Content Creation: The BIG Picture of Content Marketing

Creating content is more than just finding words to put on a page. You need to tell a good story that your ideal customer wants to read. You should also include visuals, such as illustrations or images, that help convey the story. The essence of content marketing is drawing your ideal customer to you based on the words and visuals you use to make their life easier, solve a problem, or provide information.

Use a big picture strategy for content marketing.

If you’re new to content marketing, creating content can seem overwhelming. Use a Big Picture strategy. Plan your content annually to tell your story over the year. Ask yourself:

What journey do you want to take your audience on throughout the year?
What holidays or events happen around your business throughout the year?

These questions give shape to your content and give you a “plug and play” format to follow.

What journey will you take your clients on over the year?

If your business is new, use the year to introduce you and your business to your avatar. Build a strong brand presence and get people fired up to learn about everything you offer. The beginning of the year will be devoted to brand awareness with teasers on what’s to come.

The same research you used to identify your ideal customers can be applied here. Imagine the journey they will take to learn about you, get to know you, trust you, and ultimately buy from you. Learn more about the buyer’s journey and creating loyal fans by educating your clients, not selling to them.

How do the holidays and events affect your content marketing strategy and journey?

I like to use a paper calendar with the holidays and company events or launch dates clearly marked. Build your content around what people will be searching for naturally. For example, around the first of the year, most people are searching for ways to make their lives better…hence, weight loss is a huge resolution this time of year. February, love is in the air. And with March, there’s basketball.

It is your choice whether to include religious holidays, such as Easter, Passover, Christmas, or Chanukah. Instead of religious holidays, you can use spring break and winter break. If there is a big race in your hometown that happens every year in June, write that down. Most cities have a Turkey Trot around Thanksgiving.

Your calendar should have one event and/or holiday per month. Based on the story you want to tell over the year, how can you fit that into holidays and events that naturally ebb and flow throughout the year?

Here’s an example. Let’s suppose you’re a holistic health coach who specializes in working with entrepreneurial women between 30 and 40. January can focus on how to build 2-minute changes into your day to drive your business forward without losing your sanity. During February, the conversation can continue with tips to reduce stress and take a much-deserved spa break to boost creativity. Before spring, you’re actively gaining the attention of high-profile clients ready to book.

Shake out your content into weeks

Once you have broad topics, come up with topics and assign those to weeks. I use ChatGPT for this task. (You can use AI for the whole process, and I will share how in an upcoming article.) ChatGPT’s output is only as good as its input. Be sure to include:

Information about you and your business.
Your brand’s voice.
Who your audience is in as much detail as you can provide.
The story you want to tell over the next year.
The monthly topics you have.

Once this is input, ask ChatGPT to develop weekly article topics for each month based on the monthly themes. Take a few minutes to eliminate or adjust these topics.

If you have the paid version of ChatGPT, you can save your client avatar. If not, save this chat! This eliminates having to describe you, your business, and your avatar each time you want to tweak a title or get a little help with your writing. Simply open this chat and begin with a prompt something like: Let’s start with the first article suggested for January….