By Katlynn Goodsell, Marketing & Communication Intern, MindShare Strategies
Joe Pulizzi is the face of content marketing. He founded the Content Marketing Institute and has an intense amount of energy when speaking. He has a way of keeping you drawn and his words force you to listen. Pulizzi was the keynote speaker at TMSA’s Marketing & Sales Leadership Conference held in Fort Lauderdale this past week. His keynote speech was focused around how to build an audience with a content brand using six phases:
1. Find the sweet spot, which is the intersection between passion/customer pain and knowledge/skill. In other words, find what the customers problem is, and use your knowledge or skill to heal that pain.
2. Focus on the content tilt. “Everyone stops at the sweet spot, hardly anyone tilts the content,” Joe said. He suggests creating a content mission statement.
3. Build a base. One misconception many have is that building an audience can happen overnight, however that isn’t true. Building a base audience can up to take 12-18 months.
4. Harvest the audience. Focus on the subscribers by having solid content, an amazing newsletter, or even exchanging of value.
5. Diversification. Divide your engagement into the “rule of three.” This means engage with your audience in various ways: via magazines, emails, e-newsletters, webinars, online training, podcasts, Twitter chat, or consulting/advisory services, to name a few.
6. Monetization, which means finding the difference between those who subscribe, and those who don’t. In other words: create value.
All of these steps can be utilized in order to build your brand. He had some great points and had different things to take away from his presentation. One main point that I found very important is that finding your “niche” is what will set you apart and make you different. Find something that makes your brand unique, where your brand can be the leading expert in the world.