Finally a book that is just specifically for content creators (Starting without a product).
!Disclaimer – The hyperlink of ConvertKit used in the post is an affiliate link. If you get a paid membership through it I will be compensated (at no additional cost to you). That said, I do not recommend or not recommend the service as I do not have a lot to compare with, but, it is what I use. Thank you 🙂
The 6 Parts of Content Inc. (Outline)
Throughout the book Joe mentions that there are 6 main steps to the Content Inc. Process;
1. The Sweet Spot – Finding your intersection of passion and skill.
2. The Tilt – Your unique way to stand out from the crowd, a bit like a USP*
3. Building Your Base – Focus on 1 key platform (YouTube, Facebook, Blog etc.).
4. Harvesting Audience – Convert viewers to your own audience (Mainly e-mail subs).
5. Diversification – Once you’ve mastered 1 platform, spread your message to other ones.
6. Monetization – Once you’ve gathered an audience create a product for them (But still find additional revenue sources on your way to it).
The first two impressed me most.
The Sweet Spot
One exercise that particularly stood out for me was when Joe instructed us to list our knowledge areas and special skills in a table;
Knowledge areas – defined as something that you are interested in and continuously research and thus know about more than the average person.
Skillsets – Defined as “The ability to do something well” or an area that a person has “expertise or competence” in.
| Knowledge Areas | Special Skills |
|---|---|
We’re instructed to just brainstorm and leave the refinement for later.
Here’s what my unrefined brainstorm looked like:
| Knowledge Areas | Special Skills |
|---|---|
| Nutrition for Vegans | Speaking in German and Spanish |
| Marketing & Business | Physical Training |
| Money Saving | Video Editing |
| Time Management |
Though I have developed the Video Editing skill along with the content efforts, today I guess I am more competent in it than the average person. Though if you’re just starting out it should include skills you already have I guess. For me it appears that as of now I am sitting at an intersection of skill or knowledge and passion (Marketing & Business and Video Editing) In my case the passion already became a knowledge point, which is normal I guess.
So what remains for standing out is just “The Tilt”.
(Maybe I’m just picking the easy way in justifying my content route, so that I don’t need to change it. Hope not though 🙂 )
You may try filling out that table out for yourself to see what’s your sweet spot and adjust accordingly.
The Tilt
As described in the introduction, the tilt is what makes you stand out. Because you might not be the only one at your intersection of knowledge or skill and passion. Without the tilt, no matter how skilled/knowledgeable or passionate you are, people won’t watch your content, because it needs to be special enough for them to drop the similar content that they’ve been viewing, and pick yours up instead.
Determine Your Tilt
What do you consider your tilt to be? __________________
If you were to wrap all your content up like it never existed, would people actually miss it? If not, what could you do differently? ______________________
Example
My current tilt: Animation Videos
The question: Is it good enough for people to drop the content they’ve been viewing until now and come watch my content?
The short answer: Practice shows that there are returning visitors to my content every month. So yes.
*But* I have no doubt that it could be a lot more outstanding and awe inducing. So I have decided to focus more on measuring my main goal, which is building an email subscribers list. I’ll try writing the subscription results from the previous post and analyzing what I had done differently to cause such results. Thus being a lot more results oriented ( Scientific Advertising Style 🙂 ) (See end of blog post)
Thoughts: I’ve also considered continuing with affiliate links for the books so that I could test if people actually pay as an ultimate test for the content, but it would make my content biased. Instead, I’d like to focus on measuring e-mail subscriptions, in which case my bias would be just giving you better content so that you’d subscribe 🙂 And then if there will be some outstanding book, I would be able to recommend it in e-mail authentically.
Gotta Focus on Consistency
Here’s a part of the quote with which Joe Closes Part 2 – “The Tilt”,
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Hopefully you and I will set deadlines and enforce them. This might not be new to you, nonetheless consistency is essential.
On that positive note, it seems I’m already a week after my deadline, so let’s wrap it up with a few more quotes and the promised analytics.
Consistency quotes:
Action trumps Perfection.
The Ideal length for a search engine optimized blog post is 1,500 words. (https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/ideal-blog-post-length/)
Analyzing Subscription Results of Marketing 4.0
In the last book summary(Marketing 4.0) which finished it’s production cycle at 09.02(Blog and YouTube) I wrote about three applications with examples that I learned from the book.
I also put a budget of about 23 £ total for 3 ads for 1 week. (Google PPC, Google YouTube, Facebook Boost).
My main goal was subscribers to E-mail as always.
The PPC results were: 8,359 Impressions and 255 Clicks ( a 3.05% CTR* )
The YouTube results were: 77,955 Impressions and 1007 views ( a 1.29% View rate )
The Facebook results were: 390 reach and 43 Interactions (Whatever that means… )
For the time being none of the forms of M4.0 got any subscribers.
Here are the stats from ConvertKit.
In the next post, in addition to publishing the results of this post, I’d like to test M4.0 with another ad set, and changing the CTA from 3 different CTA’s in the bottom to 1 big CTA a few times across the content. (The blog post)
Freebies/PDFs
Sources
Images
1. Content Inc. Book Cover (Joepulizzi.com)
2. Joe Pulizzi (Joepulizzi.com)
3. Basic House (Pixabay.com)
4. Farmer (Pixabay.com)
5. Audience (Pixabay.com)
6. Eggs (Pixabay.com)
7. Red Basket (Pixabay.com)
8. Green Basket (Pixabay.com)
9. Clouds (Pixabay.com)
10. Man with Umbrella Silouhette (Pixabay.com)
11. Coin Drops (Pixabay.com)
12. Checkered Flags (Pixabay.com)