When you were making your first steps as a baby, your parents held you and supported you until you could walk on your own. It's the same with any complex digital marketing discipline: it's so much easier to adopt a habit of publishing content if someone shows you what to do, how to do it, and how to avoid common mistakes. That someone is a content marketing coach / mentor: an expert who can help you and your marketing team members introduce and adopt content marketing in your company.
Everyone Is Blogging for Business.
Everyone but you.
It's not that you don't understand the value of content marketing. You do. You know that your competitors' blog posts are receiving free traffic from Google, and it frustrates you because your company deserves some of that traffic.
It's not that you suck at writing. You can write. In fact, from time to time, you do publish a decent news article or an interesting social post that gets some attention.
The thing is, you're aware that content marketing is complex, and that there are a million little pieces of knowledge about content marketing that you should juggle with, but it's.just.too.much.to.handle.at.once.
Content marketing frustrates you. You're intimidated and confused by it. But you know you have to do it!
Where Do You Even Start With Content Marketing?
Should you watch online tutorials? You did. There are so many of them.
Should you read blogs about content marketing? You did, and you have no idea whom to listen to, or which information is outdated.
Should you attend content marketing workshops, where you could ask the expert your many questions? It requires too much time to attend the workshops, and you suspect it could take years to soak in all the knowledge you need to feel comfortable in your own shoes.
Should you ask questions on social forums and communities? The last time you did, people replied to you with snarky comments or simply ignored you. You're still not sure which of the two is worse.
Should you hire a content writer? You know it's an option, but first you'd like to try writing content yourself.
Should you just give up and hire an employee to do content marketing for your company? That does not seem like a smart idea, at least not until you're sure that you can make content marketing work for your business.
Start With Getting Help from a Personal Content Marketing Coach / Mentor
Imagine being a complete beginner who can write content with a confidence of an expert. That's what you get by hiring a personal content marketing coach: you write, and the coach provides all the guidance you need, at the time you need it, as much as you need (but not too much at once).
Here's what a personal content marketing coach could do for you:
- You write, the coach edits.
- The coach writes, you learn.
- Sit in monthly coaching calls / virtual workshops, where you can ask the questions, practice writing skills, and acquire the knowledge you need at that moment.
Contact us for content coaching services
What Can Content Coach Teach You?
The short answer is: everything you need to improve your content writing skills and get the results you desire, such as increased website traffic, lead generation, and online sales.
Big results are achieved by consistently doing many small things the right way. Here are just a couple of things you can work on with your coach, in no order of importance.
Generate Blog Post Ideas
Should you write about product/service X or Y, or about something completely different? Let the coach decide about your first steps.
Write Better Blog Post Headlines
Should your headlines be shorter or longer? Which keywords should you include, and how many of them?
Optimize Your Blog Posts for Google
We're talking about the SEO stuff here, such as:
- Writing good TITLE tags
- Writing good META descriptions
- Writing H1 headings
- Embedding keywords into content, etc.
Also, what's with those big Google algorithm changes you read about the other day? Imagine being able to ask questions like these and getting actionable answers you can trust.
Learn to Interpret Google Analytics Data
What if you could stop guessing and start making marketing decisions based on what your website's data tells you? Google Analytics can tell you things such as:
- What to write about,
- How your content performs,
- Where you're losing visitors, etc.
You only need to learn where in Google Analytics to look for answers, how to interpret the data, and which actions you should take based on that data.
Analyze Google Ads (AdWords) Reports
You know that email you get from your advertising agency once a month, the one you open and promptly close because you don't really know what to do with it? Yeah, this report can inform your content marketing choices and tell you what you could write about. You could even lower the costs of advertising! Your coach can teach you how to read those reports and help you improve your relationship with your advertising agency.
Research Keywords and Find Hidden Gems Among Them
It helps to learn how to use the various free professional keyword tools such as Google Search Console and Google Keyword Planner. Even the most basic knowledge in this area can signifficantly improve the results you get from content marketing. Your coach can teach you how to apply the knowledge on everyday tasks such as deciding which topics to blog about and how to improve the ranking of the blog posts you already published.
Get Strategic About Content Marketing
Content marketing strategy is probably the hardest part about content marketing. Even the experts struggle with it. We struggle with it. Sometimes we struggle with strategy because we can't see forest for the trees. An independent expert can help you achieve clarity and focus, and introduce content marketing strategy at your own pace.
Why Pay for a Content Mentoring Service?
It may not be obvious to everyone, so here goes the list of benefits.
Avoid Beginner's Mistakes
A simple blunder you keep repeating from blog post to blog post may cost you all the results you're hoping to get.
For example, what if there are technical issues with your website which prevent Google from indexing your blog posts? In cases such as that, you could be writing all you want without getting any new traffic from Google.
Your coach can point to the lowest hanging (rotten) fruits and teach you how to do content marketing right.
Content of Higher Quality
Sometimes, a beginner's work can be improved to top-notch quality by investing no more than a half an hour of work by an expert.
For example, the informational value if your content may be great, but your writing style makes your blog posts hard to read. In such a case, a content coach can edit your content and teach you how to do it better next time. Really, it's not rocket science, but unless someone points out areas of improvement, you won't improve (as fast as you could).
Lessons Are Custom-Tailored to You Personally
A quick glance at your blog posts is enough for a coach to precisely assess how much guidance you need, and in which content marketing areas. It's hard to get that level of assistance by attending group workshops, no matter how small those groups are.
Skills and Knowledge Come to You, and Not the Other Way Around
No matter where you are, you can attend personal coaching sessions using video conference apps such as Skype or Zoom. There's no need to waste time commuting to wherever the workshops are being held.
Very Little Theory and Lots and Lots of Practical Exercises
Forget old-school classrooms, where you sit and listen to someone drone on about content marketing topics you don't need to hear for the fifth time. With coaching sessions you get exactly what you need, when you need it: practical skills and just enough theoretical knowledge to advance your skills.
No Need to Figure Out Which Skills You Lack
Let the coach do the figuring out part, and show you how to apply new skills and knowledge to your content.
Let Someone Else Make the Toughest Decisions
When you're just starting out, you may want the coach to guide your strategy and other tough topics such as content idea generation, content optimization, etc. At some point, you will take over your content marketing, but for now you can rely on an expert to do the heavy lifting.
Get Access to a Wide Body of Knowledge and Expertise
A good content marketing coach has knowledge about and experience in a wide range of marketing disciplines that go way beyond content marketing. By hiring a good generalist coach you get access to related disciplines such as digital advertising, email marketing, social networks, data analytics, etc.
Get Answers to All Your Questions
Anything you ask is kept private and you won't be ridiculed or denigrated for not having the most basic knowledge about something. There are no stupid questions, and there is no shame in not knowing. There's only plenty of opportunity to learn and practice.
Accountability
Working with a coach motivates you to do your homework and actually publish something. This aspect is not present when you attend group workshops or watch video tutorials: it all falls on how strong-willed and disciplined you are. Having someone to check up on you and your progress sometimes makes all the difference.
No Risk of Getting Addicted to Your Coach
Good coaches design their sessions so that they transfer knowledge from themselves to you. The whole point is to equip you with self-confidence and practical, DIY skills you can use even when the coach is not around. At some point, your training wheels will come off, and who knows? Maybe you'll be the one coaching your junior employees later what the coach taught you today.
Who Needs a Content Marketing Mentor?
Scenario #1: For Business Owners
You'd like to hire a content coach to personally assist you. This is great if you want to learn basic and then advanced content marketing skills, put them to good use in your company, and establish certain practices before you hire someone else to take over your marketing department. When the time comes to delegate content marketing work to another employee, the skills you acquire now will come in very handy.
Scenario #2: For Your Junior Marketers
Hiring a junior marketer is a great choice if you're serious about getting started with digital / content marketing. But what if you lack the skills and time to coach that person yourself? A junior marketer is usually a young person who lacks both depth and breadth in digital marketing, but is passionate about it and learns really fast. Outsoucing marketing coaching to an expert is a good way to save money (because you don't have to hire a senior marketer) and make sure that your junior marketer learns to produce quality work.
Scenario #3: For Your (Small) Marketing Team
Your marketing team is probably experienced in other marketing disciplines, but may struggle with content marketing (strategy). This is a perfect scenario for hiring a content marketing coach, who could deliver assistance custom-tailored to the exact level of expertise of your team.
An alternative to hiring a content coach would be to try to hire an employee with advanced content marketing skills, however people with that level of expertise AND the ability to teach others are rarely available on the job market.
How Content Marketing Coaching Works
Starting small and gradually increasing the scope of the service is probably the best way to start any coaching engagement. For example, you could hire a coach for only a couple of coaching hours a month, just to see how the two of you work together, and to give you enough time to ease into the habit of content creation.
You can expect to be able to ask questions via chat, email, or voice whenever you like.
You hop on a weekly or monthly call with your coach. You will get insights about the content that you wrote and its results.
The coach edits and improves your content or writes new content. It's all a matter of the level of service you agreed on.
You're free to decide to stop, pause, or increase your coaching sessions on a month-to-month basis. Flexibility is the key to good collaboration.
Curious About Content Coaching Service?
We offer personalized content coaching as part of our content consulting service.
Why don't you contact us for a free assessment? In our first discussion, you could:
- Introduce us to your company,
- Tell us about your ideas and struggles regarding content marketing,
- Explain what kind of content you'd like to get assistance with, and
- We'd suggest the best course of action given your particular needs.