by Jon Wuebben
Content is not about creating it once and being done with it. Content is about publishing… Publishing to your audience. Whether it’s new pages on your website, blog posts, tweets or anything else, it’s about providing information that your audience wants to know about. Top 10 lists, interviews with important industry players, book reviews, new product releases, etc. There are tons of things that people want to know about. People are curious creatures and they’d rather support you and buy from you than a big unfeeling corporation.
So what is the content life cycle? It’s a process for communicating with your audience. It’s a plan that you put together to connect with them on an ongoing basis. All the while, your audience grows and you are selling more products and services. Why? You’re giving them what they want. They will give you what you want. That’s how it works.
The first step is to create the content. This is the hardest part. What should you write about? What should you publish? Ask your customers. Look at competitors. Brainstorm on Twitter. Read Google News. Think differently. Once you decide on a topic, create it quickly and while inspired. Do your research and get feedback from others if you need to. Make it good.
Next it to distribute it – to get it out there. Blogs have made it much easier. Social media has made it much easier. Many years ago, it sort of started with article banks. Now we have podcasts, webinars and many other ways to get the information out there. The key is to get it out there in as many ways as possible and then let the viral web take it! Remember, if it’s good and you have some great link bait included, this may not be much work on your part. Others may distribute it for you. And that really is the goal.
Finally, you need to leverage it. This basically means making the content work for you. Putting a super charged turbo engine on it. If you write a blog post, make sure it gets populated on your Twitter and Facebook pages. If you write a newsletter, make sure you have your Twitter and Facebook icons there in the email, asking for people to follow you. Ask your partners to publish your content. Make one piece of content work over time for you and get as many eyeballs on it as possible.
After you’ve done all of this, then do it again.
Content is king and it always will be.
