3 Steps To Get More Strategic With Your Visibility And Content

Without wasting your time!

🎧 Music in video by www.bensound.com 🎧

Ready for some visibility magic?!

I’m dropping three steps you can take today to get more strategic with your visibility and content marketing without wasting your time!

We've been discussing these awesome strategies in depth inside Powerhouse Web Designer so I thought I’d share some of this magic with my larger audience! ✨

Chances are, you're not getting in front of enough people.

I know it's hard to know what to say and how to say it. Content marketing and visibility can feel like a huge waste of time. You think you’ll put time into creating content, but you wonder if it’s reaching the right people or if your message is resonating.

Which is exactly why I'm breaking it down for you here, with simple and straightforward magic coming your way!

I know life is busy, busy, busy… so I'm here to help you move forward with your goals and make an efficient, super powerful difference in your business.

But before we dive into our 3 steps to better visibility and content marketing, I want to share this week’s happiness hack, which is all about noticing your own self-doubt.

THIS WEEK’S HAPPINESS HACK

BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR **SELF-DOUBTS**

A lot of designers think they’re full of doubts right now because they’re new, inexperienced, “small” or WHATEVER. There are a million reasons we have doubt in ourselves.

But take it from a self-taught, college drop out who’s made a name for herself in the online community:

Self-doubt is one of those pesky issues that will continue to pop up as you grow your business.

Becoming “successful” in your business doesn’t eliminate self-doubt. You just get better at dealing with it as time goes on :)

Meaning you should learn to understand and overcome your self-doubt RIGHT NOW so you can keep leveling up!

An easy way to identify your self-doubt is to visualize a big goal. Like, a seriously big goal. Something that feels monumental… and a little bit scary. I'll share mine with you to give you a good example.

I wanted to be known as the design business expert. I wanted to be the person everyone comes to for help organizing business systems and growing a design business.

When I thought about the huge, scary goal, I paid attention to the thoughts that immediately came up:

“Melanie…who do you think you are?!!”
“You're a completely self-taught designer, you can't be the expert.”
“You're from a tiny town in rural Mississippi with less than 200 hundred people and sketchy wi-fi.”
“You dropped out of college! You can't do this. “

These negative thoughts lies that come up when you dare to dream big are your limiting beliefs.

Once you identify your unique limiting beliefs, you’ll know exactly what you have to tackle and breakthrough to get to the next level.

So if you're ready to kick your success into high gear, here's my suggestion:

Be honest with yourself about what you really want in your business. Dare to dream big! And as you dream, pay attention to those limiting beliefs that pop up. Write them down. Acknowledge them. And then focus on crushing them so you can enjoy the success that's waiting for you at your next level! ✨

Now back to our originally scheduled programming: 3 steps to better visibility and strategic content marketing.

Content marketing is one of my favorite things to focus on in my business, because once you put content marketing in place, it grows your business on autopilot.

But you've gotta be strategic about it and you do need to put in a little work. So let's get on it!

Choose ONE platform to focus on.

Don't start too broad. Pick one platform and commit to showing up weekly. I think posting weekly is important, but figure out what feels comfortable and right for you. Start with what you can reasonably manage…then grow from there.

What are the platform choices, you ask? Instagram, your blog, IGTV, Facebook, YouTube, your email list, a podcast, etc. There's a lot to choose from.

So pick one and focus on growing and perfecting your content there. Get everything else off your radar and focus on your one chosen platform and start showing up consistently.

Plan sales-oriented content.

Your sales-oriented content will become an asset for your business.

This content should point to your offer and cover two things:

The main goal your ideal client has
The roadblock keeping your ideal client from reaching that goal

You want to show people that you know what they want and that you understand what's in their way. And you want to show them that your product or service is what they need in order to get past the roadblock so they can achieve their goal.

I recently did a cool little challenge on Instagram all about this topic. You can check it out here :)

You use your content to build the know, like, trust factor with your audience. You position yourself as the expert, connect with them, and get them warmed up and ready to work with you.

Then, to build out the sales-oriented element, just include a strong call to action about how your audience can work with you.

The bulk of your content isn't about making a sale, it's about showing them that you see them, you understand their problem, and that you can help.

You're saying, “Hey, I see you! I know what you want and I know why you can't get there. Come talk to me and I will help you!”

Streamline your cross-promotion.

Here's where we bring in some of those other platform options from step 1!

When it makes sense, you can increase your reach and expand your audience by cross-promoting your content across platforms.

Maybe you started with your blog, so now you're going to promote your blog through a Facebook post or two each week.

Or maybe you've been focusing on your YouTube channel, so you start to promote your YouTube video on Instagram a couple times each week.

This can get kind of tricky, so I'm going to give you lots of examples in the ACTION PLAN below!

Now let's use these 3 steps to create a strategic ACTION PLAN.

Once you understand the content you need to create (hello, market research), you're gonna come up with four topics or themes to talk about. You're gonna talk about one of these four topics every week for the next four weeks.

When you've chosen your four topics, plan to talk about each of them for the whole week. Yep! You're going to be talking about the same topic all week long. This strategy drills your message into people's minds and helps them see you as an expert! It isn’t annoying or repetitive, it’s powerful and authoritative.

You'll be able to come at this single topic from so many different angles… showing how much you really know!

Remember that one platform you chose to focus on back in step 1? Now you're going to create a key piece of content (using your sales-oriented content from step 2) for that platform. So you could be breaking that key piece of content into three mini-posts for Instagram, writing one big blog post, or filming one main YouTube video.

Once you’ve created your main piece of sales-oriented content for your main platform, it’s time to move on to step 3 and choose a method for cross-promoting to one other platform (you can always add more platforms down the road, but start with one for now to keep it simple).

You could:

Direct your Instagram audience to your blog post.
Write an email to your subscriber list about your YouTube video.
Link your Instagram post in your blog.

Strategically cross-promoting will connect you with more people and expand your audience!

Once you get the hang of this basic system, you can:

Add more platforms to your cross-promotion strategy.
Recycle your four topics.
Repurpose content you've already created.
Start batching your content and pre-scheduling to get ahead.
You can outsource to get help expanding your cross-promotional reach.

This system is easily scalable and can continue to grow with your business!

I know this works because I've done it. This is the exact system I put in place when I got serious about content marketing earlier this year — and it's worked like magic ✨

I chose my four topics to get started with…created a streamlined content workflow…hired a VA to help me execute this quickly…and now I’m repurposing and recycling my best content!

Let’s go over the three steps one more time:

Get out there and talk to your audience. Find out what they struggle with and develop your four topics around specifically solving those problems.
Use these 3 steps and the action plan to create a beautifully organized and efficient content creation system for your next 4 pieces of content.
You'll instantly be more visible!

Once you've set this plan in place, let me know. Seriously! I will come cheer you on. I'm so excited to see what you create!

Are you building a design business but seeing inconsistent results? Looking for a boost to make it all work? Make sure to check out Powerhouse Web Designer! This course was specifically designed to help you raise your rates, create consistent income and work with better clients. Go check it out!!