When it comes to establishing your authority, growing your audience, and having a more significant impact (not to mention making more money), creating good and consistent content is one of the most important activities you can engage in.
It’s trendy these days to say you can grow your business or organization without creating content. However, that premise is faulty—and even the gurus that tell you it can be done are producing content.
Creating content is an important way to promote yourself without coming across as smarmy, spammy, or salsey. It’s a way to provide value to your audience, produce thought leadership, and expose your business to new prospects and a larger audience without necessarily having to spend a lot of time or money.
There are dozens of types of content you could produce, but there are five essential alignment content types we believe every organization needs to create:
- Sales Letter(s)
- Email Sequences
- Lead Generators
- Social Media Content
- Email Newsletters
Let’s take a quick look at each type.
Sales Letter
A sales letter is a marketing tool—typically in written format—that promotes a good or service. The point is to describe a particular benefit the reader will gain by making the purchase.
The name “sales letter” comes from the pre-digital marketing era where salespeople would write and send physical letters to their customers. Today, sales letters can take a variety of formats including landing pages on websites, video sales letters, emails, etc.
You should have a sales letter, even if you never formally use it. The process of writing a sales letter will help you define your messaging. It should incorporate key messaging elements, including:
- Building rapport through storytelling
- Addressing a problem your prospect is facing
- Discussing the benefits your service or product provides in relation to the problem
- A call to action to purchase your offer
While they sound outdated, and you might have trouble imagining how you’d use a sales letter, they’re a very viable part of an effective content strategy.
Lead Generator
A lead generator is a valuable piece of content that you give someone for free in exchange for their email address.
The primary purpose of a lead generator is to grow your email list.
However, there are other secondary purposes, such as establishing your authority on a topic, helping people see you as a leader and as someone who can help them with a problem they are facing, and helping make your target audience more aware of your product/solution.
The best lead generators help people realize what they need to understand, be aware of, or believe in order to want or need your product, program or service.
The best way to come up with an idea for your lead generator is to pick one of your client’s problems and solve it for them.
Make sure your lead generator provides a high amount of value.
Experts say that an email address is psychologically worth around $20 in value to a prospect, so the value item you deliver needs to be something your prospect would pay $20 to obtain.
Additionally, your lead generator must meet a felt need. The biggest error I see organizations make when creating lead generators is they create something that is valuable to the organization—and even potentially valuable to a prospect—but they forget to frame it in terms of a felt need.
Email Sequences
Email sequences are the unsung hero for generating more business. They consist of a series of emails that are dripped out to a previous customer or a new prospect over a period of time. Each email should build on the previous and should lead the client to take the next step in their purchasing progression.
You should have a drip sequence for EVERYTHING!
Make sure your email sequence isn’t just a series of sales emails. It’s vitally important that you add value. The great thing about an email sequence is you know the exact context that your audience is in…because you know how they got on your list.
Take advantage of what you know about your audience member to create a valuable exchange in your drip sequence. Begin to (or continue to) present yourself as a leader in the struggle they’re facing.
Organic Social Media
In today’s digital world where billions of people are on social media spending untold amounts of time scrolling through their newsfeed, you can be sure that your audience members need to see your presence in their channels.
That’s why organic social media content is one of our important alignment content pieces.
When we say “organic,” we simply mean posts that aren’t ads. They’re posted in a way to drive traffic in a grassroots, organic way to your website.
The content you post on social media can be almost anything as long as it is valuable. You can share inspirational quotes, tips and tricks, funny memes, etc.
The key is posting consistently. Having a routine and sticking to it will create better returns in the long run than an occasional post, even if that occasional post goes viral. Create a content calendar or schedule and stick to it.
Along with consistency, the best way to grow your social following is to identify your ideal customer, follow them, talk to them (like a real human), and provide value. Resist the temptation to try to sell too much in your social media posts. It’s okay to mention your products or services occasionally, but it’s best to do so in the context of storytelling (i.e. share wins you’re client is getting), testimonials, or exciting announcements (i.e. “I’m launching a new product that I’m excited about because it’s going to make xyz impact!”).
Email Newsletters
The final key piece of alignment content you need to be creating and utilizing are email newsletters.
Email newsletters might not be what you traditionally think of when you hear the term “newsletter.” Don’t think of them as a way to share news about yourself or your organization. Nobody really cares about that.
Instead, they’re a way to deliver ongoing content to your audience. You can share articles, resources, tips & tricks, etc. You’re probably tired of hearing me say it by now, but make sure your newsletters provide value by meeting the felt-needs your prospects are feeling.
You should send an email newsletter to your list often. At minimum once a month. But you can probably send more often than you think you should. If you’re truly providing value, your audience will want to hear from you. If they don’t want to hear from you, they’ll unsubscribe (which is a good thing).
And don’t think your emails have to be long and drawn out. Too often, we work with clients who struggle with creating a consistent email newsletter because they’re under the impression that it has to be long and impressive. They get bogged down with the burden of writing a long, profound article or something similar.
However, while long-form content is certainly appropriate, it’s usually not needed. The key is to be value-adding over being overwhelmingly long. Your audience is often in a hurry anyway, so if you can deliver the “goods” in a quick format, they’ll appreciate it.
Courting Your Audience
In a romantic relationship, there is typically a moment of curiosity where one person catches the other’s attention, then a period of gathering more information about the other person (Are they a good person? Are they funny? Are they marriage material? Etc.), and then the commitment.
When done correctly, quality content helps your audience learn more about you, begin to trust you, and ultimately feel comfortable making a commitment to you.
Consider leveraging these five types of content to grow your organization.