- The Content Canvas
- Posts
- ✍️ Why your organic content is not bringing clients
✍️ Why your organic content is not bringing clients
Shabir Nudrat
February 18, 2024
Hey there 👋
Welcome back to the second edition of The Content Canvas.
The newsletter where we talk about everything and anything related to content marketing.
I hope you’ve had a hyper-productive week thus far and are ready to kick some A’s again in the next week.
In this newsletter, I want to talk about a few questions I often get when speaking to founders and executives who want to start building their personal brand - to attract clients for their business.
Questions like:
How much should I post?
How do I make it related to the B2B software/service that I’m selling?
How do I make my content stand out?
We’ll tackle all of those questions in this newsletter - and hopefully, you’ll come out on the other side with more clarity and direction on attracting clients through organic content.
Step 0: Re-framing your mindset
Let’s get one thing clear.
You are not your product/service.
And your product/service is not you.
Although your goal is to get leads for your product/service, it doesn’t have to be the ONLY thing you talk about.
In fact, if you do that - you’ll probably never achieve your goal.
What most people do when they try to go build their personal brand on the internet is they try to be like everybody else.
They forget that they are a unique human being, with a unique story to tell.
And finally: They try to be too professional.
They try to only talk about stuff that’s related to their profession.
But…
What they forget is:
People buy from people. And… People follow people.
… but whether online or in real life, nobody really likes to follow/be friends with people who are just picture-perfect and don’t show any personality.
So, step zero is:
Understand that you don’t need to “create” content to build a personal brand. You simply need to document and show a reflection of who you are and what you’re building on the internet. In other words - Document, don’t create.
Re-frame your mindset to understand that showing an inauthentic side of yourself (for example, by acting too professional) or not having any opinions whatsoever can be smelled from far away.
How do you make your content contextual to what you’re selling?
This is one of the most common questions I get when I speak to executives at SaaS companies or agencies.
The obvious one is to talk about the category you’re in.
If you’re an Email Marketing Software like Klaviyo, you talk about Email Marketing.
If you’re an SMS software like Postscript, you talk about SMS marketing.
Pretty obvious, right? (PS: it’s probably also what ALL your other competitors are doing)
… but what can you do to make content that’s contextual to your product AND different?
Here’s a few ones I like:
1) The Build - In - Public Angle.
Show what you’re building and why you’re building it
Talk about the Ups and Downs of building your business and serving the target audience you’re trying to serve
Show how customers are using your product
Show the results that customers are getting from using your products
You don’t need to say “I do X service for Y businesses” to tell people what you’re doing. You can also show them by wrapping your product and how it can serve them into a story that can spark some emotion in them
2) Collabs (influencers, tech partners, and vendors)
Do any of your customers, partners, or vendors have an audience?
Do they have any authority within their space and thereby influence over their audience?
Do any of your target customers potentially live within their audiences?
If the answer to all of those three questions is “YES”, then here are a few things you can do.
Collab with them on a thought leadership piece of content
Collab with them on a podcast
Collab with them on a YouTube channel
Collab with them on a live Q&A Session
Collab with them on a webinar
You can build your personal brand, by borrowing other people’s audiences and giving them your expertise in exchange for it.
3) Employee Shoutouts and hidden case study promos
Another good way to talk about what your product does and what you’re building without saying it explicitly is:
Shouting out your employees online
Sharing what they’re working on for your customers
Sharing how that adds value to your customers
Sharing why / how you’re looking to find more people to help with serving more/bigger clients with existing or new features.
For example:
Shout out to “John Doe” who’s been tirelessly working on doing X for Y clients. The results have been Z thus far - and we just took on some of the biggest names in the industry (if accurate ofc). We’re looking to bring in more people to do XYZ.
You get where i’m getting at?
You’re basically showing your ideal customers that you’re the hottest girl/guy in town and that you work with customers who are the hottest girls/guys in their towns
And because everybody has FOMO, they might want to hear how they can be the hottest girls/guys too.
The most important thing to understand here is that, in order to make your business top of mind - you need to keep reminding your potential customers about what you do - but without it feeling like you’re trying to tell them what can help them with
How do I make my content stand out?
I’ll give a three-folded answer to this…
A) You need to be real with yourself about what you’re good at and what you’re not good at.
I was recently having this conversation with a partner of mine who insisted they needed to be on TikTok.
… and I said well: “Do you agree that you’re much better at writing”?
He said yes
Then I said: “Do you also agree that when you’re trying to speak in front of a camera, you always give long, anecdotal, and highly nuanced answers?”
He nodded and said yes again.
And then I told him: “Look, we’ve barely scratched the surface on the platforms/mediums that we’re uniquely good at (newsletter and podcast)”
You have a competitive edge when it comes to these platforms, and you haven’t even scratched the surface.
Why would you want to do something you’re less good at, instead of focusing on what you’re great at?
It doesn’t make sense.
Now - getting back to the point on how to make your content stand out, here’s what I recommend:
Be real with yourself on what medium (Text, Video, Audio) you’re uniquely good at and make that type of content to begin with.
That’ll give you a solid foundation for making your content stand out
B) Out-Help everyone
The easiest way to make your content stand out is by making it different AND better.
Be more helpful than others,
Be more helpful than others (quality), more times (Volume)
Be more helpful than others (quality) , more times (Volume) , and over a longer period of time (Consistency)
Quality x Volume x Consistency.
That’s the only thing you need to think about.
If you answer the question: How can I be more helpful than others, more frequently, and for a longer period of time than everyone else? - you will have solved the initial question
C) You have unique opinions and worldviews. If you share those, you will have unique content.
Simple as that
Don’t be too vanilla ™
Nobody can compete with you on unique opinions and worldviews.
Period.
Content resources I found interesting this week:
In this section of the newsletter - I want to share a few resources that I found helpful in regards to content, social media, and storytelling.
You might find them useful too
Thanks for reading along
As always, thanks for reading along. I hope you found this newsletter useful and valuable.
If so - feel free to share this newsletter with a friend or colleague who you think could also benefit from reading it.
And hey - if you want to connect with me, feel free to answer this email or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn
Have a great week ahead!
All the best
Shabir Nudrat