Six Steps to Acing Your Startup’s Content material Technique

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

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

👻 Spent years ghostwriting day by day social content material for shoppers, from businesses to CEOs

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

Listed below are Kris’ six ideas for nailing your content material technique — to generate strong, 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 look like 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 arms in terms of content material. Your story and voice have to:

• Be genuine
• Really feel pure to you
• Make sense to your audience

Scorching tip: Check out your rivals — in the event that they’re not doing a powerful 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. Report each thought you’ve gotten in your model, then move it on to somebody who’s near, however not part of, your enterprise.

Ask them what they see from the surface wanting in. What phrases are used again and again? What subjects hold 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 personal 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 in an effort to hit the bottom working with a transparent technique and financial institution of nice content material — in your personal phrases.

3. Extrapolate 4 Key Pillars for Your Content material

Sift via your mind dump and set up every thought, spicy quote, or subject, into one among 4 pillars:

Supply: Kris Hughes / Zanate Ventures

Every pillar provides rise to particular forms of content material, and alternating between them will make sure the subjects you discuss stay diverse and contemporary, but additionally on model.

For instance, one week chances are you’ll speak concerning the outcomes you’ve pushed for a consumer (Pillar II), and the subsequent 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 group from the get-go by interacting along with your best shoppers, rivals, and friends via 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.

Holding observe of feedback you make (e.g., in Notion) will even guarantee you’ve gotten a content material concepts financial institution; most useful feedback can normally be bulked up right into a submit.

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. Bear 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 ensure you get it on the market. Whereas the cadence and method of posting will rely on the platform, consistency is at all times key.

6. Bear 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. Hold at it. 

“Many founders are available in weapons blazing with excessive vitality, 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 remaining tip, Kris suggests speaking to your clients when issues are going nicely.

Supply: Tenor

“We have a tendency to achieve out solely when we have to put out fires,” he advised us. “However getting consumer suggestions through the good instances means you’ll discover room for incremental enchancment — when you’ve gotten the capability to behave on it.” 

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