In a previous article I provided strategies for building and keeping marketing habits. A good half of those habits involve content creation that validates and demonstrates your PinPoint positioning. Content creation is hard work. It’s too often the barrier that creatives fail to overcome on the path to effective marketing. And while content creation is always hard work, it may not be as difficult as you expect.
A Dry Well of Content Ideas?
Many creatives give up on their content strategies because they struggle to find new ideas and topics to write about. And when they do, they see very little response. Lots of effort, little result—that’s a recipe for giving up.
But the reason creatives often struggle with content creation is directly connected to a lack of PinPoint positioning. Most creatives position themselves, consciously or not, as generalists. They promote as wide a range of services as they can possibly justify, and claim experience in as many industries and sectors of the economy as they’ve ever touched. When your net is cast so wide, what can you possibly say to so many that would be impactful? You can only write about the importance of branding so many times.
As a result, creatives’ content strategies tend to focus on company culture, case studies, and topics related to the practice of design and creativity. While there’s nothing wrong with these kinds of posts, they never move the needle in terms of marketing.
How PinPoint Positioning Fills the Well
But when you establish a PinPoint position, narrowing your services to just one, or just a related few, and you repeatedly apply your skills to one industry or one set of common problems, you’ll find that the well of ideas for content becomes almost bottomless. Not only will your ideas flow more freely, the depth of insight in your articles will clearly manifest itself to your ideal prospects. Less effort, higher impact. That’s a recipe for success.
Without PinPoint positioning, maintaining a content strategy get’s harder and harder over time. Each month you struggle more than the last to come up with ideas that will make some kind of impact. But with PinPoint positioning your marketing will lead to additional opportunities in your area of expertise. This will naturally lead to more experience and insight—resulting in more content ideas. This content will further validate and express your expertise leading to further insights and increased impact over time.
It’s true that an effective content strategy takes time, and that early on it’s like rolling a boulder uphill. But a content strategy based on PinPoint positioning speeds up this process, and once that boulder gets to the top, it gains tremendous momentum as it rolls down the other side.
