Thinking Content? Time to Think Like a Baker!- Valutrics

I have taught many classes and sessions on content marketing. So much so, that I find the concept to be more complex than it needs to be, especially if you are a bootstrapped entrepreneur who needs to be a Jack of all trades.

Content is generally seen as icing on a cake, it is pretty, attractive and inviting. However, if you are thinking of starting a company blog or other content related activities you need to start thinking less like a cake decorator and more like a master baker.

Your business is essentially a cake made of several ingredients.

In this, the content may simply seem like icing on the cake and it truly is that colorful cute layer that looks good at the bakery, and invites you to buy and eat it. Suppose you buy that cake and go home to eat it and it tastes awful, now you are stuck with something that looks nice but you can’t really do anything with it.

Question one: will you throw out the cake? Possibly.

Question two: will you give it to a friend or recommend that bakery to a friend? Of course not.

Question three: would you ever go back to eat a cake from that bakery?

Making a solid content strategy is like baking a cake every single day; selling it every single day and making sure more customers are coming back for that cake.

And it all boils down to good baking and business methods. What is your bakery? It is your website/app landing page.

These are the questions you need to ask yourself when creating content: 

First off, what are the goals of that bakery? Finding bakers? Selling more cakes?

What are your assets and liabilities? What do you want your users to do on your website? Do you want them to eat the cake and leave or do you want them to stay, try more baked goods and maybe come back with more friends?

What do they want? Chocolate? Vanilla? Are you really thinking about the end user?

That is finding out what they want and then decorating the cake enough so that they come to take a bite.

Now we have a delicious cake that could be eaten.  

How would they know that you have that delicious cake? You need a wholesaler who can tell everyone looking for a cake that you have great cakes available. That wholesaler is search engines that will probably need to know:

How many people recommend your cakes to their friends? Welcome to social signals.

How many people come to your bakery, try the cakes and then come back, that is analytics.

How many people must pass by your bakery every day for a taste of that delicious cake? That is user on-boarding and conversion rate.

How many people insist on browsing the entire bakery to discover more hidden cakes? That is average time spent on the website.

How many people, walk into the bakery but it is stuffed with stuff and no one is helping them so they leave. That is bounce rate.

Is the bakery clean? Is it organized? That is UI/UX.

How do you sell your cakes? That is the impact and analytics of email marketing and social media. Do you measure these?

To be honest, Online Content strategy is the new Digital Operations.

Blog posts are just the icing on the cake, but you have some baking to do. Icing a bad tasting poorly baked cake isn’t the answer.

Happy Baking!