4 Content Creation Tips for Entrepreneurs: Harness the Power of Evergreen Content in 2021

Apr 22

Creating content is a core pillar of marketing your business. But it doesn’t have to control your entire schedule. Although content creation is essential it’s important to note which type of content is best and follow my hacks to master your content…

Seriously, content creation is one of y'all's favorite things that I talk about over here at Brandmerry, because I have been creating consistent content for my audience for five years now and honestly know a thing or two about creating content that brings in your ideal customer.

But, even though I’ve consistently created content for 5 years, you’re probably here because you know I do it in a very strategic way.

I don't believe in just creating content to create content.

I want to have workflows and systems that allow me to show up for you, to get in front of new ideal customers, to show up and nurture and build relationships with my existing audience, to ultimately lead members to a sale because at the end of the day I’m running a business and that last piece is kind of important.

And, after 5 years I know content creation allows me to do all of that.

Yet here’s the kicker - I want to make sure you know how to create content that doesn't involve you sitting behind a computer for hours and hours and hours every single day, trying to write up posts knowing that those posts are probably going to disappear.

Honestly, one of the most fun things that I get to do is create new content, and these 4 hacks that I've implemented have made all the difference not just in how I'm creating the content, but more specifically how long it's taking me to create it and how long the content lasts (it’s evergreen baby, more on that later).

Let’s get into the 4 tips. If you prefer to watch the training, scroll down for the video below.

CONTENT CREATION TIP #1: CONTENT RESEARCH

Let's dive into the first thing that I have for you on content creation hacks of 2021. This one is key. So I'm going to spend a little bit more time on this one than I will the others, so let’s buckle up!

This first step is all about your research.

Now I don't know about you, but when I first started my business 5 years ago, people weren't really talking about how important it was to do research when creating content.

We were talking about ideal customer research as it applies to your branding and that is a crucial step. It was all about having conversations with people to find out how to ultimately message to them in your business. And this was great, it helps you get a solid start, but then what do you do?

No one was talking about the research that actually goes into creating content. This resulted in business owners posting things with the foundation of, “Oh, I think my audience might like this. This might work.”

I fell into that trap for a really long time, until I started looking outside of my niche at what was really working for marketing as a whole.

It always came back down to this idea that the data is always there. The information you need on what people are searching for is already there, you just have to take the time to do the research and look for it.

This simple strategy opens up an entire method for creating content that is based on search engine results not just “oh, that might be nice!”

Why, is it important to think of things that people are searching for? Well, because they are searching for it! This means that you’re getting in front of cold leads (people who aren’t familiar with your brand and services every single day). This is key when you want to consistently scale your business, especially organically.

When you're thinking about creating content, remember, we're not just creating content that is meant to serve people that already know our brand, we have to have consistent people coming in that funnel, finding you online, discovering you, getting to know you. That has to be a consistent stream in order for them to then binge read all your posts on Instagram or go binge-watch all your videos on YouTube.

This research phase requires you to do SEO or search engine optimized research.

What are people searching for as it relates to your niche on Google?
What about Pinterest?
And what about Youtube?

These are all search engine platforms, meaning someone is going there, typing in a question or topic and finding results, and these platforms can give you a freaking gold mine when it comes to finding topics for your content.

keyword research tools

In addition to using those platforms to find data-driven research, below are my favorite three tools to take your content creation topics to the next level.

KEYWORDS EVERYWHERE

One of my favorite tools is called Keywords Everywhere, and it is an extension that you can use on your Chrome browser.

You do have to pay a small fee for a certain number of searches, but it is totally worth it because when you type topics into Google it’s going to show how many people are searching for that every single month, the cost per click and if it’s competitive.

You can start to play with that and find combinations that work really well for the topics in your industry. It's also going to give you a list of suggestions of other things that you might talk about. You could have an entire month's worth of content from just a few searches.

Keywords Everywhere Screenshot | Keyword Research Tools

UBERSUGGEST

The other tool that I love to use in my business is called Ubersuggest and it is another Chrome extension. They do have a free option with a couple of limited searches every single month, but you can also pay for a paid version of that as well.

Ubersuggest is another tool that we love to use over here for SEO, big picture, not just what content should I be creating, but how do I optimize that to show up and rank on Google?

Again, you can type in topics that you think are of interest to your audience based on your ideal client research and what people are asking you.

Then you can get the data to back that up.

It also allows you to see some awesome variations of how people are asking questions, who is doing a great job ranking for that keyword and even a way to take a sneak at others in your industry for inspiration.

Remember, sometimes we think we have a great idea, but our title is sucky! Use Ubersuggest you can choose a title that’s going to get in front of your ideal customer.

Ubersuggest Screenshot | Keyword Research Tools

ANSWER THE PUBLIC

While I don’t use this tool as much for content creation ideas it is an excellent tool for ideal customer market research to learn more about their internal and external problems. This of course will help with content topics, but it’s not as useful for determining strong SEO.

The tool is called Answer the Public and it pulls all the data from Google on the top questions that people are asking in certain areas, niches, industries, and around specific pain points.

So you can take the information that you know about your ideal customer, put it in the search line, and it's going to give you all of these different questions that people are asking. By clicking on those, it'll then open it up to Google, where you'll be able to do more digging.

Answer the Public Screenshot | Keyword Research Tools

This stage takes a little bit of time, but it's absolutely worth it. And it's going to take the mystery out of what you should be writing and creating content around.

Everything that you're going to create regarding your content, which includes podcasts, blog posts, social media content, videos, is data-driven.

CONTENT TIP #2: DESIGN YOUR WORKFLOW

You should not be recreating the wheel every single week in your business. One of the areas that I have found that people struggle with when it comes to creating consistent content is that they don't have a workflow in place.

So, while number one takes the mystery out of, “What do I talk about?”
This step takes the mystery out of, “How do I do it efficiently?”

You can have the best content ideas, but if you don't have systems and workflows in place, you're going to struggle with consistency showing up.

Here are some things to consider when thinking about your workflow:

How many blog posts are you going to publish a week?
How many videos are you going to release weekly, bi-weekly, monthly?
Are you going to have a podcast?
What channels are you showing up on social media?
Are you going to be on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest?

The goal here is to determine where you’ll be showing up and how often. Now, you don’t need to be everywhere, we just don’t believe in that strategy here at Brandmerry, but you do need a clear idea of where you’ll be sharing your content.

My suggestion and something I teach inside of Brandmerry Academy is to choose one search engine optimized platform (Blogging/ Google, Pinterest or Youtube) and one social media channel to start.

Once you have that data you want to pull that into a workflow that might look something like this.

Step One: Create a blog post
Step Two: Turn that one blog post into 12 posts on Twitter for the week
Step Three: Then use that blog post to create two posts for Instagram.
Step Four: Record that blog post as a podcast episode.

You could do this a ton of different ways, figure out the way that works best for you.

Some of my clients love blogging and writing, so that becomes their core content.
Some of my clients love video, like myself, and that becomes their core content.
Some love recording audio, podcasting and that becomes their core content.

Whatever core content you want, you can then push it out and repurpose it on multiple platforms.

I’m going to do a video and blog in a few weeks on repurposing, but remember this step is all about the workflow. What needs to happen and when. If you want to grab a little cheat that I've put together for you, you can go to brandmerry.com/repurpose, and get your hands on more details regarding that.

It’s these systems that allow us to build sustainable businesses.

CONTENT TIP #3: KNOW YOUR NUMBERS

Number three is a piggyback off of number one with the data, but this hack is all about knowing your numbers.

Seriously, please look at your analytics. They will tell you so much about what you want to scale in your business and can give you insight into the type of content that drives the most traffic, gets the most engagement and more.

While tip one might have focused a bit more on bringing your new audience in, this step can tell you a lot about your existing warm audience.

What types of videos do well?
What types of podcast titles and episodes have a higher listener rate?
What kind of blog posts are getting more rank on Google, are getting more traffic from Pinterest?
Which of your social media posts get more saves and shares and engagement?
Do people prefer certain topics or imagery on your social media?

You have to make it a habit to look at your numbers.

I suggest looking at your numbers every 30 days and making small adjustments and every 90 days planning your bigger moves for the next quarter of content.

For instance, I did a podcast episode about morning routines, which was one of the hardest things for me to do because I have a very different take on morning routines. You can listen to that podcast episode over on the Beautiful Climb Podcast, but this was the topic that we knew my audience cared about and would do well.

We had seen it through Instagram posts and through past Pinterest traffic. All kinds of data was saying, “Do this dang podcast episode, Michelle.”

So I did it and it was our highest listenership because we knew that it was going to be.
It was one of our most viewed reels that I created on Instagram.
We then took that content and turned it into a blog post and that blog post is doing amazing on Pinterest.

So the data is there and once you have this consistent rhythm and that workflow in place, you can start to take the guesswork out of creating content.

Look at your analytics, know your numbers, create more of what is working.

Now you can absolutely experiment and play around with things and you should, but always remember to come back to your numbers and allow that to fuel those decisions.

One of the areas that perform well in my business is video. As we ended 2020 we had a lot of data on what worked best and how we could make some modifications heading into 2021.

Here’s an example of how the data then fueled a change in my marketing.

While we knew video did really well in my business we were seeing that live video wasn’t necessarily working better than prerecorded.

At this point, I was going live every Monday at the same time to deliver branding and marketing tips as part of my show Mondays With Michelle.

Live video takes more time and energy on my part, so rather than not creating videos, we realized that we could pre-record bulk video content.

So four to five videos, depending on how many weeks are in a month to be released every single Monday on Facebook as a premiere, and on IGTV, and then repackaged to release on YouTube later on.

So by looking at the data, we realized that we could make this adjustment. I could have more time in my schedule to take on more clients, which resulted in more money and it all came from looking at the data.

CONTENT TIP #4: OUTSOURCING

The last tip I want to share with you is centered around freeing up more of your time by outsourcing. Now before you're like "Michelle, I don't have the money to invest in a team," I totally understand and that’s not necessarily what I’m implying so keep reading!

When I say outsourcing, I mean tech or team. So if you have the means to hire a virtual assistant or somebody to manage your workflow in ClickUp or wherever you're setting it up, to publish your videos, to edit your videos, then absolutely do that.

Start to outsource those content creation pieces very early on if you have the means to invest in that.

If you don't have the money or means to do that just yet, there are tech options available that are going to yes, be an investment, but a small amount compared to how much time you're spending.

For example, you can use a tool called Veed.io, which I talked about in my recent blog on my favorite Marketing Tools here, to resize your videos for different platforms, add transcripts and even edit the title and captions.

You can use a transcript service like Rev.com to upload your video or podcast and have a full transcript that you can then turn into your blog.

There are a lot of tech options out there that will help you streamline this entire content creation process. And again, as you begin to build your revenue, you can then build your team, which is going to make your life so much easier!

Content creation is the heart of your business. Without strong content, you can't attract your ideal customer, you're not nurturing your existing audience, you're not showing up for them and you’ll have a hard time selling.

So creating content should be a very, very important part of your brand and of growing your business.

This is where I recommend that people invest pretty early on when it comes to tech and team, and when it comes to marketing and advertising dollars as well.

Remember, to save this blog for future reference and grab your free repurposing guide at brandmerry.com/repurpose to master your workflow.

Branding and Business Coach | Michelle Knight of Brandmerry

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