What Content That Serves Can Do for Your Business

“By dedicating yourself to a content rhythm, you’ll develop a consistent level of creativity and energy that flows into everything else in your business.”
~ George Kao

You might already get that it pays to have a presence on social media, to publish a blog and/or to send out regular newsletters. But if I were to guess, I’d say it might not be abundantly clear to you why it’s so important and because of this, perhaps you’re not making it the priority it deserves to be.

Before we go on, let’s just clarify what we mean by creating content.

What I’m not talking about here is marketing copy such as sales pages, launch posts or any other copy designed specifically to get your audience to buy. Instead, what I’m referring to is content that serves your audience, in much the same way that your products or services might, albeit, of course not as profoundly. Content that helps them, educates them, inspires and uplifts them. Content that freely shares your best ideas and advice on the very transformation you help your clients to achieve.

What trips most people up when it comes to content creation is the mistaken belief that their content has to entice people to buy, which of course then feels icky and gross. When we let go of that idea, we’re free to simply show up and share what we know and when we do that, not only does our audience benefit but we also enjoy creating content a whole lot more.

So why is creating content so important if it’s not focused on making a sale?

Good question! Consistently creating and sharing free content supports you and your business in a number of fundamental ways.

1. It demonstrates your expertise. What better way to show people how knowledgeable you are about your skill or service, than to create content that illustrates it?

2. It helps you more deeply connect to your audience. When you show up regularly in people’s lives, be that in their inbox or their newsfeed, people not only get to know you better, but they also begin to trust and rely on you and the information you share.

3. It allows you to serve your audience before they’ve even spent a penny with you. Being generous with your content and giving your best ideas away for free cultivates reciprocal generosity, meaning people are more likely to invest in what you’re selling (if the content resonates) and/or refer you to other people.

4. It allows you to find your voice and express your point of view. Having a strong point of view is crucial to helping you stand out to your right-fit people. Creating content consistently allows us to explore what we believe and share that with the world.

5. Consistent content creation allows us to get to know our audience better. By paying attention to which pieces of content get the most likes, shares or comments, we begin to better understand what our audience is interested in and therefore what it needs from us.

6. It helps to grow your audience. As your content improves, which of course it will the more you practice and the more you heed the feedback you get, the more likely it is that people will share that content and the more eyes will, therefore, be on you and your business.

It’s for all of the above reasons, that content creation has been at the heart of my business growth strategy for years now and because of this ongoing commitment and consistency, my content is now sending me paying clients on the regular. Two clients recently told me that they found me via my content on Medium and many of my current 1:1 clients found me via Google because my blog posts came up in their searches.

This wasn’t the case even a year ago but over the past year, having been pretty consistent with my content since early 2019, people are now finding my content online and hiring me as a result.

So what does consistency look like? I always think about these words from my business mentor, George Kao:

“How often should you create? Once a week is a good rhythm, but what’s interesting is that it’s easier to do it everyday. When you have a weekly habit, it can be hard to build momentum. When it’s a daily habit, there’s no question that you have to do it each day, and it becomes a rhythm.”

I certainly don’t write every day these days, but back when I was struggling to get into a rhythm of weekly writing, I took George’s words to heart and whilst initially thinking that there was no way could I create a blog post every day, I subsequently remembered a 30-day challenge I set for myself back in 2012, where I did exactly that for my old personal growth blog.

This in turn led me to running a 30-day content challenge in 2019 in which I wrote 30 blog posts in 30 days. This is where my journey of consistent content creation began. Since then, I’ve written many more pieces and regular content creation has become an ingrained part of my weekly business schedule and I truly wish the same for you.

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