During a pre-sale call for my consulting service, a client asked me if I did content marketing "campaigns."
Now there are PPC campaigns, impression campaigns, and even some podcasting could be looked at as a campaign -- but not your overall content marketing.
Here's why: If you're looking at content creation as as this thing you "do" and not an expression of yourself or the company, the passion isn't there and you're just flipping switches. Content has to be compelling, informative and most of all authentic. You can't just bust out a stencil and trace the lines to create your blog post -- if you did everyone would be pumping out the same thing.
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The best time to create content is right when you start that next big idea. I'm not just talking about the blogging daily, I'm talking about publishing content on various channels -- start your a media empire.
"But I'm not ready for marketing!" you shout.
That's, ok, in fact it's perfect! So, many of you have heard of the lean startup methodology, start with something that solves this small problem and get it into the hands of others as quickly as possible. This production line validates the business and the product with a niche market or case study.
You can validate your idea with content marketing before you even begin to put sweat equity into coding. Validate your idea with a blog post Recently, I posted about the benefits of becoming a mentor. If you haven't thought about sharing your experiences with a young padawan, head on over to that post and consider it -- mentoring will change your life.
That little blog post, or seed as I refer to it, had some great feedback. Folks were leaving comments and connecting with each other to help out. I received a bunch of e-mails from around the world looking to see if they could get help.
Ok, this idea is validated.
I launched an MVP of the mentor program over at WP Mentor and as of this writing there are 17 listings for mentors and mentees. More validation, now with actual results and practice. Gauging design feedback on Instagram https://cloudup.com/cxdzDJr9rrz
I see Brian Gardner do this a lot. Now, I'm not saying he does this on purpose, but it's something you can certainly leverage. Use Instagram to post design concepts or mockups. Look for comments there and grow an audience. It's a great channel to add to your media empire.
Lastly, cool design photos are perfect for that medium and it's not out of place. Look at each channel you create content as if it were TV. Would you put the same advertisement out for your company during an episode of Walking Dead as you would The Today Show?
More channels + diverse audience = quality feedback. Screencasts for beta plugins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w6UDVEsajg
Got a plugin or SaaS business that's still not ready for the public consumption? A screencast is a perfect piece of media to shed some early light on your product.
The above example is a 3 minute walk through of BackupBuddy, not an actual product demo, but you get the idea.It doesn't have to be long and detailed -- remember your plugin is still in it's early days.
What you want to do is give someone