The Five Phases of Content Marketing

Hi everyone.?Welcome to Volume 2.

Most of the business strategy sessions I have with myself are during or after a long run. This newsletter is a place where I put my scattered thoughts to paper.

Creating content? First, define your objective.

I talked about go-to-market strategy in my last newsletter article and the concept of “push” to “pull” marketing.?How do you do this?

Create and distribute content. ?I believe in the next 10 years every company will have its own content arm that produces media which somehow ties back into the company's mission.

Simple, right? Not so much.?

One of the hardest parts about creating content and marketing yourself on social media is pressing the ‘Post’ button. This is a dilemma that many people struggle with, myself included. Fear of judgement, indecisiveness on the “brand” you want to put out there to live in perpetuity, and questioning if your creativity will outlast the sheer volume of content needed to play the long-game.?These are a few of the many thoughts that go through my head during my process of putting stuff out there.

The social media ‘gurus’ say, “Just post and do it consistently.” ?However, I do think there’s a level of forethought needed before you start blasting out ideas on social media without purpose or general sense of who your target audience is. ?Without a sound strategy, you will spin your wheels and have a high likelihood of burning out fast. (no pun indented)

Here is a strategy that I think is worth following:

?The Five Phases of Content Creation

This framework by Alex Hormozi gives us 5 key phases of content creation strategy to follow. ? It has helped me organize my thoughts and get started sooner. You don’t need to have fame at the level of the Kardashian’s to generate revenue via social media.?You just need to understand what your goal is, then align the levels of input required to get to that goal. Alex shares 5 phases of content creation and how those 5 phases align with a certain objective.

The Two Objectives of Social Media Marketing

There are two objectives (outputs) you should keep in mind when creating from Phase 1 though Phase 5:

Objective from Phases 1-2: Lead nurturing

Prospects will reference your content to make sure you're a real person and validate that you know what you're talking about. You can also leverage this content as ammunition during your sales process.

Objective from Phases 3-5: Generate new customers from your content

This is where you can expect to really create new opportunities after 12-18 months of consistency.

The Five Phases of Social Media Marketing

Phase 1: Make something and post it.

Post something, sometime, somewhere.

Phase 2: Post consistently.

Pick one platform, create a cadence or a calendar and post something consistently. This could be daily or every two weeks, etc.

Phase 3 : Post reliably on all platforms.

Massive increase of volume. Grease the content engine to get content out reliably at scale

Phase 4: Maximize output on all platforms

Fine tune the content machine and create maximum output that each social media platform can handle. The maximum varies platform to platform.

Phase 5: Capturing and creating. Further enhance in reach.

Act as a content aggregator/distributor where you create content and also capture content at scale.

I lined up Alex’s framework with your typical marketing/sales funnel. This helps me visualize where social media is most effective in my sales efforts.?

One big takeaway I had is that social media is meant to supplement your sales process in the short term, not replace. ?Phase 1 and Phase 2 are more than adequate for sales teams to create a meaningful presence that will help drive sales, but don’t expect many of your leads and opportunities to just show up on your doorstep. Abandoning your proven methods for customer acquisition is not be wise.

If you’re interested in watching the entire video (11 minutes 27 seconds), here is the link:

Comment what phase you think a majority of the people in your LinkedIn newsfeed are in.