Aug 29, 2021
When you’re a side hustler, creating content to grow your business is essential, but there may be a piece you’re missing to really get the biggest return on your investment.
What is that missing piece?
Purpose.
Creating content purposefully means that not only does it provide value to your audience, but it also deliberately helps build your authority, strengthens your relationships with your audience, or actively sells your product or service.
Before we start digging into the 3 primary purposes of your content, let’s clarify what type of content we’re talking about. For today’s purposes, content refers to your weekly blog post, podcast, or video episode. Social media is a horse of a different color that we’ll talk about another day.
Purpose #1: Build Your Authority
Content that builds your authority is created to help your audience see you as an expert in your field. You want these posts or episodes to show off your wealth of knowledge and create the belief that you are the person that can help them solve the problem they have.
In other words, you want to be the person that comes to mind when they have a question.
Some types of posts or episodes you could create that build your authority are:
Tutorials
Myths vs Facts
Product or Tool Review
Mistakes and Lessons Learned
Lists
Case Studies
Monthly Updates & Stats
Frequently Asked Questions
A good call to action for your authority posts would be asking people to sign up for your email list with a free download.
You can learn more about these and other types of content you can share in this post https://sidehustleteachers.com/types-of-content-to-share/
Purpose #2: Strengthen Your Relationships
Another component of using content marketing is creating strong relationships with your audience.
Why is this important? Well, you may have heard the phrase, “Know, like, and trust,” because it’s the key to building a business. It’s not enough to be an expert. You also have to be a person they know, like, and trust.
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to be your audiences’ BFF (though that’s okay). You do have to be someone they feel understands them, and who can connect to them, and who has a personality they can learn from.
This means that there will be people who aren’t a good fit for you, which is okay.
Some types of posts or episodes you could create that strengthen your relationships are:
Mistakes and Lessons Learned
Personal Stories
Rants or Unpopular Opinions
Behind the Scenes
For relationship content, you may ask your audience to follow you on social media to get to know you better.
Purpose #3: Actively Sell
No matter how much your audience knows, likes, and trusts you, they won’t buy from you if they don’t know that you have something available for sale. That means you have to create content that is designed to move your audience to become customers.
These posts or episodes should still provide value, but think about content that you could share in which your call to action could be to buy.
Case Studies
Monthly Updates & Stats
Tutorials
The Right Balance
As in most things related to side hustles and life, there’s no one perfect equation you can use to figure out how to balance the purpose of your content. It’s not as easy as saying, “50% authority, 40% relationships, and 10% selling.” I wish it were.
But there are some posts or episodes you may share that have a dual purpose, or you may be serving in an area that is more technical and needs more authority content, or more personal, which needs more relationship strengthening.
As you go forward and create your content, keep in mind the purpose of each post or episode you share. Determine a purpose before you start to plan, and even go back through your old content to analyze how much of each type of content purpose. If you need to, go back and update your calls to action to match your purpose.
Join me on Tuesday at 7:30 pm (EDT) in the Side Hustle Teachers Facebook Group for a LIVE recap, answers to your questions, and more information and examples of creating content with a purpose!