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7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
Rainmaker.FM Elsewhere
Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
hosted by Sonia Simone

To Craft Content Marketing that Works: Avoid Silly Fads … and Do this Instead

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Previous Episode:How to Work from Home: Getting Stuff Done when No One is Looking Over Your Shoulder More Episodes Next Episode:Encore: How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet 'Facts'

All Episodes:

July 25, 2016

The 2 Points of Clarity that Will Make You So Much More Productive

July 18, 2016

Launching Your First (or Next) Digital Product

July 11, 2016

A Quick, Enjoyable Way to Sharpen your Vision, Goals, and Values

July 4, 2016

Q&A from Twitter, Independence Day Version!

June 27, 2016

The Difference Between Mindset and Wishful Thinking

June 20, 2016

Things I Love / Things I Hate #4: Trade Secrets, Transparency, and Lemonade Stands

June 13, 2016

Should You Swear on Your Blog?

June 7, 2016

Up All Night to Get Lucky: Sonia’s in a New Documentary!

May 23, 2016

The Context of a Successful Content Strategy: The Harpoon and the Net

May 16, 2016

My #1 Time Management Tip: Don’t Multitask; Compartmentalize

May 9, 2016

The 7 ‘Escape Pod’ Principles (Help Me Write My Book!)

May 2, 2016

Things I Love / Things I Hate #3: Nerdy Nummies and Crummy Content

April 25, 2016

Leadership, Categories of One, and Purple Rain

April 18, 2016

Make Better Mondays! 6 Minutes to a Happier, More Productive Week

April 11, 2016

5 Idea-Generating Techniques We Use on the Copyblogger Team

April 4, 2016

Blog or Podcast? 5 Questions to Help You Decide

March 28, 2016

Two EQ Hacks: A Nifty Trick for Making Big Changes, and How to Handle Hurt Feelings

March 21, 2016

Things I Love/Things I Hate about Health & Fitness Marketing

March 14, 2016

A Simple, Powerful Creativity System to Capture and Generate More Ideas

March 7, 2016

Anniversary Edition! On Finding Your Stubbornness and Going the Distance

February 29, 2016

Q&A: Cornerstone Content, Creativity, and the Future of Our Businesses

February 22, 2016

Getting to Freedom and Business Clarity: A Conversation with Sonia Thompson

February 15, 2016

New Mini-Series: Things I Love / Things I Hate

February 8, 2016

Getting Clear on your Metrics and Benchmarks: The 3 Lenses to Look Through

February 1, 2016

The Untethered Society: Scary or Liberating? (Or Both?)

January 25, 2016

Deep Creative Focus, the Long Haul … and, Yes, David Bowie

January 11, 2016

Motivation and Creativity: A Conversation with Mark McGuinness

January 4, 2016

Vision and Goal-Setting for Your Digital Business

December 21, 2015

Encore: How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet ‘Facts’

December 14, 2015

To Craft Content Marketing that Works: Avoid Silly Fads … and Do this Instead

December 7, 2015

How to Work from Home: Getting Stuff Done when No One is Looking Over Your Shoulder

November 30, 2015

5 Work Habit Hacks from 12 Creative Geniuses

November 23, 2015

Encore: Productivity for Flakes, Head Cases, and Other Natural Disasters

November 16, 2015

What You Need to Know about Guest Posting

November 9, 2015

7 Straightforward Steps to Superior Blog Posts and Podcasts

November 2, 2015

Self-Help for Business Owners: Useful or Useless?

October 26, 2015

The 7-Minute Content Makeover

October 19, 2015

7 Commandments of Professionalism for Content Marketers

October 12, 2015

Staying Grounded on the Road to Success: A Conversation with JB Glossinger

October 5, 2015

Minimalism, Success, and How to Be a Big Shot

September 28, 2015

Finding the Balance Between Pragmatism and Your Ideals

September 21, 2015

What Happens at the Crossroads of Content and Social Media

September 14, 2015

But Facebook Doesn’t Work For … (waily waily)

September 7, 2015

Marketing for Writers and Other Creative Souls

September 1, 2015

How to Turn Bad News into Happy Customers

August 25, 2015

How to Avoid Getting Sucker-Punched by Internet ‘Facts’

August 18, 2015

Bringing More Emotion into Your Writing — From the Inside Out

August 11, 2015

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Rainmaker.FM Digital Business Podcast Network

August 4, 2015

My Favorite Tools of the Trade for Writing, Content Planning, and Creative Collaboration

July 28, 2015

How Long Will It Take for My Business to Start Making Money? And Other Impossible Questions

July 21, 2015

5 Things I Learned from Minecraft about Community, Ecosystems, and Business

July 14, 2015

Call to Action: The Awesome Power of Asking for What You Want

July 7, 2015

A Question of (Writing) Voice: How to Strengthen It, How to Shape It

June 30, 2015

Deviance, Obsession, and Sharing Your Gifts with the World: A Conversation with Bill O’Hanlon

June 23, 2015

Is Hypersensitivity the New Fascism?

June 16, 2015

Q&A: Duplicate Content Worries, and Other Questions from the Audience

June 9, 2015

Business and Marketing for Artists and Creative Workers, Part Two

June 2, 2015

Business and Marketing for Artists and Creative Workers, Part One

May 27, 2015

The 3 Types of Trolls You Meet Online (and How to Deal with Them)

May 19, 2015

The 7 Circles of Belief that Drive Customers to Your Business

May 12, 2015

The Difference Between B2B and B2C Marketing (and Other Questions)

May 5, 2015

Annie Pratt on Resilient Leadership: How to Build a Smart, Agile Business by Crafting an Incredible Team

April 28, 2015

How Not to Be a Dirty, Rotten Spammer

April 21, 2015

4 Deep Marketing Questions (with Answers!)

April 14, 2015

How to Uncover What Your Audience Wants to Buy: An Interview with Ryan Levesque

April 7, 2015

Productivity for Flakes, Head Cases, and Other Natural Disasters

March 31, 2015

8 Harsh Truths about Social Media (and 1 Pretty Awesome One)

March 24, 2015

3 Juicy Marketing Questions Answered

March 17, 2015

How to Strengthen Your Talents

March 3, 2015

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Business, Part 2

March 2, 2015

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Business, Part 1

December 14, 2015

To Craft Content Marketing that Works: Avoid Silly Fads … and Do this Instead

Ever wonder why some people think content marketing is the greatest thing since sliced bananas, and others find they never get any real return on time and energy they’re putting in?

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The difference tends to be a question of strategy. Just because it’s “content” (what does that even mean, anyway?) doesn’t make it “content marketing.”

In this 16-minute episode, I talk about the bedrock of a sound content marketing strategy: your cornerstone content. I cover:

  • The “cocktail party” technique for finding topics
  • The power question for virtually any kind of site or organization
  • The role personality plays in good cornerstone content
  • The kind of content that makes a site “sticky” and authoritative
  • Our January Cornerstone Content Challenge! (Free stuff to make you more awesome)

Listen to Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer below ...

To Craft Content Marketing that Works: Avoid Silly Fads … and Do this InsteadSonia Simone
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The Show Notes

  • The all-free, all-awesome Cornerstone Content Challenge! This is a free e-course (plus pop-up forum and webinar) to walk you through exactly how we do it at Copyblogger and Rainmaker Digital
  • Our (also free) content marketing library of ebooks. If you want to dig a lot deeper into content marketing strategy, this one’s for you. You get instant access with your free registration.

The Transcript

Sonia: Greetings, superfriends! My name is Sonia Simone and these are the Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer. For those who don’t know me, I’m a co-founder and the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital.

I’m also a champion of running your business and your life according to your own rules. As long as you don’t lie and you don’t hurt people, this podcast is your official pink permission slip to run your business or your career exactly the way you think you should.

This time of year we tend to gravitate toward wrapping up any loose end projects, doing that final push for whatever our main projects are, and getting ready for the next year.

Today I’m going to get very tactical and talk about the one thing that will really make the difference between having a website that’s authoritative, that meets your content strategy goals, and that becomes an asset for the long term for your organization … versus content that’s fluffy, silly, faddish, and will tend to work only in the short term if it works at all.

The difference is what we and others have called cornerstone content. It’s what makes your site solid. It’s what makes you a real player.

Let’s talk about it.

The heavyweight at the cocktail party

Pamela Wilson recently wrote about this on Copyblogger, and she reminded us that actually, the cornerstone content on our site answers the kinds of questions people ask at cocktail parties.

  • How does [your business/topic] apply to me?
  • Why did you get into [your business/topic]? What motivates you?
  • How can I get started with [your business/topic]?
  • What do I need to know to be smart about [your business/topic]?
  • How can [your product or service] help me?
  • If I’m just learning about [your field of expertise], what do I need to know first?

The first place to look for ideas for cornerstone topic are those newbie questions that people ask all the time. What kinds of questions are people asking when they start thinking about your type of organization?

For example:

  • In fitness, “How does strength training apply to people like me?”
  • For finance, “Why did you get into wealth management? What motivates you?”
  • For marketing, “How can I get started creating better marketing communication?”
  • For tech education, “What do I need to know to be a smart Python coder?”
  • For hobbies, “How can your site help me have more fun and make cooler things as a knitter?”

And the last one is the power question for almost every organization:

If I’m just learning about [what you do], what do I need to know first?

The power question for your content marketing

For example, “If I’m just learning about assisted living options for my dad, what do I need to know first?”

“If I’m just learning about programming Java for Minecraft, what do I need to know first?”

“If I’m just learning about bringing on a copywriter for my website, what do I need to know first?”

You’ll probably be able to craft a lot more content than you might think at first glance to answer this question.

Some topics are somewhat easier to get started with. If you’re a knitting site, you’ll want to teach people to cast on. There are a few options, but the beginning is pretty easy to spot.

But of course, no one wants to stop there, because it isn’t any fun. From that, you’ll naturally segue in to things like, “Knitting your first scarf,” or into any one of nearly infinite possibilities for interesting beginner projects.

Some topics have more points of entry. Content marketing is one of those that we could start all kinds of places. We could talk blogging, or email, or social media management, or SEO, or white papers, or video tutorials — etc. etc.

For a site like Copyblogger, we’ve worked steadily over the years to create cornerstones for each of those possible points of entry, and then each of those leads to a more advanced and cohesive set of strategies. That naturally leads to things like our email library, as well as more advanced posts on those topics.

Cornerstone doesn’t mean boring!

Sometimes people think that “cornerstone” means you’re competing with Wikipedia for “most dry and boring content award.”

What makes your cornerstone uniquely valuable is knowing what you’re talking about and being interesting. Your voice, your unique angle, your point of view, your personality (or your organization’s personality), perhaps the unique audience you serve.

That’s why we don’t just have one universally recognized set of cornerstone content for really any topic on the web. There are different options to suit different kinds of people. And of course, lots of people, once they find one solid cornerstone piece, will look for a lot more.

The greater volume of genuinely useful and interesting content you have on your site, the longer you can keep that person there, clicking through and bingeing on all your great material.

We have free stuff!

I do want to let you know that we have a free mini-course coming up for you on exactly how to do this.

We’re calling it the Cornerstone Content Challenge, and we’re going to walk you through exactly how to create cornerstone content pages that help your site’s authority with your audience and with search engines.

Maybe even more important, we’ll show you how to make sure your cornerstone content serves a valid business purpose and moves your organization toward its goals. It’s not enough to rank in search or earn that social media click if the visitor doesn’t move forward with your business.

The mini course includes:

  • A free email course that walks you through how to create your cornerstone content.
  • A private forum where you can ask questions about the content challenge, and share links to content you’ve created.
  • An educational webinar about cornerstone content — exclusively for content challenge participants.

This is a fun new project that Pamela Wilson and I are creating, and it kicks off in early January. You can find it on the Copyblogger blog, swing by pinkhairedmarketer.fm for the link, or just come on over to copyblogger.com/blog and you’ll find it under the headline “A Practical Approach to Using Powerful Cornerstone Content on Your Site.”

Holiday schedule

Next week we’re going to run another encore session on Pink Haired Marketer — How Not to Get Sucker-Punched by Internet Facts.

The web is going crazy right now, maybe even a bit more than usual, with pseudo-facts and failures in critical thinking. Arm yourself! That episode airs December 21.

Then the entire network is taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. You may not realize that we have a small but insanely effective production team that keeps the podcast network running smoothly — and they are taking a very well-deserved week off.

I’ll be back the first Monday of the new year to talk about goals and vision, but if you want to do the complete cornerstone challenge, you’ll want to already be on the list when that post comes out.

Don’t forget to join the challenge!

The work of a cornerstone content creator is never done! At Copyblogger, we’re constantly strengthening what we have, as well as adding new cornerstone channels in to capture new kinds of searchers and learners.

We’ll show you exactly how we do it, and I would love to see your awesome work, as well as hang out with you in the private forum and on the exclusive webinar.

Swing by the Copyblogger blog to get signed up, or you can come by pinkhairedmarketer.fm and I’ll have a link for you.

See you with a new episode in 2016!

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Comments

  1. Susanta says

    December 15, 2015 at 9:27 PM

    Great podcast! Asking the right questions about your business is indeed the most important step to creating cornerstone content. I really enjoyed this episode. Keep ’em coming!

    Reply
    • Sonia Simone says

      December 16, 2015 at 9:06 AM

      Thanks Susanta! Hope you join us for the cornerstone challenge, will be fun (and free) and I think it will get a lot of folks’ sites into better shape!

      Reply

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