How can you create the perfect content mix for your audience?

Well, the ultimate goal is selling! But to get there you need to set goals along the way such as appointments, touchpoints, engagement ratio, etc. Making these goals smart if the biggest challenge. Do not focus on the vanity metrics!

Absolutely, reaching the end goal of sales is paramount, but it's the incremental, strategic goals that pave the way. Setting objectives like scheduling appointments, increasing touchpoints, and improving engagement ratios are essential steps on the path to conversion. The real challenge lies in crafting these goals to be SMART—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—while steering clear of superficial vanity metrics that don't necessarily translate to real-world success.

Creating the ideal content mix for your audience requires a strategic approach. First: get a good hold of your audience through researching their demographics, interests, and preferred communication channels, using tools like surveys and analytics and case studies already done by others. Next, diversify your content splitting it into educational, entertaining, inspirational and marketing pillars, across a variety of formats. Lastly, maintain consistency with a content calendar, adapting to evolving preferences through feedback, experimentation, and result- measurement. The goal: consistently deliver resonating content that people will enjoy and want to both engage with and share with their own friends, amplifying your own voice and brand.

To create the perfect content mix first you need to establish the goals you want your content to have. Then you need to lay out who your audience is (create a target audience profile). Then map out your sales funnel / sales road map. How are you going to turn a stranger into a loyal customer. Then you need to list out information and questions your target audience needs answered. Then under the list write out the info that will give them value.

If you want to earn money from content, it's key you're reaching the right people. Hence, you need to measure accordingly. Here are 5 steps to consider Step 1. Define ICP (companies) Step 2. Define personas (Decision maker & Influencers) Step 3. Create content Step 4. Measure 'vanity' metrics only of those persona & ICP prospects. (reach, engagement, profile visits, Connection request accepted) Step 5. Measure the gold: Inbound connection requests, Inbound DMs asking for info, Conversion rates, Dark social metrics (always ask; how did you hear about us?) These 5 steps help to measure what's actually important. Reaching your ideal customers and converting them.

Well, it is sad that some salespeople have no idea of their audience. It is the first exercise you need to and here is what you should have: The Buyer The people who influence the buyer The (social) media channels they all use How you are connected to them? And Where? Next up is finding what pain points they have

If you're not making the number of sales you want each month there's a good chance you don't know your audience as well as you think you do. The most important things to know about them are: - What are they experiencing now that they don't want? - What is it they desperately want? - What have they already tried to get what they want & why didn't that work for them? When you know this you can create content that speaks directly to the exact person you're looking to work with & sets you far apart from any "competition" as you'll have insights others don't

Knowing your audience is simpler than you might realize. If you sell to a persona, you likely have someone at your company who IS that persona. Ask them: What do you read? What do you watch? Which thought leaders do you trust? Do you prefer short form or long form? Do you prefer audio or visual? Then ask them if they'd be willing to intro you to a few of their peers and ask the same questions. You'll get a feeling for what CROs read, or what VPs of Engineering care about when consuming content. Then go create content that mirrors what they prefer to consume.

Here's my mantra when diving into social selling: "Get inside their heads!" Understanding your audience is like having a secret map. Dive deep: What keeps them up at night? What victories are they chasing? How do they absorb their daily digital diet? Buyer personas aren't just buzzwords – they're the paint for your canvas. Couple that with insights from surveys or that gold mine called social listening. If you're catering to the always-on-the-move professionals, maybe it's snappy, to-the-point content they crave. Think mobile-friendly tips that can be consumed quicker than their morning coffee. It's all about striking the right chord at the right time. Let's not just speak; let's converse.

You can't do anything meaningful if you don't know your personas. Here's examples of what I like to focus on - Role - What they are struggling with - Metrics in their job - Jobs to be done - Least favorite part of their job - Favorite part of their job - Persona related events - Persona related trends - Influencers in their space that they look up to - What career path they had and where they'd like to end up - What triggers them to take action There's so much to learn. Invest in your personas daily

A content plan is not only about topics, formats, or calendars. A good marketer must consider the three phases of a customer's journey in order to support sales team actions: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. All three objectives must be considered when using social selling. Our customer journey is not a straight line, and we need to walk all the way, side by side, to create relationships, nurture those relations, and sell.

As a Client Solution consultant in this topic, I find that my clients often try to push branded content to their employees so they can share externally, and what are he results? 30 employees sharing the same article with 0 engagement and the same caption, creating a feeling of spam and that it was shared by a bot. Social Selling is about connecting humans to humans, and showcasing your own story and experience. For me, what it works best is a 70% industry-related content, 20% company content that brings value to clients and 10% native content. That is a great content mix for your plan!

When it comes to content planning, here's how I break it down: 1. Define your content buckets - what are you going to talk about? 2. Assess your current content - what do you already have that you can use? This can include blogs, podcasts, presentations, videos, emails, other social posts, etc. 3. Reduce, reuse, recycle - repurposing your content makes content creation easier and sustainable for the long term. 4. Make a plan - nothing gets done until we actually make a plan for it.

Having a content plan does help you with creating content and leading prospects to buy. Don't be afraid to share on-the-fly content as inspiration hits as well. My clients are service-based coaches & experts who sell high ticket programs so we typically break down each step of their program into pillars and focus their content on one step per week This way the market gets deep insights as to why each step is important, how it all ties together & how it will help them achieve their desires. Don't forget direct offers posts as well (DM me if you don't know how to do these without feeling spammy)

Elements to take into consideration before planning content - Seasonality of your persona's business (don't sell BBQs in winter) - Buying cycle (how long?) - Stakeholders involved Then you can start mapping it out per persona - Pains - Hooks - Formats - Themes The nature of the posts are divided under three categories - Attract (getting them in the door) - Bond (show that you know your stuff and build familiarity) - Converting (ex. use cases to show how you've helped others) That is how you can build a scalable and effective content plan, focussed on progressing prospects through the buying journey.

Engagement is your friend. Your audience will tell you what works and what doesn't. Listen to them. Do retros for every piece: Why did this work? Why didn't this work? If you can get 1-2% better with each piece, you'll have high-performing content in a matter of months.

Alright, let's get real about content. After crafting that piece you're proud of, the game's not over; it's just halftime. Dive into those stats: How's the engagement looking? Did that catchy headline do the trick or was it a flop? Measure, measure, measure! Likes, shares, comments – they all paint a picture. Now, let's sprinkle some experimental magic. Maybe tweak that image or play around with the headline. What if you posed a question instead? Listen closely to your audience's reactions. They're giving you all the hints you need. Stumbled upon a nugget, like headlines with stats becoming crowd-favorites? Well, there's your golden ticket for next time! Keep evolving, and remember, it's all in the fine-tuning.

When it comes to content the key is test, refine, test again. That might be the content type, topic, time of day, day of the week, etc. Sometimes it will be a huge flop, other times it will get a ton of engagements. It's important to be consistent and see if you can spot the trends.

Instead of chasing the "perfect mix", create content that you are excited about. Create content that you are confident in. That could be a mix of text, video, images, and links. Or it could be just one of them. Lean into what you have to add to the conversation. You're much more likely to stay consistent when you do so.

I've learned that 'big' posts are better than daily, tactical posting. In the last months I've been trying different strategies: posted everyday, used different formats (video, static pictures, PDFs, etc), but I was getting little engagement. Lately, I've been working on what I call 'big' posts - posts about professional highlights, very valuable and actionable insights and real life experiences (takeaways from events and meetings with clients). Also, posting 1-2 weekly is working the best so far. Let your content live and breathe in the feed without suppressing it with another post the following day.