Content Inc.

I was convinced that relevant content designed to build an audience of prospects was the way to succeed when starting a new business. (Location 123)

I merged the two topics together and advocated the heresy (at the time) that you should sell products and services with content instead of relying on advertising. (Location 131)

An MVA is the point when your audience starts growing itself through social sharing and word of mouth. Even better, it’s also when you start getting the feedback that tells you what product or service your audience actually wants to buy. (Location 141)

Without a product to pitch, I focused all my attention on building an audience. In a few weeks, the blog was up and running. Three to five times a week, I was creating and distributing helpful information targeted to marketers in large companies—the audience I wanted to reach eventually with my new product. A few months later, I was starting to build a small, loyal following. (Location 166)

By focusing on building an audience first and defining products and services second, an entrepreneur can change the rules of the game and significantly increase the odds of financial and personal success. Let me repeat that: I believe the absolute best way to start a business today is not by launching a product, but by creating a system to attract and build an audience. Once a loyal audience is built, one that loves you and the information you send, you can, most likely, sell your audience anything you want. This model is called Content Inc. (Location 172)

Or shorthand: Become the expert resource that attracts the right audience without having to buy advertising on someone else’s platform. (Location 224)

1. The Sweet Spot Simply put, the entrepreneur needs to uncover a content area that the business model will be based around. To make this happen, we need to identify a “sweet spot” that will attract an audience over time. This sweet spot is the intersection of a knowledge or skill set (something the entrepreneur or business has a competency in) and a passion area (something the entrepreneur or business feels is of great value to him or her personally or to society at large). (Location 237)

2. Content Tilt Once the sweet spot is identified, the entrepreneur needs to determine the “tilt,” or the differentiation factor, to find an area of little to no competition. (Location 244)

Claus’s sweet spot was the intersection of his skill at performance art and his passion for chili peppers. But Claus realized there was an abundance of content and experts around the “heat” behind chili peppers, but a content gap around the taste of peppers. (Location 250)

The blog originally started as just me, blogging approximately three times per week. In 2010, we opened up the blog to additional contributors at five times per week. In 2011, the blog went daily, even on weekends. (Location 264)

metrics; I knew what mattered. I knew email acquisition was the key metric and I had decided that we weren’t going to promote (meaning “sell”) anything until we had at least 10,000 email subscribers. And we got to that number so quickly that I knew we were really onto something. (Location 274)

5. Diversification Once the model has built a strong, loyal, and growing audience, it’s time to diversify from the main content stream. Think of the model like an octopus, with each content channel being one of the eight arms. How many of those arms can we wrap our readers in to keep them close to us (and coming back for more)? (Location 280)

6. Monetization It’s time. You’ve identified your sweet spot. You’ve “tilted” to find an area of content noncompetition. You’ve selected the platform and built the base. You’ve started to build subscribers, and you’ve even begun to launch content on additional platforms. Now is when the model monetizes against the platform. By this time, you are armed with enough subscriber information (both qualitative and quantitative) that a multitude of opportunities will present themselves to generate revenue. This could be consulting or software or events or more. (Location 290)

“A blog post is like a miniskirt … it needs to be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep it interesting.” (Location 327)

A few years later, after reading the book The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone, I separated my goals into the following six categories: (Location 400)

I’ve found that those two daily behaviors I mentioned have likely made all the difference: writing down my goals and consistently reviewing those goals. (Location 409)

Great content marketers do two things differently from the rest    They document their content marketing strategy in some way (written, electronic, etc.) (see Figure 1.1).    They review and consistently refer to the plan on a regular basis. (Location 415)

I’ve seen so many smart entrepreneurs start with a business idea they think will change the world, only to fail many months later by not having their priorities straight. (Location 427)

The first is what the legal entity for the business should be. In our U.S. examples, it seems the most popular legal model is the creation of an LLC (limited liability company) taxed as an S corporation (see a professional legal consultant for advice on your situation). The second is hiring a virtual assistant. (Location 488)

One of the biggest failures when it comes to content is a lack of specialization. I see heating and air-conditioning companies blogging about the town festival next week. I see manufacturing companies creating articles on human resources best practices. It hurts to see this. To be the expert in your industry, you must first define your customers’ pain points and the niche industry you will cover that will make a difference in your business and in your customers’ lives. Get laser-focused. Think of yourself as the trade magazine for your industry. Cover that. Be the expert in that area. If you are a large enterprise, you will need separate content strategies, not a broad one that makes no impact on anybody. (Location 623)

For a Content Inc. approach to work, you need to embrace not just being a factory for content, but an idea factory. Just as news organizations cover the “news of the day,” you need to cover the news as it relates to your content niche (more on that later). (Location 630)

Without a doubt, the biggest reason content marketing fails is because it stops. I’ve seen business after business start a blog or e-newsletter or white paper program or podcast series and stop after a few months. Content marketing is a war of attrition. It’s a process. Success does not happen overnight. You must commit for the long haul if you want to be successful. (Location 640)

Most failures occur because the entrepreneur goes too broad and not narrow enough. (Location 653)

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. MICHAEL PORTER (Location 677)

The Content Inc. model is dependent on first identifying the sweet spot. Simply put, the sweet spot is the intersection of a knowledge or skill area and a passion point (Location 707)

In looking at various Content Inc. subjects, the model can work by identifying either an exceptional knowledge area or a unique skill. What do we mean by knowledge? Knowledge is information acquired about a particular subject through study or observation. (Location 741)

Simply put, for Content Inc. to work, you need to get up every day loving the right side of that sweet spot, or the work doesn’t get done. (Location 778)

Doug Kessler, cofounder of content agency Velocity Partners, believes the sweet spot is three-dimensional: it’s important to know the exact size, shape, and depth. (Location 810)

She had been adding more and more daily content to the blog and at the same time was seeing stagnant website traffic and far fewer subscribers and conversions. My first question was this: “Who is the audience for your blog?” She answered: “We target 18 different audiences on the blog.” “I found your problem.” (Location 855)

We want to define our audience as specifically as possible. Ask the following questions: (Location 864)

Today, from search engine results to social media sharing, Marcus and River Pools & Spas are the leading information provider in the world on the subject of fiberglass pools. (Location 888)

Once you develop an audience around your content, the opportunities to sell additional products is almost endless. River Pools & Spas is an example of Content Inc. in action. (Location 896)

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Now that you’ve seen a visual example of the sweet spot, let’s start adding some dimension to your model. (Location 909)

If you are in need of an easy-to-use resource on building out who your audience really is, you’ll find the CMI resource on audience personas (http://cmi.media/CI-personas) helpful. (Location 965)

To be successful with our Content Inc. strategy, you have to become indispensable to your audience. That means creating a strategy that can actually position you as the leading informational or entertainment expert in your content area.    The more audiences you target, the more likely you will fail. Focus on the most defined audience possible. (Location 968)

There is so much of the same content out there in the world. To succeed with Content Inc., you need to step out of the pack. Let’s do this! (Location 978)

In his book Zero to One, Thiel tells businesses that they should “figure out something that nobody else is doing and look to create a monopoly in some area that’s been underdeveloped. Find a problem nobody else is solving.” (Location 990)

It’s like, “Hey I like knitting, and I’m going to start a knitting blog.” Really! There are 27 other knitting blogs. Why would anybody read yours? What is different? What is unique? What is interesting? Why would anyone stop reading the knitting blog that they’ve been reading for the last three years and read yours ever? And if you can’t articulate that, you need to go back to the drawing board. And most people I find who haven’t been doing this for a while just don’t go through that competitive calculus, and it’s dangerous. (Location 996)

If Content Inc is going to work for you, your content must be different. It must fill a content hole that is not being filled by someone else. As Peter Thiel suggests, we must find a problem area that no one else is solving and exploit that area with content. (Location 1003)

Without “tilting” your content just enough to truly have a different story to tell, your content will fade into the rest of the clutter and be forgotten. (Location 1011)

Figure 5.1 Ann Reardon’s content tilt of “impossible food creations” is what separates her content from the thousands (Location 1034)

If you are not striving to be the go-to resource for your industry niche, you are settling for the comfortable, whatever that means to you in goal-setting terms. (Location 1071)

Let’s go back to Jim Collins again and his fantastic book Good to Great. (Location 1081)

Everything under the sun has been said … you have to find a new way to say it. HENRY WINKLER (Location 1116)

Let’s dissect the mission statement:    The core target audience: Digital camera owners.    The material that will be delivered to the audience: Simple tips.    The outcome for the audience: Get the most out of their cameras. (Location 1166)

To get to the heart of your customers’ needs, you have to focus on what they want to be and help them get where they really want to go. (Location 1179)

Many entrepreneurs have ideas about what it is they want to create content around; they just don’t go that extra mile to clearly differentiate themselves. (Location 1230)

In leveraging Amanda’s words with a content marketing viewpoint, this is how to find your content tilt: (Location 1238)

LEVERAGING GOOGLE TRENDS Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping, believes that Google Trends is the most important and most underutilized tool when it comes to locating your content niche. (Location 1256)

But if we dig a bit deeper, we’ll find gold. Moving down the page, as Figure 7.3 shows, you see a section called “Related searches.” Here’s where we find our tilt. (Location 1270)

Jay would never have found this out if he had not put himself out there creating content. It’s completely acceptable that you take your best shot (like Jay did) at a content tilt and start developing the platform. (Location 1350)