If producing content—blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts—is a significant part of your marketing, you may well be running a media company.
Or at least a media division.
And that means you have to start thinking and operating more like a media maven and less like a conventional CEO.
So what does that look like exactly?
Your remarkable content draws your audience—clients, buyers and referral sources—to you. If you’re sending out a monthly newsletter with a few links or a couple of newsy stories—you’re not running a media company. But if you’re consistently blogging and interacting with readers (on your own site or social media), writing regular articles, producing videos and/or commenting in industry or national publications, you’ve got yourself a media role.
You produce content, no matter what else hits your business. Once you’re running what’s essentially a media arm, you don’t have the luxury of deciding you can’t deliver. So you write that blog post even though your client work that week was excruciating. You deliver the article you promised, on time, no matter what. You prioritize your content every bit as much as client work.
You don’t outsource your media. Instead of being incidental, media has become a core piece of what you do. You simply don’t outsource your core. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t hire people to draft, edit, produce or distribute aspects of your content—you can’t do it all yourself. But it does mean you must always retain control over your message and how it’s delivered. Your content, shaped and shared in your voice, is your key competitive advantage.
You go beyond your own stories and services. You become a curator, using your voice, your taste and your experience to share a focused selection of valuable content. Side benefit: chances are you’re soaking up this information as part of your daily reading anyway and sharing it is often exceedingly more efficient than developing new content yourself.
You own your own public relations. If you build and distribute your content steadily, you give yourself the ability to build your own media relationships—think bloggers, social media touch points and professional journalists—over time. Then when you have something big you want to share—like a book or a new service line—you’ve got built-in relationships. The trick to this is agonizingly simple, and yet oh-so-challenging to execute: just add media to your network as you go and STAY connected. (Twitter is an excellent way to keep them in your line of sight.)
This can all be quite tricky in the early stages when you’re stretched to your limit, trying to serve clients, build out your business and create compelling content.
But if you stick with these guidelines consistently, you can use your content not only to deliver clients to your doorstep, but as a core wealth-building device in your business.