Getting an Education Through Content Creation

Many business owners, and certainly most marketers, have succumbed to the need to consistently product high quality, education based content as the foundation of their marketing efforts.

Without looking too hard you can see that many successful organizations lean very heavily on their content to generate and convert leads. In fact, the wildly successful online marketing service Hubspot appears to do little more than produce, aggregate, syndicate and promote useful content as a way to expose potential customers to their way of doing business. (Granted they do a lot of it.)

With content production comes work, however, and that’s the part that even marketers that realize how important good content is struggle with.

I’ve written many posts about tools that make content production easier and even where I find inspiration for things to write about, but there’s one bit of leverage that I’ve not shared that may help kick your content production into high gear.

What if you looked at content production as a way to get yourself educated?

See, I’ve found that one of the surest ways to get something done is to increase the payoff for doing it. (It’s sort of why after months of not being able to get our taxes organized we magically get it all done one day in early April – the payoff, or perhaps threat of fines, makes it a high priority.)

So, what if instead of always writing about the things you know, you chose to include writing about the things you need to or should know.

For example, as a business owner I need to know more about cash flow, balance sheets, profit and labor productivity. Not so much so that I would advise others on these things, but certainly enough that I can understand them, teach them to my staff, use this data to run my business and, in some cases, teach my CPA how to actually be an adviser.

So what do I do? I ask around and find what some are calling the best book on these matters. (Here’s the one I landed on: Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential) I read the book. (That part most people do) Then I find the author, interview him, create a podcast, and write about the very subjects I needed to know more about – an act which deepens my learning.

This is such a powerful way to learn what I need to learn, get advice from leading experts, and produce high quality content all at the same time.

You likely couldn’t make this your only content strategy, but you can certainly create a list of 8-10 topics that you need to know more about and go to work on finding someone that would be happy to teach you while you create content.

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