Fifteen years ago, if you had a website, you would get customers. If you had a facebook page, you would get followers. And if you decided to start a blog, you would create a small army of people obsessed with your brand.
But it's not that simple anymore.
Everyone is a content creator these days. It doesn't matter if your a huge internet influencer like Martha Stewart, or a local small business owner - all the smart entrepreneurs are using content to bring in the the three things their business needs to grow; sales, leads, and brand recognition.
Unfortunately, that's created a lot of competition these days. So it's not enough to just create content anymore. You can't just slap something up on Facebook, and expect leads to come rolling in.
Instead, if you want to bring in enough leads and sales, you've to create really compelling content that resonates with your ideal customers.
Plus most people are posting to multiple platforms at the same time, while still maintaining their company's website.
But when you're a small business, this can feel really overwhelming. So I'm going to teach you how you can more leads and customers in three easy steps.
Every successful company is also a media company.
Gary Vaynerchuck (a mega influencer with more than 44 million followers) said this in his blog way back in 2014...
Every single company out there, where they know it or not, is a media company in addition to the business or product that they specialize in.
This is a world where you don’t have to invest in a printing press, or a satellite, or a sales team in order to distribute your story anymore. Everybody is able to use the internet – or rather the tools being built on it like YouTube, Medium, Instagram, and Twitter – for distribution of their content. Over the next decade, more and more people are going to come to realize this, be it companies or individuals.
The faster your business realizes that it’s a media company, the more likely it will be to succeed in 2020, in 2025, in 2030…
But unfortunately most small businesses still aren't getting it.
Most small businesses today are either under-utilizing their content, or not making content at all. So customers can't see them. People don't know they exist when realizing that they need a new product or service.
So what do customers do?
They go and buy from the companies that are consistently nurturing their following, and staying in the public view.
But the problem is that most small businesses don't realize this is happening.
They know they're not ranking well on Google. They wish more people would follow them on social media. They see their competition outselling them. But they haven't connected the reason with the outcome yet.
So I'm here to tell you that your customers can't find you because you haven't left them any breadcrumbs.
If you want people to see your business and buy from you, you're going to have to do what Gary V. told you to and build a media company for yourself.
How do you turn your small business into a media company?
At it's most basic level, a media company is just an organization that creates, publishes, and distributes content.
So of you want to turn your small business into a media company, all you've got to do is create content, publish it somewhere, and then distribute it.
It sounds really easy, but I think the problem is that there are so many choices now for how you can choose to do this. Right now there are at least 15 social media platforms with at least a half-a-billion users. And if you don't have a website, that's a hurdle all in itself.
The key is... One thing at a time.
Here's the first thing. If you don't have a website, build it. Today. Right now, if possible.
That's how you're going to publish your content. If you don't know where to get started, and want to get it done as easily and cheaply as possible, go through my website creation course.
Diana Pettit
Secondly, decide where you're going to distribute your content.
Which search engines or social media platforms are you going to use to distribute your content?
If you're already heavily invested in a social media platform, then I'd probably go with that one. It can be time consuming to get started, and post to a platform you already use can save you a ton of time.
You can also choose a platform where your audience is more likely to hang out.
If you're selling to businesses, then I'd probably focus more on X or LinkedIn. Consumers usually hang out more on Facebook and Instagram.
It's 100% up to you.
There are also several lesser known options. You've just got to choose one.
Finally, you've got to create the content.
Once you've got a website and you've chosen where you want to distribute you're content, all that's left is making the content. And that is what the bulk of this course is going to be about.
How do you create content that people are going to want to read? And how do you create content that will make those same people want to buy from you? Because once you can do that, everything else will take care of itself.