most of the things I just mentioned have to give.
Give way to the ONE core activity that your business can’t move forward without.
How to Multiply Your Content Marketing
If we can’t multiply ourselves (unless you are a mother that is – they can do it all), then we have to focus on multiplying our content.
HAVE TO.
How do we take that one post we toiled over for hours and make it work for our business in more than one way and for more than a few days?
Once I started doing research on the topic, I was blown away by the possibilities.
Here are just a few of them that I mentioned in my ultimate blueprint to more traffic:
- PowerPoint Presentation: create an outline, turn it into a PowerPoint presentation, and submit it to Slideshare-type sites.
- Video: make an audio to go with the presentation and turn it into a video – syndicate to video sites.
- PDF: make a transcript of your video, turn it into a PDF – syndicate to PDF sites.
- Article: condense your post into an article – submit it to article directories.
- Podcast: turn the audio file into a podcast.
- Images: turn key points of your post into images – submit them to sites like Pinterest and Instagram.
- Guest posts: use the main concepts of your original post and develop them into a guest post (not duplicating, but complimenting it); link the guest post to your original one.
- Free WSO: submit your PDF as a free WSO through WarriorForum.com.
- Press release: write a press release.
- Webinars: if the topic has depth to it, you can expand your original PowerPoint presentation into a webinar (conduct it for your own readers or, better yet, team up with another blogger to present it to their readers).
The idea of leveraging content in this way is not new by any means.
However, Pete Williams (Petewilliams.com.au and PreneurMarketing.com) was the one who brought it all home with what he calls “Content Leverage System”.
Below you’ll find two must-see videos that will give you all the knowledge you need to start putting together a system of your own.
Content Marketing Leverage System
by Pete Williams
Video 1: The Concept of Content Leverage System
YOU SHOULD SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL to be the first one to see my new videos:
Video 2: Customize Content Leverage System for YOUR Business
If you are having a hard time wrapping your head around the whole concept of leveraging content or struggling with how you can actually adapt it in your business and your way of doing things, watch this video.
Quick productivity tip: I know the video above is long, but it’s also worth watching.
Here’s how you can watch it a lot faster:
- Sign up for a YouTube Beta HTML5 testing http://www.youtube.com/html5.
- Now, if you click on the “settings” icon under any YT video you watch, you’ll see an option of adjusting the video speed.
- Might be strange to watch a video at 1.5x or 2.0x speed, but you get used to it quickly and it’s a HUGE time saver.
Making Your Content Work for You Is Not a Choice
Leveraging our time is not a choice.
Leveraging our content will help us to leverage our time.
I truly hope you’ll take your time to figure out how to come up with a content leverage system that you can easily apply to your business.
A few final pointers to remember:
1. You don’t have to take every post you write through the system.
Focus on the ones that have potential to
- become your pillar content;
- bring in profitable search engine traffic (like product reviews);
- go viral on social media;
- establish your expertise on your niche subject.
2. Outsourcing makes all the difference in the world, but…
I realize that not many of us have the budget to outsource the system.
Or, to be more precise, we simply don’t fully grasp what a huge difference outsourcing can make for our businesses – if we did, we’d come up with the money to do it in a heartbeat.
It’s fully realistic to do at least some syndication on your own.
For instance, right now I am working on syndicating my website traffic blueprint I mentioned earlier in the post.
If you take a look at the post, you’ll see that I now have a mind map and a video to go with the post, neither of which I’ve done before.
Next steps: Slideshare and PDF directories, then a podcast.
There’s a first time for everything, right?
I’ll keep you updated on my success and will most likely write a post on how I am making the content leverage system work for me.
3. The first time is the hardest.
Once the system is in place, using it again and again becomes a copy and paste job.
So don’t get discouraged if your first round of content syndication is taking forever.
4. Kill several birds with one stone.
Is it search engine traffic you are after?
Your content leverage system will increase your backlinks and result in better search engine visibility.
Need more social shares?
Since you now offer your readers to consume your content in multiple forms (videos, images, outlines, downloadable PDFs), you make it more shareable.
Thus you’ll get more shares and more social media traffic.
Need to create a product?
Now that you are cranking up so much content, it’ll be a cinch to put it all together as a freebie to build your list with or a paid product.
That’s why it’s called LEVERAGE.
Marketing Takeaway
Here’s your plan of action.
Click here to see image full-size (pay attention to Step 5)
Download as PDF
See what happened?
I was going to quickly write up some action points for you, but instead I went to my mind map software (right now I am using MindOnTrack – free software) and put together this quick outline.
Took me about 5 minutes; mostly because I’ve done one before, so it’s like riding a bike.
So even before I published this post, I uploaded two videos, created a mind map, and saved it as PDF and image.
Just like that I can start submitting this content to several different places.
Content leverage system at work…
Off you go to create your own!
