Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
My business coach posts about Robbie Williams (here's why)
|
I set up a live chat with some Substack subscribers the other day. I asked subscribers: What’s your number one question about writing online? The responses were variations of this conundrum: “How can I find the right audience?” Niche and audience selection kept me up at night for a few years, but I don’t worry so much about it anymore. Creating niche-specific content is a smart approach if you’re building a website. I ran a food and drinks website (not under my personal brand) for a few years. We published recipes and equipment reviews. Publishing content about say, writing online or brand building, wouldn’t work for that site. Audience selection is also a good idea if you’re working on a content marketing project for a business, a client or a corporate account. I worked on a content marketing campaign for an accounting software business for a few years. We published content explaining why spreadsheets are terribly inefficient for preparing a tax return. Not sexy stuff, but leads ate this content up and turned into customers. Clearly, creating content about habit-building would be a waste of time and dollars for that company. Creators writing and publishing online under their own name can and should mix things up more. It’ll build trust and relatability. A reasonable ratio is 70% business or on-brand and 30% personal stories. Or simply, create content about what you find interesting. For example, I’m working with a business coach who specializes in LinkedIn. He regularly posts about how he helps clients with sales presentations. That’s on-brand for a business coach and very much in the vein of popular LinkedIn content. He also posts “off-brand” content like his thoughts about the Robbie William’s biopic Better Man. And he gets lots of comments and shares for these posts too. In my newsletters, I regularly drop in snippets about races I’m training for as running long-distance is one of my hobbies. I also write about life working from home with three kids… they’re off school today because of a big storm. These emails sometimes get more responses than my regular ones. So, I plan on doing this more in my social content too. Mixing on and off-brand content helps followers and subscribers see you’re more like them and less like an unreachable guru or heartless business. Get the balance right and a niche will naturally form around you and your work. And that’s hard for a competitor or AI to reverse-engineer.
|
Letters From the Desk of Bryan Collins
Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
I’ve been spending more time posting content on Substack lately. The other day, I messaged a few creators new to the platform. Surprisingly, many of them are migrating from Medium to Substack. One ex-Medium writer told me she wanted a tutorial on using Substack. It’s a simple but intuitive platform that’s free of ads. If you’re not using Substack yet, here’s a 101 primer… followed by an explainer about my unconventional Substack strategy Start by creating a Substack profile. Upload a photo...
Some writers and creators love using AI to write and create content. Others hate it. One newsletter reader even wrote in to tell me she hit the unsubscribe button because of my “blatant support of AI.” The last time I checked, OpenAI didn’t invite me into their seed round. That said, here’s my take: AI isn’t going anywhere, so I could pretend it doesn’t exist and get left behind or start using it for my business. I develop ideas for my content without AI and write what AI can’t generate....
They often can’t afford what you sell or will try it once and move on. Instead, create content for your ideal client instead, one can afford your offer and will do the work. I wrote blog posts and articles for new authors and writers for a few years. Two examples come to mind. I wrote a several thousand-word guide to using Scrivener for blogging, packed with pics, examples, and templates. I also published a huge step-by-step breakdown about how to crowdsource great book covers over at...