My formula for finding content audience fit is quite simple and begins with answering these 3 questions:
1) What do I have experience doing?
2) What do I enjoy writing/talking about?
3) What do other people me you for advice on?
But even answering these questions isn’t enough because you may end up with a handful of topics.
Next, you should ask yourself:
What are the skills, topics, or interests that I can monetize?
Monetization can come in the form of career progression, a side hustle, or a current/future business opportunity (if you’re a startup founder then this topic should be tied to your expertise or the problem that your product solves).
For example, I enjoy writing about my fitness journey, I’ve been working out for close to 15 years now, and people often come to me for advice on their fitness goals.
But it’s not the primary focus of my career, interests, or future businesses.
It can be a sub-topic to a broader niche like “self development” but not the specific niche that I want people to immediately associate me with when they see my face online.
A better example would be social media marketing.
I have a decade of experience in social media, I truly enjoy writing about social strategy, and my DMs are usually filled with questions about content & social media.
And it’s something that I plan on doing for a long time.
Once you’ve landed on your primary niche that you have experience in, enjoy talking about, regularly get people asking for advice on, and can see yourself monetizing, then you can use these tips to developing a content strategy.
For the sake of simplicity and clarity, I’ll keep the social media marketing example but you can replace with your niche.
Questions to ask yourself during the content creation process:
Why do I love [insert niche]?
What’s one tip others can use to improve [insert niche]?
What tools would I recommend using for [insert niche]?
What are the most common questions I get about [insert niche]?
Tell a story about how I first got into [insert niche].
What have other people said about working with me in [insert niche]?
Who are other creators or builders who I follow in [insert niche]?
What would I tell someone who has a misunderstanding of [insert niche] and where would I point them to learn more?
What advice would I tell myself when I first got started in [insert niche]
Where do I think the future of [insert niche] is going and why?
Each question can result in tweets, long form posts, video series, and more.
Here’s how I’d answer #1:
I love social media marketing because it allows anyone to build an online presence given the low barrier of entry (compared to other marketing functions). It provides you with the ability to scale yourself through the form of content and online platforms like never before. It has made brand building and growing a business much more accessible since you can find any niche community and join without spending thousands of dollars. For those building a business, social marketing can impact your product development, distribution, acquisition, user research, customer service, and just about everything in-between. I view social media as the modern day leverage that is still under-appreciated and overlooked (which inherently provides opportunity for those wise enough to act now and begin building their online presence).
Then I’d turn this into a long form post with more examples, a few single tweets, and maybe mention this during a podcast interview and clip a video snippet for social.
I could also turn this into a recurring content series where I highlight 1 reason why I love social media marketing every week for a few months.
As you increase your content output using these templates, it would be wise to keep an eye on your analytics to see which sub topics or series perform best.
Overall engagement is a good indicator but pay extra attention to the posts that drive bookmarks, replies, and DMs — these are the ones that you want to double down on.
For example, one of the best performing topics for me is social media growth.
People are constantly asking me how to build their social presence.
They ask things like…
“How to I more reach people with my social content?”
“How do I grow a loyal following?”
“How do I increase my content output?”
“How do I increase engagement with my current followers?'“
Each question provides me with more content opportunities.
Keep a running tab of the questions that you receive and adjust your content strategy appropriately.
You can easily get started on this by going through your DMs from the past 30 days.
Map out any themes.
Then open up your analytics and see if there is any overlap with your past top performing content (simply filter by past 30 days and highest engagement).
Over time, you should see an uptick in content performance (since you’re proactively writing about what people want to see/learn from you).
Then it’s a matter of keeping up your consistency.
Final thing I’ll say is not 100% of your content needs to related to your primary niche.
I’d break it out like this (examples below reflect my content)
70% - Primary (Social Media Marketing)
20% - Secondary (Self-Development)
10% - Tertiary (Get to know me)
If you scroll through my social content, most of it is related to social media, content, growth, and everything related to building a social presence.
Then I sprinkle in some self development content, fitness updates, and stuff I’m learning.
And once in a while will share a spontaneous life update that isn’t directly tied to my primary or secondary niche, but more-so aimed at helping people get to know me personally a bit more, my story, and how I think.
Hope this all helps!
A few more posts that should help:
Best of luck!
And if you have any other questions as it relates to social media marketing, send me a tweet @ishverduzco and I’ll cover it in an upcoming edition.
^^See what I did there? 😉
If you’re finding value in this newsletter, I’d really appreciate a share on social!
It goes a long way for me.
Thank you!
Ish
What I loved this week:
