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Content Marketing: The New Rulebook for Entrepreneurial Success

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Are you an entrepreneur tired of the same old playbook that leaves you high and dry? Ready to ditch outdated strategies that are getting you nowhere? Hold onto your seats because it's time to flip the script! Welcome to the era of Content Marketing, a game-changing approach that's not just a buzzwordโ€”it's a proven pathway to entrepreneurial success. In this post, we'll dive into the revolutionary ideas from Joe Pulizzi's book, “Content Inc.,” where he reveals a six-step business-building process about creating valuable content first and products later. So, if you're ready to build a massive audience and turn your entrepreneurial dreams into reality, keep reading. Your future self will thank you.

Can content marketing work? Is content marketing a buzzword or a solid business plan?

Content Marketing Can Fuel your Entrepreneurial Success

What's the surest way to startup failure? Follow old, outdated rules. If the same old, same old isn't working and your ideas are going nowhere, you need something new.

What you need is a NEW rulebook for entrepreneurial success. Enter Content Inc.
 
In Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses, one of today's most sought-after content-marketing strategists reveals a new model for entrepreneurial success. Simply put, it's about developing valuable content, building an audience around that content, and then creating a product for that audience.
 
Notice a shift?
Interview with Joe Puliizi
 
Author Joe Pulizzi flips the traditional entrepreneurial approach of first creating a product and then trying to find customers. It's a brilliant reverse-engineering of a model that rarely succeeds.

The radical six-step business-building process revealed in this book is smart, simple, practical, and cost-effective. And best of all, it works. It's a strategy Pulizzi used to build his own successful company, Content Marketing Institute, which has landed on Inc. magazine's list of fastest-growing private companies for three years straight.  It's also a strategy countless other entrepreneurs use to build multi-million dollar companies. Build an audience, and you'll be able to sell pretty much anything you want.

In Content Inc., Joe lays out the success that he's built with Content Marketing Institute and growing to Content Marketing World with case studies and examples. Joe has carved a solid niche with content marketing, and share how you can use this method to fuel your entrepreneurial success. He breaks down the business startup success model into six steps:

  • The sweet spot – learn to find the intersection of your passion and your competencies. Hone your niche.
  • Content tilting – Find a place where little or no competition exists and tilt your content to fill it.
  • Building the base – Find your number base for your content.
  • Harvesting audience – Use social media to convert readers to subscribers and, ultimately clients.
  • Diversification – Grow your business with a multiple-channel content marketing strategy.
  • Monetization – Now that you've established your expertise and built your audience, you can begin charging money for your services or products.

Some great quotes from the book Content Inc. to get you thinking about your content marketing:

1. For each article, Upworthy writes at least 25 different headlines. Then, the company does various A/B tests with its subscription lists to see which headline led to the most e-mail opens and shares.

2. Any industry can develop an audience through consistent storytelling.

3. Letโ€™s say someone rounded up all your content and placed it in a box, like it never existed. Would anyone miss it? Would you leave a gap in the marketplace?

4. Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.

5. More and more, I find that the best Content Inc. programs revolve around aspirations, not needs.

6. A blog post is like a miniskirt โ€ฆ it needs to be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep it interesting.

7. What I now know is that itโ€™s next to impossible to truly be a thought leader in your industry without a killer blog, a thoughtful book, and a speech that rocks.

8. Differentiate your communication with prospects and clients to succeed.

9. The Content Inc. model only works if you can build a loyal audience of subscribers over time. Period.

10. Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, says it best: Itโ€™s hard work. Iโ€™m not going to lie. Anyone who tells you itโ€™s really easy to build a content business is not telling you the truth. You have to accept the fact that this is going to be grueling, difficult, time-consuming, and laborious work. But if youโ€™re willing to roll up your sleeves, get dirty, and constantly analyze what youโ€™re doing, scrap what doesnโ€™t work, continue what does work, and keep at it, you can be very, very successful.

So there you have it, folksโ€”the future of entrepreneurship is here, and it's spelled C-O-N-T-E-N-T. Gone are the days of creating a product and scrambling to find an audience. With the insights from Joe Pulizzi's “Content Inc.,” you're now armed with a six-step blueprint to build a thriving business from the ground up. Remember, it's not just about working hard; it's about working smart.

So why wait? Start crafting your killer content today, build that loyal audience, and watch as your entrepreneurial dreams take flight. Trust us, you won't want to miss this ride.

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6 Comments

  1. Hi Peg! I just wanted to tell you again how I think your Book Club is KOTAWesome. I love how you’ve branded it and how you’ve so successfully brought the joy of books and reading to an online sphere.

    Joe Pulizzi is so smart and so quotable. I love how he always emphasizes how content marketing, done well, is incredibly difficult and requires an enormous amount of work. Just as Michael Stelzner of the Social Media Examiner says.

    One of my favorite quotes from is Joe is “Treat content marketing like a product.”

    Too many people think they can just come up with a great idea or product and put all their money into that while reserving little to none for “content marketing” because they think it’s easy, instant, and requires no real work. The thinking goes like this: Anyone can set up a Twitter account and post a link, therefore it’s simple and the money should just come pouring in without effort.

    Of course we both know better. Content marketing can fuel enormous success, but you have to put in the work. Joe’s “treat content marketing like a product” advice is perfect because people tend to put everything into what they regard as their actual product (their app, shoes, makeup, etc.) and forego all that time, effort and money for their most important product — which is their content marketing.

    A lot of people start off putting in a lot of work, but once their brand becomes strong, they start to slack, figuring people will share their blogs no matter what. They stop engaging with people, stop finding new and creative stories to tell and let their brands become stale.

    I’m aways so impressed with all you do on social media and how well you do it. You never let your brand become stale. You never stop engaging with people. So your brand stays authentically you! Your intelligence always shines in everything you do and that’s why your content marketing most certainly fuels your entrepreneurial success!

    Hope you’re having fun baking your cookies this weekend!

  2. Content Marketing really does work. In order to keep building your archives to go for more search keywords you must be good at content marketing. One of the coolest ways to use Content Marketing is to include the experience the user wants to go through before they start to trust you and your brand. This leads up to a good opportunity to build lists of twitter followers and facebook fans or even get more comments when you make your calls to action.

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