Six Steps to Acing Your Startup’s Content material Technique

Kris Hughes is a content material technique and storytelling wizard. He:

✍️ Wrote (and offered) blogs earlier than it was cool

👻 Spent years ghostwriting each day social content material for shoppers, from companies to CEOs

🖥️ Runs his personal digital technique consulting agency (on monitor to hit 30% YoY income development)

Listed below are Kris’ six ideas for nailing your content material technique — to generate stable, genuine leads.

1. If You Don’t Inform Your Model’s Story, Somebody Else Will

As a founder with 1,000,000 priorities, content material like blogs and social media posts can seem to be low-priority gadgets.

However for those who don’t inform your model’s story, another person will make assumptions and inform it for you. 

Don’t sit in your palms on the subject of content material. Your story and voice must:

• Be genuine
• Really feel pure to you
• Make sense to your target market

Sizzling tip: Check out your rivals — in the event that they’re not doing a robust sufficient job of telling their story, they’re leaving content material gaps on the desk so that you can capitalize on.

2. Do a Thorough Mind Dump

Spend ~30 days on a “mind dump” train, utilizing voice notes and free-form writing. File each thought you’ve got in your model, then cross it on to somebody who’s near, however not part of, your enterprise.

Ask them what they see from the skin trying in. What phrases are used time and again? What matters preserve returning? This deep-dive step is significant for 2 causes.

One: “Persons are their very own worst entrepreneurs,” Kris says. “There’s in all probability a ton about your individual model story you’re not telling. The deep dive and outdoors perspective brings this to the floor.”

Second, this train will spin off aligned speaking factors to be able to hit the bottom working with a transparent technique and financial institution of nice content material — in your individual phrases.

3. Extrapolate 4 Key Pillars for Your Content material

Sift by means of your mind dump and manage every concept, spicy quote, or matter, into certainly one of 4 pillars:

Supply: Kris Hughes / Zanate Ventures

Every pillar provides rise to particular kinds of content material, and alternating between them will make sure the matters you talk about stay diverse and contemporary, but in addition on model.

For instance, one week it’s possible you’ll discuss in regards to the outcomes you’ve pushed for a shopper (Pillar II), and the following share a few of your founder story (Pillar IV).

And for those who ever get author’s block, you possibly can return to your pillars as inspiration and a reminder of what you need to convey to your viewers.

4. Concentrate on Group-Constructing earlier than You Put Out Content material

Create a neighborhood from the get-go by interacting along with your excellent shoppers, rivals, and friends by means of value-driven feedback and messages.

This step will get you snug with the way you write, the way you painting your self, and the way individuals obtain you.

Protecting monitor of feedback you make (e.g., in Notion) will even guarantee you’ve got a content material concepts financial institution; most beneficial feedback can normally be bulked up right into a publish.

5. Now You Can Get Your Content material Out There

Use your pillars, saved feedback, and mind dump to generate content material that’s genuine to your model. Keep in mind to:

📈 Have a transparent KPI: Is your content material to construct generalized consciousness, or drive leads?

📝 Develop a voice information, a useful resource information, and a content material calendar.

Kris is an advocate of scheduling content material to be sure to get it on the market. Whereas the cadence and method of posting will rely on the platform, consistency is all the time key.

6. Keep in mind: Content material Is A Lengthy Recreation.

It takes time to construct up a popularity to the purpose the place your content material drives leads. Maintain at it. 

“Many founders are available in weapons blazing with excessive power, after which fizzle out after just a few months,” says Kris. You’ll miss the magic for those who do. Keep motivated by:

• Setting new benchmarks
• Specializing in optimistic suggestions
• Reusing your top-performing posts each few months

As a ultimate tip, Kris suggests speaking to your clients when issues are going nicely.

Supply: Tenor

“We have a tendency to succeed in out solely when we have to put out fires,” he advised us. “However getting shopper suggestions throughout the good occasions means you’ll discover room for incremental enchancment — when you’ve got the capability to behave on it.” 

Constructive buyer transformation journeys are highly effective additions to your model story.