First of all, what does leverage mean? It means to use a quality or advantage to get a desired outcome or result. The outcome or result you’re looking for is to grow your business and increase your brand, right? The quality or advantage you are going to use to accomplish that is your expertise. The idea I’m going to share with today is based on using your area of expertise in multiple ways to establish yourself as the authority figure in your area. The reason behind this is to simplify and systematize your marketing efforts. There are so many options for marketing that it can be overwhelming and frustrating when you’re setting up your strategy.
One caveat first: this works best when you have a clear idea of what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. In other words, you’re marketing to your ideal client.
For today’s exercise let’s use an article as our starting point. Writing an article is a great way to establish yourself as an expert. Even if writing isn’t your favorite thing to do, it is worth developing this skill and making it a central part of your marketing arsenal. Why? Because there are so many ways to reuse an article. Another way to look at it is developing content. Content adds value and you want to be known as a resource. It doesn’t need to be a long article. In fact, the shorter the better as long as you pack it full of content rich material.
Once you have a topic that is relevant to your audience (why the target market is important) and you have written the article, here are the ways you can use it:
- Post it on your blog. You can set up a blog for free on wordpress.com. Once your blog is set up, you can link to it from your website.
- Then copy the URL and post your fascinating article to your Facebook fan page, your groups on LinkedIn, and Twitter. Your archived articles are a great resource when you’re updating your social media sites.
- Use your article as a base for developing a seminar or webinar. Become known as the expert in your field by consistently presenting quality content.
There’s no getting around the fact that there is work involved. You have to come up with the topic and write the article, but once you have it, you can use it multiple ways and that is the key to leveraging your material. That is the key to saving yourself time and money.
Here’s how this works in real life: Each week I decide on the topic for my online radio show, Monday Morning Movation, then I write it up so I have an outline for the call. The outline becomes an article for my blog, my blog become a post for my social media accounts, and as I build my library of articles I will have a material for a book or a seminar. It takes about 45 minutes a week and I have a system in place.
My encouragement for you this week is that you will start a list of topics that you can write about and start developing a marketing strategy that allows you to save time by leveraging your materials.
Guest Writer – Liz Uram
Liz Uram, owner of The Coach & Mentor Group, is a certified professional coach, has a B.A. in Organizational Leadership, and is the author of How to Organize & Manage Your Time – A One Year Planning and Action Guide.