Part 2 - What will you create?
OK we’re jazzed to make a creator business. Woot!
Now let’s work out what we’re actually going to create!
Let’s get started:
What will you create
- Solve the same problem via content and products
- Give it all away. They’ll still buy.
- Link your core messaging and content pillars to the problem you are solving
We are building a creator business.
It’s still a business. This is key.
We want to use our content and our personal brand to ultimately make sales.
We aren’t making content for the sake of it or for ego.
Because of this we need to think of the whole funnel.
Broadly speaking it’ll be:
- Wide awareness building content
- Transitional, more detailed content
- Call to action content
- Sales funnel of products and services
- Freebies in exchange for email
- Low cost digital products
- High cost services
Each piece of content moves our audience members closer to become a customer.
And once we have them as a customer we continue to use content marketing to escalate them.
Joining it up
Here’s the key. The big realisation that unlocks everything.
All the way along your funnel you’ll be delivering the same basic information.
Your audience members and customers have a set of problems and questions.
Your first wide, awareness content will grab their attention because you are talking about themes related to the problems and questions.
As they watch, listen to or read more of your content you continue to cover the same topics, just in more detail.
When you transition them to products and services guess what - you are still providing the same information, the same solutions to their problems.
There is a through-line. It’s the same content at each step.
Here’s another big takeaway. We don’t need to hold anything back. We can talk, teach, educate without limits. You don’t need to be thinking “what should I keep back for my product”. We just give, give, give. Safe in the knowledge that most people won’t actually act on the information in our content.
Instead as people move towards action they’ll naturally gravitate to our more detailed content and then products and services.
Will some just scoop up all you free content and work out how to do it all themselves? Yup!
But they were always going to do this. They aren’t your customers. They are more time rich than cash rich and are happy to invest all that time milking your content. They were never going to buy.
Thankfully for your business though most people will need more assistance to put into action what you talk about.
Worked example
An example will help here.
In the case of Prompt Entrepreneur the basic question my audience members have is “how can I use AI in business?” This could be using AI in their existing business. Or starting something from scratch using AI.
One sub topic here is the future of work and how AI is going to affect jobs. Let’s look at some content pieces connected to this.
Here’s an example of a wide awareness piece:
This video talks about how AI is impacting work and business. It’s about the general themes that my audience members are interested in. It has about 15,000 views which is decent. It’s wide, general content.
The purpose of this content is not to sell. It’s merely to get my face and message out there to a wide audience.
Some of those people will follow and engage. They are basically saying “yup! tell me more”.
For the next stage you’ll have more in-depth content. It requires more of your audience’s time and attention.
You will not get as much reach. But it will be higher quality reach because the people who pay attention are really paying attention.
Here’s an example from over on X/Twitter this time:
This is a thread with multiple tweets, multiple graphics and much more detail. Click through to see it in full - I can only embed the first post.
Notice though that it’s on the same basic topic - AI and the future of work.
I also have one more step in the chain which is my newsletter. I did a whole 10,000+ words on this topic for anyone who really wanted to get into the weeds.
https://promptentrepreneur.beehiiv.com/p/ai-and-the-future-of-work-part-1
This part is entirely optional and most creators don’t use newsletters. I’ll talk more about this in a later Part.
From here I then have products and services that are directly connected to the same themes.
The Forge (premium subscription) for instance is a whole newsletter delivering you weekly guides on how to start a business using AI in order to deal with the uncertain future of work.
It’s at the product and service stage that you begin to transition audience members into actual customers.
All on the same problems and questions. But moving further and further towards giving them a solution. And making that solution as actionable as possible.
Your core message
You’ve just seen in action one example of content marketing for one sub topic (the future of work).
Before you can start your content production though you need to work out what exactly your messaging is.
Specifically you need:
- ONE core message
- 3-5 connected content pillars.
Your messaging is a big ol’ topic tied to your business niche. Let’s use a prompt to get started.
Act as a brand strategist
My business niche is [niche]
My top personal values are: [list some values]
my customer's biggest problems are: [list 3-5 top problems]
My solution is [how you help them]
Use this information to generate 5 potential core messages for my brand.I plugged in the following:
My business niche is AI entrepreneurship
My top personal values are: self-reliance, freedom, education.
my customer's biggest problems are: no business idea, no cash, limited time
My solution is give them a step by step method for leveraging AI to start a business.ChatGPT gave me a handful of potential messaging angles:
Out of these I like “Concept to Creation with AI”. That’s a slick message which I could work with.
Once I’ve made a decision (or used these to manually work out messaging) I’ll use this next prompt:
Act as a brand strategist.
For option [number] outline 5 potential content pillars
For each give me the content pillar name, the customer's core question/challenge and 5 ideas for awareness content, 5 ideas for expert content and 5 ideas for CTA contentChatGPT’s answer will be lengthy so here’s the first pillar from our example:
Some solid ideas here to start thinking about.
Remember the key is that everything is aligned. Everything is consistent. Content leads to products and services. We’re not just creating content for the sake of it.
We’re going to be boring by talking about what - to us - seems like the same darn information. Again and again and again.
But to your audience members it’s all new. And that when they are ready for more detail they’ll progress down your funnel.
In the next Part we’ll lock in our content marketing and start creating.
We’ve now got our messaging in place and some basic content pillars sketched out.
Now it’s time to get to the actual work of creation - taking the message and getting it out into the world.
Let’s get started:
Turning on the creative machine
- Choosing your platform
- Choosing your format
- Preview of our repurposing machine