Six Steps to Acing Your Startup’s Content Strategy

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

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

👻 Spent years ghostwriting each day social content material for purchasers, from companies to CEOs

🖥️ Runs his personal digital strategy consulting firm (on observe to hit 30% YoY income progress)

Listed here are Kris’ six ideas for nailing your content material technique — to generate stable, 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 appear to be low-priority gadgets.

However should you don’t inform your model’s story, another person will make assumptions and inform it for you. 

Don’t sit in your arms in relation to content material. Your story and voice have to:

• Be genuine
• Really feel pure to you
• Make sense to your target market

Scorching tip: Check out your opponents — 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 have got in your model, then cross it on to somebody who’s near, however not part of, what you are promoting.

Ask them what they see from the skin trying in. What phrases are used time and again? What matters maintain 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 individual 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 so to hit the bottom operating with a transparent technique and financial institution of nice content material — in your individual phrases.

3. Extrapolate 4 Key Pillars for Your Content material

Sift by means of your mind dump and manage every concept, spicy quote, or matter, into one in all 4 pillars:

Supply: Kris Hughes / Zanate Ventures

Every pillar provides rise to particular sorts of content material, and alternating between them will make sure the matters you discuss stay diverse and contemporary, but in addition on model.

For instance, one week you could discuss in regards to the outcomes you’ve pushed for a shopper (Pillar II), and the following share a few of your founder story (Pillar IV).

And should you 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. Deal with Group-Constructing earlier than You Put Out Content material

Create a group from the get-go by interacting together with your ideally suited purchasers, opponents, and friends by means of value-driven feedback and messages.

This step will get you comfy with the way you write, the way you painting your self, and the way folks obtain you.

Conserving observe of feedback you make (e.g., in Notion) may even guarantee you have got a content material concepts financial institution; Most worthy feedback can normally be bulked up right into a publish.

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 be sure you get it on the market. Whereas the cadence and method of posting will rely upon the platform, consistency is all the time key.

6. Bear in mind: Content material Is A Lengthy Recreation.

It takes time to construct up a status to the purpose the place your content material drives leads. Preserve at it. 

“Many founders are available in weapons blazing with excessive vitality, after which fizzle out after a number of months,” says Kris. You’ll miss the magic should you do. Keep motivated by:

• Setting new benchmarks
• Specializing in constructive suggestions
• Reusing your top-performing posts each few months

As a closing 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 informed us. “However getting shopper suggestions in the course of the good instances means you’ll discover room for incremental enchancment — when you have got the capability to behave on it.” 

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