Where Should You Put Your Content?

Where Should You Put Your Content?: from Your Lead Generation Methods Have to Change | chrisbrogan.com by ceb

I’ve been asked by subscribers of my personal newsletter how I decide what goes on my blog and what goes into my newsletter. I think the answer differs depending on your strategy, but I’m more than happy to tell you how I view it. I put information that sells on my blog, and information that nurtures in my newsletter.

Information that Sells

My job, because people seem confused these days as to what exactly it is I do or am selling, is to help mid-sized to larger companies build business (revenue and growth) by improving their use of the human digital channel (social media, email marketing, mobile marketing, content marketing, and other business applications). When I write something here on [chrisbrogan.com], the goal is to help YOU, and then also to entice potential clients who are seeking ideas on how to build up business.
Thus, what goes onto my blog is information that I hope gets indexed by Google, that I hope gets shared by you, and that I hope is found to be useful to the kinds of clients I like to work with (primarily B2C, but I get some B2B as well). Lots of times, however, I write for my community and not my marketplace. This article is for you. It’s not really as useful for a bigger company, unless that company is just as uncertain where to put which kind of content. See the difference?

Information that Nurtures

On my newsletter, I write personally to you. I write with ideas that I think will help you grow yourself, and sometimes your business. Last week, I wrote about how to start an email marketing program to grow your community. This week, I’m going to write about how one starts charging for services, and/or the whole money thing in general. (If you want that information for free, subscribe here.)
My idea is that my newsletter content is built to nurture my community.
That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t sell to your community. Don’t forget: if you’re doing it right, your community is very willing to hear what you’re offering for sale, because they know that you’re only offering products and services that are of value to their own needs. So you can sell. You just have to spend more time nurturing than selling, lest you lose the privilege of having a strong email newsletter community.

What About the Outposts?

As your primary site is your Home Base, social networks are Outposts. What should you create for those places? On Google+, for instance, I might write a piece that isn’t a blog post. What I do there, quite often, is just write the “liner notes” to this site. I write information that I find interesting, or that might tell you more about me, but that isn’t exactly the bread-and-butter of [chrisbrogan.com]. For instance, when I write about music, I tend to write about it there. Same thing with Twitter and LinkedIn. If I still belonged on Facebook, I would write posts that were specific to my community and try to help nurture it even more.

How About You?

Does this line up with what you’re doing? Does this make sense? How have you found this kind of approach helpful, or how has the opposite treated you?