Hey, friends, how are you guys this week? I hope everyone is leaning into spring. We’ve had the weirdest weather here in Portland for the last month and a half. But I think it might be on the upswing, I don’t know. Yes, knocking on my fake wood desk there, you know, just making sure that we’re all covering bases here, right. But anyway, beyond that, I am back into the swing of things here in Britney Gardner land. And today, we’re going to be talking about 3 steps to awesome client-focused content. 

And I talked about content a lot, but can we just acknowledge something for a second here.

Content is really anything that you create; that funnel – its content, the email you send to clients as they onboard – content, what you actually are putting in a course or a program, or what you’re sharing in your one-to-one work – of course, that is content. 

But when it comes to creating good content that brings in good leads that turn into revenue, there are a lot of questions. What to say, where to say it, when to say it? They start feeling like you need your own personal Nostradamus, right? 

I am here to take the ambiguity out of all of that. And there are really only three things that you need to nail to not only create good content but do it in a way that doesn’t take over your life and your client-facing time. And then, of course, keeping you organized doing it.

Those three things are the strategy, the measurement and system, and the daily what to say. 

Now before I dive into the nitty-gritty on those three things, I want to tell you a short story about my mooching neighborhood squirrels. Yes, I already referenced that it is spring here in the PNW, and two months ago, we had a glorious February and March.  The weather was really quite lovely. Honestly, I was working outside on our back patio quite a bit. And April’s been kind of a letdown, you know, the whole like false spring meme. I think we were on a whole month of false winter number three. Anyway. Before that happened, had done a really heavy day of weightlifting. And then you know, I was already all sweaty and groggy from the gym and I came home and I was like, I’m gonna start planting my bulbs because I wanted really pretty blooms all around me. And I already saw the beginnings of a bunch of blooms coming up from our previous house owners, lots of tulips, scads of irises, as it turns out quite a few mature peonies, and I started posting them I actually did not know what the peonies were as they started coming up from the ground because I’ve never grown them before and I texted my friend Mary Elaine, she’s like my gardening guru friend. And I was like, What is this? And she’s like, those look like beautiful, glorious mature peonies. Can I come over and divide some and steal some from you? And I was like, Yeah. Well, before she came over, I had already planted all these bulbs. And the next day I was at another friend’s house so sore from all of my weightlifting, I think I overdid it that day. And then doubly sore because I had been planting all of those balls, you know, like leaning over bending over squatting, all the stuff. And my husband calls me while I’m at a friend’s house and he’s like, have you seen the front yard? The squirrels dug up all the work you did. And I was devastated. Because not only was a super sore from weightlifting and then also super sore from planting those bulbs, it just felt like such a waste. And I was really upset I was pissed. I started Googling all the remedies on how to get squirrels out of my yard. I’ve been sprinkling red pepper flakes, by the way all over my yard ever since then, to some varying degree of success. And then Mary Elaine came over she came over to divide those peonies and she was commiserating with me about all my dug-up stuff. And she told me a story. 

Now Mary Elaine and I have a mutual friend Steph, who is no longer with us. And a year ago, the two of them decided to buy a crapload of tulip bulbs and plant them all over Merlin’s neighborhood as just a way to cheer people up. And the same thing happened to them. The squirrels came and they dug up all the bulbs and like merely was seeing like eating out husks all over the neighborhood and she was just livid, like, we spent all this time to make people happy. And you stupid squirrels, you came and dug up all of our work, right? And as it turns out, they didn’t dug dig them all up. And this is what Marilyn was telling me. Just this year, not the year they planted them, but this year, tulips have been popping up everywhere and Merlin’s neighborhood. And it’s kind of a double blessing, right? Because Steph is no longer with us. And it was this thing that Marlene didn’t stuff and she was like, Britney, the squirrels might have gotten some other bulbs, and they might have dug some of them up and that’s unfortunate. But you’re going to be surprised by how much salt comes up. And I’m waiting here it’s May you know, June should be coming soon. I might see the beginnings of those bulbs. I’m really hoping for the best. 

But it’s always kind of this idea that you’re putting all this work in, you’re doing it, you’re already tired. Whether it’s from lifting or just, regular life, you’re already tired, you’re putting in the work and you’re making your content. And some of it’s just falling flat, it’s not giving you the results that you’ve wanted, and planting seeds and creating content, they have a lot in common. They have more in common.

If you’ve nailed these three ingredients that I was talking about:

1. knowing your best client intimately in the least creepy way possible
2. tying in personal, but relevant stories that make your businesses relatable
3. balancing the kinds of content you publish. 

And you’ll note I didn’t say the kinds of content you create, but the kinds of content that you’re scheduling. Remember, we want to make sure that our content is not running our life; it’s supporting our life on the business that we have created so that we can live our life. 

So I’m going to dive into these three in a little bit more detail here.

1. Knowing your best client intimately in the least creepy way possible.

All right, so that is all about knowing who your best client is. And if you’ve listened to the show before, you know that I talk all about ditching the ideal client avatar. It’s jargony, it puts up a wall between you and your audience. And it’s not something we as small and micro businesses really need to be worried about, we just need to know who our best client is, who is the person we can most easily help in an efficient way with the problem they most urgently want to fix. That is your best client. It’s not going to necessarily have demographics that are the same among everyone. Yes, you can work with both women and men, you can work with both 25-year-olds and 45-year-olds. Those demographics work for other kinds of businesses, and they might work for ours. But they aren’t necessarily the be-all-end-all. So knowing your best client intimately. What are they thinking, and what is driving them? You know, I talk all the time when I’m talking about content about knowing what their goals are their spoken goals, their desires, their unspoken goals, their hurdles to buying, you know, what will actually get in the way of them buying to work with you. And then also their anxieties, those pain points, right? All those things that they’re really deeply worried about. When you can word those anxieties, in their words, when you can acknowledge those things before they even have a chance to bring them up, you become a genius in their eyes. That is why your best client work is so important. And if you need help in this area, I do have the Best Client Builder available for purchase on my website. And it is a quick, easy, less than an hour-long exercise you can walk through to do that work, so you can create better content to serve your audience and get them in that first step of the journey towards becoming one of your clients. So that’s number one. 

2. Tying in personal but relevant stories that make your business lessons relatable.

And that squirrel story – you think I just threw it in there for fun entertainment purposes? I mean, I did. It’s kind of funny, right? And it has an uplifting moral at the end. It’s really lovely that Mary Elane and well, Marilyn gotta see the flowers that she and stuff planted. But I also tied it in because I’m talking about laying seeds with your content. And it’s a relevant story that makes the lessons that I’m talking about in this episode, easier to apply in your life. That’s what good stories do. You can call them metaphors. You can call them intros, you can call them transitions, and you can use them in all of those various areas. But the point of including them is, one – humanize yourself as a person, hey, I’m a person; two – the most important part of that story is to make sure that people understand what you’re really saying. This is that experts curse. When we are the expert, we don’t always remember the early stages and the early things we needed to know to get to where we are today. Putting relevant stories into your content helps bridge that gap, it helps connect the dots between where your audience member is today, where they want to be, and how you are going to help get them there.

3. Balancing the kinds of content you publish

That brings us to that third thing, balancing the kinds of content you publish. And I want to reiterate, not the kinds of content you create, but the kinds of content that you’re scheduling on a regular basis. I am a big fan of only creating one new piece of content a week because that’s attainable. That fits within my lifestyle. And as I’ve already said, I created my business to support my life not to run my life. Now, if I’m only creating one new piece of content a week, how am I having a robust content schedule? How am I fulfilling that, but you’re everywhere, Brittany thing that everyone always tells me? And it’s because I’m repurposing the content I’ve already made in the past. I’m repurposing good, hard-hitting content that does generate leads in my business. And I know this because I am measuring it with my Content Dashboard along the way. When I’m talking about balancing the kinds of content you publish, if you want more information on that, head back to Episode 181 of the podcast, it’s all about showing your brand and content. I walk you through my old new borrowed and blue content balancing, and it’s relatable. It’s something that you can do in your business. It’s memorable. It’s an old cliche wedding film, right. But more importantly, it helps you balance that old content, things you’ve already created, and the one weekly new piece of content you’re creating. And then you’re borrowed and blue, which you’re going to want to go listen to the episode to find out what those are in more detail, of course. But when you’re doing that, it gives you a really nice, easy way to make client-focused content. And client-focused content is the kind of content that’s going to result in good leads for your business and interested leads. It’s going to take you out of the world of cold leads and into the world of warm leads, which ultimately will help you serve them better and make more money for your business. So you know, win-win-win, right. 

If you think of your content, like seeds, it’s easier to approach creation, some seeds germinate, and others, even with the best intentions, just don’t. That germinated content is what you repurpose. And that’s when your content planning gets easier because you can rely on that old content in a big way to carry out your daily stuff. 

Now, all of that said, I covered a lot of lofty things here, right. But there are tools and resources for every step of this process. Knowing your best client intimately if you need help there, the best client builder is on my website, and I’ll link it in the show notes as well. If you want to learn how to tie in personal and relevant stories, I’m going to recommend just listening through to some of the episodes on this on this podcast or hopping over to my blog and doing the reading version of that because I do a lot of it. And that is definitely a learn by practice, learn by doing the situation. And then if you want to talk about balancing the kind of content you publish back to Episode 181. Once it comes to actually repurposing that content, or approaching your old content with new perspectives, The Show-up System or The Be-Seen Method are going to be your best bets. All of those are available in the show notes. And on my website. I have them. They’re all very intro-level pricing options. None of them are expensive. I do that because better content out there is going to help us all. If you want to be a part of getting rid of that stupid cold pitch, LinkedIn messages, people, this is how we do it. We do it by putting out such good content, that we no longer have to rely on those kinds of scammy weird tactics that other people are talking about. 

Alright, hope that helps you guys. You guys know the drill. If you found value in this episode, or if you have a friend or business colleague who desperately needs to hear this, do me a favor and share this with them. I am on a mission to rid the world of crappy content. And this is one of the ways that we can band together and do that. See you guys next week.

Are you ready to create a measurable content plan?