We all know how vital content is in building a successful brand. It’s key to connecting with your audience and providing value.
But of course, we don’t just build an audience for audience’s sake. There needs to be intention behind audience growth.
Daniel Priestley is a leading authority in scaling businesses. He is the co-founder of Dent Global and ScoreApp, as well as the author of the book Key Person of Influence, his self-confessed guide to becoming “one of the most highly valued and highly paid people in your industry.”
And he’s also the latest guest on The Content 10x Podcast!
In this podcast episode and blog post, Daniel imparts his invaluable knowledge on scaling companies through content and becoming an authority figure in your industry. He also shares some excellent repurposing tips!
Listen to the podcast episode here:
Watch the highlights video down below or head over to our YouTube channel for the full episode.
Or read on for some priceless tips on scaling your business with content.
Why is content so important?
It’s no secret that content is a crucial component of marketing a business. It’s how people find out about what you do and how you can help them.
But making sure that your content is working well and actually doing its job can sometimes be a difficult task. To create effective content, it needs to be both compelling for your audience but also beneficial to you from a business perspective.
Looking at engagement and delving into the statistics is all well and good, but is your content leading your potential audience to take the action you want?
We’d all love to throw a couple of tweets out there with a call-to-action and have thousands immediately respond. But to encourage your audience to take the action you want; you first need to build a connection and trust.
TOP TIP:
Part of that is establishing yourself as the specialist in your field.
You want your audience to think of you as soon as a problem you can solve arises.
Guess how you can do that? With content.
You can read more about that in Daniel’s book, Key Person of Influence.
You could say the book makes him a ‘key person of influence’ when it comes to becoming a key person of…you get it!
3 things your customers need to feel
Building a bond with your customers is vital if your content strategy is going to serve you well.
Daniel says there are 3 key things that your audience needs to feel for your content to be a success.
Your audience must:
- Know you – they should have clarity when it comes to your voice, what you do and how you can help them.
- Like you – they should have a positive opinion of you and your content and be compelled to act on the content they see.
- Trust you – they should see you as an expert or authority figure in your field and feel like they’re making a great investment when they buy/use your services.
The good news is that digital relationships can become just as strong as in-person connections!
So people can feel they know, like and trust you even if they have never met you in real life.
In fact, Daniel used the example of the sadness we feel when a beloved celebrity passes away. We feel like we know that person because we have consumed their content for so many years and have a personal connection to them.
So you don’t have to wait for the next in-person networking event to grow an audience that knows, likes and trusts you - you can start right now online.
Building your personal brand or business profiles online goes a long way in making you a trustworthy source of information.
But how do you get your audience to know, like, and trust you?
Daniel spoke about what Google coined the Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT. Something that we love to refer to here at Content 10x too, in fact check out episode 210, How Content Repurposing Can Help You Win the Zero Moment of Truth, for more on this.
The ZMOT is the final stage before making a buying decision.
It’s when we decide if we know, like and trust the person or brand enough to buy from them. Google found that it takes 7 hours, over 11 interactions and 4 different locations to really feel like you know someone.
The good news is, the 7 hours of interaction doesn’t need to be in-person, it can be through content.
The more content you make and the more often it’s seen, in different online locations, the better chance you have of getting customers to know, like and trust you – which means converting more people!
Becoming a voice of authority in your industry
In our discussion, Daniel explained that when you have an online profile, whether for your company or personally, you have a brand. So, in a way, everyone has a personal brand, whether we want one or not!
It’s all about how to control it. You have the potential to become an authority figure in your industry if you work on your personal brand.
More often than not, people are actually invested in people as opposed to brands. Daniel highlighted that big business leaders often have more Twitter followers than the companies they’re famous for developing. For example (at the time of writing):
- Richard Branson has 12.7 million / Virgin has just 251,000
- Elon Musk has 97.4 million / Tesla has 15.9 million
- Tim Cook has 13.5 million / Apple has 7.9m
People will pay attention to what you say more than what they see on your business’s social media profiles. If you put the time and effort in, eventually, what you say will carry more and more weight.
That then leads to growth! The larger your profile, the larger your audience and, therefore…
…the more sales you will make.
We spoke to Ash Jones, founder of Great Influence, in episode 201, How to Use Social Media to Build Great Influence, where he discussed the power you wield as the owner of a personal brand. Check out that episode for more on building personal brands.
Content repurposing to scale your business
Content repurposing can lighten the load on your marketing team and give you more time to really perfect your strategy.
By repurposing your core content into other forms, you can extend its reach, boost its potential and scale your business.
For example, if you are a specialist in your subject, writing a book is a great way to stamp your authority on your topic. And this is a great example of core content you can repurpose.
Daniel suggests repurposing excerpts from your book across multiple platforms. This could be as social media text posts, graphics or quotes – designed for self-promotion or just for engagement.
Daniel himself has taken passages from his books and used them as standalone LinkedIn posts in the past.
We have our own book, Content 10x: More Content, Less Time, Maximum Results – our “ultimate guide to reaching more people online by the power of content repurposing”. The book features so many points and ideas that we repurpose and use in our content time and time again.
The book was also created by repurposing content, for more on this check out Content 10x The Book – An Update and How to Repurpose Content into a Book.
Other core content like blog posts, thought leadership articles, podcast episodes and more create excellent repurposing opportunities that can really help you grow your influence online.
In conclusion
There are 3 major takeaways from the conversation with Daniel Priestly:
- Ensure that your audience know, like and trust you
- Identify areas for improvement in your content strategy and fix them – why not find out where you are on Daniel’s Key Person of Influence scorecard?
- Content repurposing can help you scale your business by widening your reach across your target audience
For more from Daniel, listen to the podcast episode at the top of the page, connect with him on LinkedIn, head to his website or the Dent Global or ScoreApp websites to find out more. You can also read Daniel’s book, Key Person of Influence, to find out more about improving your content to scale your business.
If you’re keen to boost your content output in less time, the Content 10x team can help. We take care of the content repurposing so you don’t have to. Find out more here.