Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods out there, with lower up-front costs and deeper long-term benefits than paid search. Also, users are getting over-saturated with ads, and therefore starting to tune out. Many users are using ad-blockers, and click-farms and bots are both decreasing the conversion rates of ads, making smart marketers turn to alternatives like content marketing. Gary Vaynerchuck is one of the leading marketing figures to listen to when it comes to content marketing, and he’s created an incredible resource for diving deep into his content model.
However, you’ll notice that the very first pre-requisite for his content model is what he calls “pillar content,” or very long-form content that you can produce micro-content from. But if you’re a small business or startup, you probably don’t have much pillar content out there. Most founders aren’t traveling the world, giving hundreds of speeches and putting out insane loads of content on a regular basis. Basically, most entrepreneurs have to start from scratch when it comes to content marketing. So this article is for those that are fairly new to the game.
While Vaynerchuck’s content pyramid goes from pillar content to micro-content to social network distribution, going from scratch is almost the opposite. You’ll want to start with sharing your ideas and creating a following on social media. You’ll create quotes, memes, gifs, and short stories shared across different channels.
Once you’ve amassed a decent following and have created a lot of content across channels, you can now move to longer-form content, like articles. You now have enough ideas, social feedback, and content to create posts and articles worth hundreds of words. The best part is that you can easily repurpose many pieces of smaller content into larger ideas.
Finally, the last step of our content model (from scratch) is creating pillar content. You don’t get keynote speaking slots or writing deals without having something meaningful to say, but by now you’ve amassed a following on social, and have shared your expertise in articles, so you’re ready to add more value (and ask for more of people’s time) with very long-form content. This includes things like keynotes, e-books, and webinars.
Ultimately, Gary Vee’s content model can work wonders for people with a lot of “pillar content” out there, but for content marketing to work for those new to the game, it makes sense to come up with micro-content ideas from scratch, then moving up to longer posts and articles, and finally working up to things like e-books and speeches.