Or: the article where I spill all my content marketing secrets

Kira Leigh

Feb 12, 2019·23 min read

I’ve been meaning to write this article for what feels like over 9000 years. I’ve made a shorter, less-intensive version in the past, but it’s really not the “full picture”.

Because of this, I thought it’d be helpful to finally offer a method that works for me… if you do it right.

However, every time I’d park my ass down to write it, I’d be confronted with the sheer magnitude of this undertaking.

Writing Content, Distributing it, and Making Sure The Right People See It, is No Fucking Joke

This shit is not easy. It’s just not.

It’s an insane amount of work, and many businesses and freelancers structure their content roll-outs so carefully that being “Agile” about it is almost impossible.

Sure, we want to be deliberate about all our marketing efforts, but the more data you have on what works and what doesn’t, the faster you can find a content marketing lead-gen system that works for you.

So this means a lot of content. All the content. All the socials. All the memes. All the reposts. All the avenues. Allllllllllll oooff iiittt.

When 41% of people use adblockers (combined mobile and desktop), and many people don’t trust Influencers anymore (hellooo Fyre Festival), we legit have to start investing time, effort, energy, and moneyz into content marketing.

But it’s tricky.

Clients don’t like to hear that their efforts may not work out, or that it takes time to actually make their articles work for them.

There’s no guarantee that the trend-worthy article I write for Client X is going to flourish, especially since I can’t dedicate 50 hours a week to schmoozing it across The Internets.

That’s just the honest answer. It’s hard, costs money, and takes time.

All three of those things scare people off worse than antivaxxers and flat-earthers scare off normal people.

But that’s what it takes, well, if you want to do it right, anyways. And not just phone it in.

Today I’m just going to write the best guide I can for you. I’m going to combine several tips from several of my other guides, in the hopes you’ll learn something.

Let’s begin.

Step 1: Figure out who the hell you are and what makes you special.

Oh, ouch, owie, oof. Yeah, there’s no avoiding this one. Freelancers, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs need to figure out Who They Are as much as businesses do.

However, I don’t mean: figure out Who You Are and then Be Safe About it. I do not mean: Figure Out How To Mimic Your Competition.

I also do not mean: Realize You’re Boring AF So Make Stuff Up.

I mean be yourself, in the way that no one else can be.

Everyone is sick to death of the same-same-same, and since everywhere, everything, all of every platform ever, is saturated, what you need to do is actually, really, specifically, one million percent, be the human that is you.

Ok Kira, Whatever. How do I figure out Who I Am Inside?

I’m just going to yank this from my article on how to get leads on LinkedIn, since the format hasn’t changed at all.

Open up Google Docs or Word, or your word processor of choice.

Make a list of the following, and only put 1 thing total in each category:

• What I’m Exceptional at:
• What I’m Good at:
• What I Suck at:
• What (Competitor) Is Exceptional at:
• What (Competitor) Is Good At:
• What (Competitor) Sucks At:

Once you have done both, try to see a pattern between what you’re a fucking rockstar at, what you suck at, and your competitor’s prospective list.

Add one more point and fill it in:

What I’m better at than (Competition):

Seems pretty straightforward, right?

You now have a rough idea about what your USP (unique selling point) is. Which means Who You Are Inside in terms of business.

If that seems super simplistic, it’s because it is.

Figuring out what makes you / your services / your business different takes a lot more than just a tiny-ass list, but it should give you at least some idea of where you stand.

If you still can’t figure out Who You Are Inside or what makes you or your business special, reply in the comments and I’ll give you the best advice I can.

Step 2: Figure out the types of people you want to attract by Being Who You Are.

This should be a no-brainer.

Who do you like working with? What types of industries do you enjoy doing work for? What types of projects do you like working on?

More importantly than all that though, who’s your like-minded chill-bro duderino, customer, client, or otherwise? What does your “tribe” look like?

Where do they “live”, how can you reach them, and what do you think they’d want to see from you?

This is one of the trickiest parts because I legit cannot answer that for you unless we sit down and I play business-therapist.

Ok Kira, Whatever. How do I figure out the types of people I want to do work for and with?

You make a list of the above questions, ask yourself these questions, and give honest answers, duh.

Do you have your answers ready? Now’s the time to start laying your groundwork.

Step 3: Lay the groundwork for content success by Putting Yourself Out There.

You’re going to want to start making little pieces of social content for your social media profiles. You need to start putting yourself on blast.

Use appropriate hashtags.

If you need a way to make quick social media posts, Canva is free, and it’s your friend.

LinkedIn is also a godsend here.

Fun content like this can put you on the map. If you don’t see the value in sharing fun things people will like, you need to start thinking of people as people and not just “prospects”.

Ask questions and tag people for their opinions. I use a format like:

Super Honest Question Time: Inflammatory Quasi-Question Kira Believes In But Lowkey Antagonizes People?

Below the little fold, where you hit enter twice:

Explaining that Kira isn’t really an asshole, anecdotal story, funny thing, end on a statement that makes people want to challenge, agree, rant, laugh, or ‘burn the witch’. CTA for other people to add their opinions?

Then, you need to tag some people, and ask their opinions. Then, you must wait.

Someone will reply. If they do not, you need to add more connections, or you need to make more engaging social posts.

You should have at least one comment. Reply to it. Try to leave thoughtful comments because people will remember them, really they will.

If you don’t have people to tag yet, tag me! But if it’s not something I’ll be into, I might not reply. Which is something to keep in mind: try not to tag people willy-nilly.

You can’t always tell who to tag, of course, until…you start doing it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ok Kira, Whatever. How is this going to help me market my content so I can get leads?

Remember how I wrote about finding your tribe? Well, whoever responded positively to your social posts is more likely to respond positively to your content.

We’re using social media to ‘warm up the landscape’, ‘find our tribe’, and build ‘proof of concept’ for our content, brand, and niche.

Post enough on social media and you’ll find out just who’s into what you’re doing. So when you drop an article or post a doofy meme, you can tag them or send it to them.

You’re also going to want to get a Reddit account and build up some Karma in your niche, so please do that.

Building Karma requires you to provide value, so your responses and your top-level posts must actually give something back to the community, or Reddit will hate you.

You’re going to want to follow the 80/20 rule here, ask people questions, share fun things in your niche, post anecdotes, and share stuff your ‘tribe’ does…80% of the time.

20% of the time should be spent on self-promotions, but honestly at this point I just do whatever feels most natural. I posted an oldskool Newgrounds meme the other day, just because it’s fun.

Have fun with it!

Alrighty. We’re not quite there yet, we need to define how we’re measuring our success, and define what we personally mean by “success”.

Step 4: Define your goal for this slog through the content marketing landscape.

I’m quite literally only including this part for the marketers and business owners who are ringing their hands as the phrase KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR swirls around in their head like a fever dream.

If your goal is to get as many eyeballs on your article as possible, that’s a great goal. Make sure you have a way to measure the results.

Google Analytics for your own website works. LinkedIn stats are kind of lame-sauce for personal accounts, but that’s still something.

If your goal is to get more clients-which I hope it is-how many more clients, exactly? Within what sort of time-frame? And how will you know they came from your content work?

Where content marketing is concerned, this can be tricky.

I’m still getting leads from some doofy Reddit article I wrote in August of 2017. This means content is a long-term strategy, and this also means it’s hard to measure.

I know my leads come from my content because they email me and tell me that’s where they discovered me.

If you’re using Medium, which I strongly urge you to, the platform has stats baked into it. This will show you the daily views, weekly views, monthly views, the percentage of readers versus visitors, etc.

The above is from my viral article on the hiring process being broken. I am also still getting leads from this article, and it averages 3,000 views per month since it went nuclear.

If you need to specifically track each click-through from every place you post your article link when it’s all finished, check out Bitly or Rebrandly.

Ok Kira, Whatever. But how will I know if my article landed me any bloody leads REEEEE!?

Well, smarty pants, if you’re not linking to your LinkedIn profile at the bottom of your articles on Medium, or your email address, that’s your problemo.

If you’re not giving people an option to submit an email form on your Wordpress blog or whatever, that’s on you. There are a billion free solutions, check out Contact Form 7.

This is why content marketing is hard to “justify” to business owners, CEOs, and otherwise. Success is not instantaneous.

I pulled in 7 leads during the last week of January. All submitted to me and the team via direct email or the submission form on the website, all of them saying they saw my articles.

I can’t see into your brain.

Do the logic. Feel the logic. Be the logic.

If you need specific help narrowing down how to proof this for yourself, you might just want to message me on LinkedIn, because content marketing and distribution is complicated, and I need to know your pipeline.

If that’s not a good enough answer for you, put an Upscribe embed at the bottom of your Medium article so you can capture email addresses in a form.

Or put a call to action with a URL shortener at the end of your article, leading to a landing page.

Unbounce is the gold standard for landing pages, but I think it’s a bit clunky.

I like Mailchimp Landing Pages as well, they’re pretty easy to work with.

WordPress has tons of plugins to make landing pages, so that’s a thing. However, sometimes it’s just better to make one from scratch, using HTML / CSS, because you have more control over it, and it’s faster.

If you don’t know how to do front-end design, you probably need to outsource this (we offer this service, wink).

Or make sure to specifically list your email address all over your articles, as mailto: blah blah links, everywhere. Shitloads of them, all over the place, bashinga.

Measuring your success is always going to be tricky. Until you get those leads from your stellar article that you worked really, really hard on writing, distributing across The Internets, of course.

Then you won’t have to second-guess it, because you can observe the results. Just like how you can feel your skin bubbling if you stick it in a pot of boiling water.

Now we’re onto actually writing the bloody thing. Are you ready?

Step 5: Write from the heart. Write with passion, with gusto, and write what others don’t write. Write the article that scares you.

Write the article that has to be read by the people you want to reach.

I’d strongly suggest writing the article on Medium first.

Medium also has publications that can instantly give your work a giant exposure boost, so consider using Medium for this.

You’re going to want to write a killer headline for your article, of course. All email marketers know that killer headlines are what’s up, the same can be said for content marketers.

Use co-schedule for this, there’s no shame in using tools to make your work better.

If you’re stuck on grammar or how to write so that people don’t fall asleep, try the Hemmingway App or Grammarly.

I’m telling you now though, despite what copy editors are going to tell you, not everything needs to be grammatically perfect.

Depending on who you’re trying to attract, yeah, get down with that college-thesis-level writing.

However, humans are emotional creatures.

People lead with the heart, and people certainly aren’t perfect, so your writing doesn’t have to be perfect either.

If you’re using a platform that allows a cover image, use something like Unsplash for a free one, and make sure it relates to what you’re writing.

Try to stay away from images everybody already uses. Try to stay away from article topics that people have seen 900000 times in 495649 different configurations.

If you have your own hot-take about a common topic, infused with Who You Are Inside (or who your biz truly is inside), feel free to spin that up.

Do not hit publish yet.

There are ten billion trillion articles on content marketing out there, for example. I think most of them suck, so here we are.

When in doubt, you can always use Zapier automation to trawl Reddit for a topical trends, or use Google Trends. But unless it comes from the heart, it’s probably going to flop.

Step 6: Find publications, Subreddits, platforms, groups and places to submit your article to.

Content Distribution is the step where people give up, more often than not.

Mostly because they have no idea which outlets to use, haven’t built up a little tribe of like-minded people, or are just afraid of… IDK. Backlash? Annoying people? Research?

Putting themselves out there?

Suffice to say, it just has to be done. You kind of need to get over it.

Where putting yourself out there is concerned, here’s another list of places to nab clients from:

• Freelancer for Freelance.
• You can also set up profiles and apply here: Freelancer, Upwork, Guru, and more. I don’t suggest this unless you’re fine with getting low-tier clients.
• Craigslist still works, but results are shady sometimes.
• If you have awesome website work, submit to the Awwwards.
• Get on Behance. I hear good things, but I’m not actually on it.

Whatever the case, you still have to distribute your article and build a presence. The first, easiest, biggest step is to follow a bunch of people in your niche, on Medium. That’s easy.

The second biggest, and most helpful step, is to find a Medium Publication to submit your article to.

They most definitely have a broader reach than you do, and if your article is The Good Stuff, they’ll definitely be willing to add you as a writer.

Check out this board filled with top Medium Publications to submit your draft to.

Smedian makes it easy to connect with publications, and they’ve just recently revamped their system so you can even put your article On Blast right on the platform itself.

Awesome!

I don’t personally bother trying to submit to Forbes, The NYT, or anything like that, because there’s honestly no point. I’m too weird for them.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

Join a Facebook Group or several, but only promo work where you’re allowed to. Some Facebook groups and other platforms have specific rules about this.

Subscribe to /r/BlogDiscovery and /r/TellThePeople. Keep those subs in your radar. You are 100% allowed to repost your blog articles there.

Subscribe to /r/Startups, and /r/Entrepreneur if you’re in the tech industry, like me. Start commenting a lot, offering top-level posts that have value to your niche, and be a part of the community.

If you’re a marketer, sign up for a GrowthHackers account. You can post your work there too.

Sign up for Flipboard and employ the 80/20 rule. Flip a bunch of articles you love, follow a bunch of people, then flip your stories.

Join a pod if you want to. I don’t tend to use them, even though I’m invited to plenty. Mostly because I forget about them (dat ADHD life).

Once your article has been successfully submitted and accepted to a publication, start distribution using the above links, tactics, and tricks.

If you opted to keep the article on your own website’s blog, okay, but I’m telling you now that Medium won’t cannibalize your blog posts so your SEO is safe.

Medium’s publication and cross-posting pathways automatically add canonical links to protect your original content posted offsite. This means that Medium can only boost — not cannibalize — your SEO.

If you decided to post your article on LinkedIn (where this was originally posted), that’s fine too, but be aware that your pull may not be strong enough on its own to reach many eyes.

Hit the bloody publish button.

I’m trying to help you get the most impact out of your content. However, if you feel your idea or way is best, please go with that.

I can only provide you advice on what has worked for me, specifically.

Step 7: Distribution Is Literally Everything.

Now, you must distribute your article.

You’ve done all the research, you’ve put in the Karma, you’ve signed up for the platforms, you’ve done the slog.

You know what your goal is, you know how to measure it, everything is all set, and you’re ready.

I know, it can be scary. You spent time building up your Reddit account, for example, and you don’t want to get banned for promoting your content.

Well…you might get banned, sorry. Heck, you might get banned for posting in a completely unrelated Subreddit. The mods are crazy. That’s the reality.

But no risk, no reward, right?

Repost your article on your personal social media accounts, and if applicable, company social media accounts. Any space you have to put it, that you think people will actually want to see it, and you’re allowed to put it there, post it!

Ask friends to share your article, or leave a comment on it. You can honestly ask me too, I love reading and like giving honest feedback.

Refer back to Step 6 if you need places to drop your link.

If you can’t find a publication to accept your article right now, you can try posting it without one, or make your own publication.

Yup, that’s right, you can make your own publication on Medium, for free.

Try collaborating with other writers, content marketers, techies and creatives. The network effect is real: support and share work from your pub by other writers, and they’ll do the same. It’s all an ecosystem.

Barring that, you can hit me up and I might put it in THERE IS NO DESIGN if I think it’s on brand.

I’m not going to guarantee it, just being honest. It’s mostly a repository for stuff that won’t go elsewhere, that’s specifically for the company.

If you have an email list, you should try leveraging it.

Marketers swear by email, but honestly there’s so much spam going around that I prefer to plonk article links on The Socials. That way people don’t get mad at me for spamming their inboxes.

Also GDPR is a thing…so if you have any email lists you scraped before GDPR rolled around, you might want to…clean up your list.

Just sayin’.

You can automate an email blast with your articles via an RSS feed in Mailchimp using merge tags.

If you need help on that, ask me, it can be a pain in the butt.

Ok Kira, Whatever. But this is a shitload of work, how do I make this easy?

The answer: You can’t!

Well that’s not entirely true.

You can make it easier on yourself by creating a Content Strategy in Trello so you know when you need to promote work, where you’re going to put it, what you did, and if it was successful.

Here’s a social media board template for Trello that you can copy and change to fit your Content Marketing efforts.

Trello is my favorite tool for project management. And yeah, this is a project, if you couldn’t tell. A giant one, that is forever ongoing.

It never ends.

You can also use a platform like Airtable to keep on top of your Content Marketing Strategy. I like it better than Google Sheets, which is a blatant eyesore.

Here’s a Content Calendar template for Airtable. I’d pick Airtable over Trello, but the learning curve is steep.

You can also also make it easier on yourself by queuing up your social media posts for ‘warming up the landscape’ (and for your articles for Content Distribution) in a social media scheduling tool.

Buffer is still my favorite option, because the free version is fine enough for people who don’t need to glare at analytics all day, but it’s also woefully buggy right now.

Lately is another keen choice if you’re doing a lot of stuff. It can help you save time by automatically generating copy for your social posts.

Hootsuite is also an option, but it is…also woefully buggy right now. It does let you see your content in a ‘calendar-like’ spread, which I like.

I also just found out they allow direct video posting to Instagram, so that’s fun.

I’m not linking Sprout Social. Sprout Social is a disaster, it nags you on your phone when you’re logged out, and its UI is so bad it gives me hives.

There are actually AI solutions for making your content marketing efforts easier. Like Concured…but swallowing that $3,500 price tag per month is kind of insane.

You might as well hire a team to do it if you have this kind of budget, seriously.

BrightEdge is apparently another option, but I don’t trust SaaS products that don’t give me a pricing page, sorry.

Crayon is also promising, but it also doesn’t list their pricing, which makes me think I’ll have to sacrifice my first-born to Satan to afford it.

Suffice to say that we’re not yet at the “AI For Everyone” stage, so I won’t vouch for these platforms, personally.

Step 8: We Wait…then we see how we did.

You Distributed your content like a Beast.

You did it!

You took the time to build up a small presence, got in with a Medium Publication, wrote the article of your dreams, beefed up your social presence, joined some pods, charted your path, made sure to include a CTA or an email form in your article, and you Distributed.

Give it a bit. Chill.

If you aren’t seeing any Medium claps / LinkedIn comments / Blog Traffic / whatever after a day, however, you’ll know you messed up somehow. I’m just being real.

If you did all the above steps, and your article and Headline is at least halfway interesting, you should be getting something.

That something might be: LinkedIn replies.

It might be an email.

It might be traffic to your site, if you chose to forego my advice and use your own blog for this first stint instead of Medium.

It might be views on Medium. It might be new Medium followers.

It might be a LinkedIn message. It might even be some connection requests.

Sit with it, wait with it, keep on posting fun social media stuff and talking to people on LinkedIn. Keep puttering around on Reddit.

Keep trying, even loosely, to maintain the trajectory.

Follow more people on Medium, comment on other Medium articles and drop your article as a link if it relates to what they wrote. Share your article via your email list.

Exhaust all your options before you start freaking out.

Ok Kira…but what if it doesn’t work?

You try again.

That’s it.

You try again, and you keep promoting that article in future social media posts.

You make a new article, a better article, you find better outlets, you make more connections, you join a different Facebook group, you post in different Subreddits.

If you want to try your hand at Facebook ads to boost your articles (I can help you), go for it, but that’s kind of missing the point of my organic methods.

You. Try. Again.

That’s it.

Content Marketing requires a finessed touch, a firm grasp on your niche, intuition, a keen eye for trends, networking skillz, and writing chops.

This shit is not easy. It’s just not.

The above guide is barely breaking the surface, I’m being real.

There are tools, tricks, and tactics that I could not possibly write out to the level they deserve to be written at. I’d need to make some eCourses, and I just do not have the time right now.

I’m sure you can find some Hubspot fluff courses that spell out all of this in business terms far better than I can at 9:33 PM on a Saturday night (when I finished this).

However, they’re not going to tell you the #1 thing you have to hear where getting clients / leads via content is concerned, because they want your money or your data.

They want you to believe that if you invest in their platform, they’ll make you into a content superstar.

They want you to take their little courses and get your little certificates and feel confident that you can 100% win the content marketing game, which they call Inbound Marketing for some inane reason, because it lines their pockets.

Here’s the thing you need to hear, read, internalize, and understand:

Where content marketing success is concerned, there is no easy answer.

There is no magic bullet. There is no robot that can make you pitch-perfect content…yet.

There is no easy win. It’s not easy, it’s just not.

But you know what is easy? Not trying to create great content, not trying to make a go at organic, not trying to position yourself as a leader in your industry for your niche.

Not trying…is super easy.

Easy just doesn’t cut it anymore. Everyone is doing ‘easy’.

Do you want more clients? Do ‘Excellent’.

If you can show potential clients and leads, with your content, just how excellent you are, you absolutely will get more clients.

You will get the clients you want to get, pre-vetted via your content. You will get excellent clients, because you are excellent.

I have complete faith that you, too, can make content that gets you clients.

I have complete faith in your capability to write a bad-ass article.

I firmly believe that anyone can do this, if they really try.

It’s not easy, but I believe in you, or I wouldn’t have spent hours writing this piece of content.

I’d have made it into an eBook and forced people to give me their email address to unlock it, like All Marketers Are Supposed To Do, or whatever.

Now, go out there, and prove me right.

Kira Leigh is a snarky marketing nerd, writer, and artist. See her work here and send her a message if you want to work together with her amaze-balls team.

Special thanks to Renato P. dos Santos for his continued support.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.