No matter what your area of expertise or level of experience, if you’re not sharing your knowledge with your audience, you’re going to struggle to grow your business.
Content creation is the top skill that can take you from invisible to industry leader in just a short time…
But to do that you need to learn how to create content that converts.
To find out more about exactly how entrepreneurs can produce winning content, we chatted to Kyshira Moffett, a business strategist, coach, author and founder of the Power Collective.
Kyshira specializes in helping small business owners package their expertise into high ticket content and coaching programs and she shared her expert knowledge at our Think In Color conference.
Read on for Kyshira’s top tips to help you create content that converts – plus ideas to help you repurpose your existing content.
- Why you need content for your brand
- The difference between paid and free content
- 3 examples of how to repurpose your content
- How to plan your content strategy
- 5 tips to create content that converts
- 3 key takeaways
Why you need content for your brand
Whether you’re a course creator, coach or educator, the vast majority of your interactions with customers revolve around content.
Content is at the center of your products, your services, your marketing, your community and all your brand interactions.
You don’t have a physical storefront where customers can come and visit you and see your products in person – everything happens online and through content.
That means that your content is a make or break element in your business.
Without content that converts interested people into paying customers, you’re going to seriously struggle to grow your brand and generate revenue.
Content is the missing link between you and your customers – so you need to get it right.
Kyshira breaks it down for us…
Using content to connect your audience with your brand
At its heart, content is an education tool, says Kyshira.
Content helps educate your audience about your brand and move prospective customers step-by-step through your sales funnel from brand awareness to brand interest and finally to making a purchase.
Kyshira’s 3 step funnel helps to simplify the customer education process and make it easy to see how your content can convert customers.
1. Brand awareness
For many customers, your content will be the first contact they have with your brand.
At the brand awareness stage, people have an idea of who you are. They might engage with you on social media or have browsed through your website. They might even have heard about you in the press or read your guest blog – but they haven’t bought anything from you yet.
In the awareness phase, prospective customers are aware of your brand but they haven’t taken any real action. This is where lead generation content is really important to increase brand awareness – and encourage your audience to convert into leads.
Check out our ultimate list of lead magnet ideas you can use to create content that converts.
2. Brand interest
The next rung of the ladder is brand interest, where prospective customers convert into leads. This means they start taking actions that bring them closer to your business – but they’re still not making any purchases yet.
At this stage, your prospective customers have done something to show their interest in your brand – like joining your mailing list or signing up for a freebie or an event. You have their information in your database and they’re now officially a lead who’s shown interest in your business.
This means they move on to level 3.
3. Making a purchase
The last step is where you convert your prospective customers or leads into paying customers. That means making a purchase, signing up for a subscription or buying something from you.
These people have bought into your brand – they trust your expertise, they’re convinced of the value of your products and they’re willing to hand over their money to get what you’re offering.
Your content is what will get them to this stage.
So what types of content are we talking about?
- Social media content
- Email marketing content
- Ad content
- Website content
- Podcasts
- And many more!
There are a wide range of different types of content that you can use to generate leads and convert interested audience members into paying customers.
The difference between paid content and free content – and how to use both
When you’re creating content, you’re going to want to divide your content into free and paid content.
But how do you know what content to give away for free and what to charge your audience to access?
The trick is to think about your content as a value chain, says Kyshira.
The higher you climb up your value chain, the more value your audience receives from your content and the higher the price you need to attach to it.
Free Content
Free content is exactly what it sounds like – it’s content you produce and publish that anyone can access for free. You don’t charge a fee for this content. Instead, you use it as a conversion tool.
Your free content should tell your audience something – but not everything.
With free content, your aim is to teach your audience something new about a topic while building up your audience’s awareness of your brand. You can also use free content to establish yourself as an expert and thought leader in your industry.
The trick with free content is to hold some things back – you don’t want to give away all your secrets for free! Otherwise there’s nothing to convince prospective customers to pay for your content further down the line…
So when you’re creating free content, keep in mind that you’re helping your audience to understand the core problems and pain points in their lives – and introducing them to your solutions to those problems.
Here are Kyshira’s favorite types of free content:
- Telling her brand story
- Countering misconceptions about the topic
- Answering frequently asked questions
- Illustrating a pain point that the course can solve
- Commenting on current events and industry debates
The trick to creating free content that converts is to establish yourself as an expert and show your audience why you’re the best person to help them overcome whatever challenges they’re facing.
Kyshira’s example
Kyshira gives this example for creating your free content – say you have a course on ‘How to Leverage Instagram to Make More Sales’, for your free content you can share one thing from that course to win over prospective customers.
You might create free content on ‘Three mistakes you’re making on Instagram’. This would help your audience to learn where they may be making mistakes while also positioning you as an expert in their eyes.
You’re giving them ideas that they can use immediately – and opening up the opportunity for them to purchase more content from you in the future.
Entry level content
The next step in your value chain is your entry level content. This is where you start to teach people in a structured way – and it involves payment of some kind.
It’s up to you what the price tag is for your entry level content – it might be $10 up to $200 or even more.
This type of content would include your basic course, downloadable resources and training videos.
Entry level content is typically self-paced content, so learners can follow along at their own speed. Your entry level content is pre-produced so it involves minimal day-to-day input from you.
Customers can learn from you in an affordable, accessible way – without filling up your schedule. After all, your time is valuable!
Mid-level content
The higher level of content – your mid-level content – is what Kyshira calls ‘do-it-with-you’ content.
This is your content that’s highly interactive, typically coaching programs or group courses that involve direct input from you or your team.
This type of content can include:
- Live webinars
- Group Zoom calls
- Office hours
- One-to-one coaching
- Live Q&A sessions
Students get to hear from you directly and have their questions answered. You provide guidance, feedback and support in addition to the course content.
You might also create extra resources and exclusive videos as part of your mid-level content offering.
This type of content involves more involvement from you or your team and therefore it’s priced higher – you provide more value to your audience as there are more opportunities for in-depth learning. Think of this as your premium product.
High-level content
The highest level of content is what Kyshira calls ‘do-it-for-you’ content.
This is the type of content that includes brand partnerships – where you’re creating content for another brand or business and producing the work for them.
That might be podcasts, graphic design, web design, photography, copywriting or anything else. This ‘do-it-for-you’ content has the highest price tag as it involves extensive involvement from you.
If you can establish a reputation in your industry through high quality content, you can open up a whole new revenue stream for your business by securing corporate clients.
This is the content that converts into big sums – and can really take your business to the next level.
The good news is, you don’t have to be an influencer to build brand partnerships, you just need good content and the ability to turn your knowledge into problem-solving for brands.
Read more: How to Do Brand Partnerships (Strategy + Outreach Template + Tips)
3 examples of how to repurpose your content
If you read the last section about the different levels of content and thought – “Ok but that sounds like a lot of work” – don’t worry!
Kyshira’s favorite way to save time and resources is to repurpose content across different channels.
This works for free content and paid content alike.
When you’ve produced one type of content, you can easily adapt and enhance it to suit different channels and products.
Here are 3 examples to give you a better idea of how it works.
Example 1 – Blog posts
If you take the time to write a long-form blog post – why not use that content for your social media posts too?
You can easily dissect a 5 paragraph blog post into 5-10 social media posts, for instance, by drawing out the key points, eye-catching statistics and bullet lists. Use your existing blog structure to guide your social media posts.
You could also create infographics from your blog content to give your posts a visual, shareable element.
These types of posts are ideal for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Example 2 – Live streaming
Live streaming is one of Kyshira’s top lead generation methods – and all that content can be repurposed into other forms of content.
Kyshira loves to repurpose her live stream content to use across different channels, including:
- YouTube
- Social media
- E-Books
- Workbooks
- Webinars
- Mini courses
- Podcasts
- Email courses
It’s really unlikely that every one of your audience members is going to watch your live streams – so recycle that knowledge and juicy content into new formats!
Top tip: Your live stream themes can also build on your paid course content, so you don’t even need to make up fresh content there! Just adapt your existing course or coaching content to make your live streams or webinars – this lets them act as a teaser for your paid content.
Example 3 – Case studies
Case studies are a super customizable content format that you can use for a huge range of content that converts customers.
Case studies are brilliant for showing customers what’s possible with your business, giving them a real-life example for inspiration and highlighting your approach to specific problems and pain points that they might have.
Here are a few ideas for different types of case studies:
- Client success stories
- Step-by-step case study of how you approach a situation
- Current events
If you have long-form testimonials from your clients, they’re an ideal type of content to turn into case studies. Collect customer feedback, reviews and testimonials and transform them into blog posts, social media content, interviews, podcasts, email content and more.
How to plan your content strategy
The secret to creating content that’s consistent, cohesive and converts your customers is to pre-plan what you want to produce and when.
It’s much easier to create content if you have a clear plan to refer to. Kyshira calls this her Content Vault – essentially a Google Drive where she stores all her content ideas for each month of the year.
Her favorite technique for brainstorming content is the index card technique. Here’s how to do it.
The index card technique
- Get index cards and get started: Cut a piece of paper into rectangles or buy index cards, grab your pen and start thinking…
- Think of 2-3 major topics: Select topics that you’re qualified to write about, that you feel comfortable with and that are related to your course content. Think broad, very general topics. Write them on one side of the index card.
- Select subtopics: Flip the index cards over and then write down subtopics for each major topic, around 3-5 for each card – these are more specific ideas for your content.
- Link your subtopics together: Once you’ve got your subtopics down, look at how to link them together into a series. Imagine how they could work as a series of guides, live streams or podcasts – then just like that you’ve got a month of content.
This type of brainstorming is really helpful to give you an overarching view of your content for each month – repeat it 12 times and you have a whole year of content ideas.
You can also use a spreadsheet if you prefer to do a digital version of the index card technique.
Here’s an example of how the method could work with Kyshira’s content:
Major topic: How to stand out in a saturated market
Subtopics:
- 3 ways to stand out on Instagram
- 5 ways to find your unique value proposition
- 3 ways to price yourself competitively
Content ideas:
- Blog series
- Podcast series
- Newsletters
- Captions for social media
Kyshira can use each of her subtopic ideas to create 4 different types of content – giving her one month of content across 4 different channels, all based around one major topic that links back to her paid content or course.
Think of every platform like a different touchpoint
The trick to create content that converts is to think about your content strategy as a whole.
Rather than looking at each channel individually, all your content should link together and work with each other.
Why?
Most people engage with brands across multiple platforms and types of content.
You might read a brand’s marketing emails, follow them on Instagram and listen to their podcast now and again.
Your job as a content creator is to think about how you can leverage all these tools in connection with one another.
This will make your content strategy a lot easier for you to create – and for your customers to digest and understand.
You don’t need 30 different pieces of content spread across all your channels. Instead, you can create 5-10 pieces of content and adapt them for each different content channel.
Once you’ve brainstormed your content and planned it out, you can then use it to create an editorial calendar so you know what you need to produce and publish when and you have a clear timeline.
Here are Kyshira’s 5 tips to help you produce content that converts – and keeps your customers coming back,
5 tips to create content that converts
1. Leverage trends, popular culture and events
If you’re creating content for your brand, use trends, event days and popular culture to your advantage.
This not only makes it easier to think up new content ideas and keep your content fresh – it also makes sure your brand is relevant and up-to-date.
This is especially important for big changes in your industry or field – as a thought leader you need to be commenting on events, debates and changes to show that you’re on top of what’s happening and what’s important to your audience.
This type of content will also help you position yourself as an expert that people turn to for expert analysis and advice.
2. Keep your content simple
In every piece of content you create, make sure it’s accessible and easy to understand for ordinary people. Write about every topic in basic language and don’t get bogged down by jargon and big words.
Keep it simple and communicate clearly to your audience.
3. Add a Call-To-Action and power words
To write content that converts, you also need to include a Call-To-Action (CTA) to direct people to take action and create a sense of urgency in your content.
CTAs in your content signpost what your audience needs to do next – whether that’s signing up for your mailing list, downloading a resource or making a purchase. Add them to all your content, including social media, podcasts, blog posts and more.
Check out our list of 50 power words to use in your content to boost conversions.
4. Use social proof to create FOMO
Another way to transform your content is to utilize social proof in your content – by showing off who else is using and buying your products and services.
Social proof lets you leverage FOMO – the fear of missing out – in your content to convert more of your audience into customers.
There’s a whole range of different types of social proof you can use, including:
- Testimonials
- Brand partnerships
- User generated content (UGC)
- Case studies and customer examples
- 3rd party reviews
You can either create dedicated social proof content – like case studies – or you can sprinkle social proof throughout other types of content.
Top tip: Add a CTA to your content to generate more social proof for your business, such as ‘Write us a review today!’ or ‘Tag us in your photos’!
5. Don’t worry about being on every social media platform
If you’re a small business owner, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to be active on every social media platform to convert your audience into customers.
You do not have to be on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. These are all amazing tools and platforms to help you grow your business – but that doesn’t mean that you have to leverage every single one of them.
When you’re starting out with creating content for your business or you’re a solo entrepreneur, just pick one or two platforms to work on.
This will allow you to focus your energy on creating content for those platforms – and avoid burnout in the process.
To future proof your brand, Kyshira recommends making profiles on every popular social media platform so you can secure your brand name. Create a profile, put a bio, add a link to your website and a photo of you or your brand logo. Then forget about it – you know it’s there if you ever need it but it doesn’t require your attention right now.
To create content that converts, you need to concentrate on your strongest marketing channels first.
6. Use analytics to your advantage
Every major content platform has built in analytics and insights tools that you can leverage to your advantage. Make sure you’re reviewing your analytics regularly to see what’s working for you and where you’re getting the most engagement. This also lets you decide which platforms you should focus on to get the most returns.
If you’re looking to create content that converts – you need to be tracking your conversions to see where your content strategy needs tweaking.
Kyshira’s 3 key takeaways
Here are Kyshira’s top content best practices to make sure every piece of content you produce delivers the conversions you’re hoping for.
Be consistent
When it comes to creating content that converts, Kyshira highlights the importance of consistency. That doesn’t mean posting every day across every content channel you have. What it does mean is showing up when your audience expects you to.
For example, if you set a routine that you’re going to be hosting an Instagram Live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week, then you need to make sure that you’re meeting those expectations for your audience.
This is how you build your reputation as an expert in your industry – and convert your audience into customers in the future.
Be selective
With any content that you produce, it’s all about quality over quantity.
Don’t create content just for the sake of it. Create with purpose.
While it’s important to post new content regularly so your audience knows you’re still there, you don’t need to churn out new content every day in order to be seen and get visibility.
Instead, says Kyshira, it’s all about leaving a lasting impression with your content. Create something memorable and genuinely valuable for your audience and they’ll keep coming back to you.
And remember – you can repurpose old content and still produce valuable insights for your audience.
Be patient
One common pitfall Kyshira sees in her students is creators trying out a content funnel and then throwing it away if they don’t get the results they’re looking for right away.
When you’re creating new content and repurposing your old content, you need to be patient.
If you’re not getting conversions, Kyshira recommends looking at your analytics and identifying where you may have missed a step in the funnel instead of starting from scratch.
This might mean analyzing where customers have dropped off or checking to make sure there aren’t any technical issues preventing conversions.
If you can continue to edit your funnel and tweak it, you can keep building on your existing work to get the results you want. It takes some patience and trial and error – but don’t give up!
To create content that converts you need to have a clear plan and a long-term strategy, change probably won’t happen overnight. But little-by-little, you can increase your conversions and build your brand.
The secrets to creating content that converts
You don’t have to be a big name brand or influencer to create content that converts your audience into paying customers. Any entrepreneur or course creator can create content that provides value to your audience and turns them into long-term, loyal customers.
