In this episode, I dive into the difference between beginner content marketing and advanced content marketing. There are significant differences between the two, and they each have a different purpose. This is your guide on figuring out how to focus your content marketing!

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Transcript: Ep 200 – Beginning vs Advanced Marketing

I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful day.

I am very excited for a couple of reasons. One, I had a wonderful weekend with family, I got to celebrate my son’s birthday and it was just so wonderful. He turned four, which is giving me all the feels. 

Second, I just added some new components to my mastermind Show Up and Lead. 

• A biweekly $50k+ call for everybody making $50k+ in the last 12 months has an additional call for us just to have those kinds of conversations. 
• A content coaching and co-working session once a month where we will be really focusing on content creation. 
• A biweekly sales coaching call that’s focused on sales. 

I’m really excited about all of them and I am planning to have each component on the next round of the Mastermind as well. Every single mastermind, I’m adding newness. I’m adding different things. I’m editing, in some cases, I’m taking away, when it makes sense for my clients and I, I’m really, really pumped about adding it to the current round. 

Outside of that, y’all, Show Up and Lead Mastermind is coming up, enrollment for our third round is opening June 8th. Applications will be open for the Mastermind on that day. We start the mastermind at the end of August, early September.

The live event will be at the end of August, so I’m really excited about it. If you are interested in joining, let me just tell you a little bit about it. Show Up and Lead Mastermind is a business coaching mastermind or group program for coaches, content creators, and course creators who have made at least $10,000 in their business in the last 12 months, have the desire to scale to six figures and have the desire to create a fully booked one-on-one coaching practice.

This program is going to help you become a better marketer and help you really step in as the CEO of your business. Every single client I work with is like, 

“You help me become a CEO. You help me actually start thinking like a CEO and make decisions like a CEO. I feel like this is my business and I have control over it.” 

So if this is something that you need in your life, make sure that you’re listening to my podcast weekly, following me on Instagram and staying in touch because doors open June 8th to apply to this Mastermind, so I hope to see you in there.

Today’s topic is content Marketing from the lens of beginner content marketing versus advanced content marketing. Advanced content marketing is something that I am going to deeply talk about during the live event in August for Show Up and Lead Mastermind.

I’ve been thinking so much about content because it really does evolve as you scale your business, and I really want to talk about what that difference is. Between like the beginning part of your business when you’re just getting started versus, versus as you scale your business. How do these things work?

And I actually think there’s like another level to this that I’m going to add on. But for right now, I really wanna talk about these two beginner and advanced because there’s a big shift that happened for me when my business went from under six figures to six figures, to multiple six figures, and that’s what I want to talk about.

When I think about beginner marketing, beginner marketing has a big focus, and the focus is I want to build as much community, build as many followers, and get eyeballs on my stuff. I want more people to know I exist and my business exists. It’s all about building community. It’s about making sure people know who you are. It’s about making the space, whatever your space, you know, your. Your following, whatever it feels like. Whatever way you use content, it’s all about making it visible, which is a great thing. This is a great, great thing because, at the beginning of your business, you absolutely need that outside of your network, right? Your actual professional and personal network. Creating content helps you become more visible. 

We’re very lucky to have social media for free that we can use to create content and help people in their businesses and their lives on a regular basis. It’s really a blessing. And at the beginning of your business, it’s very much like the content kind of looks like a lot of how-tos, it looks like following a lot of trends. It looks like doing what you’re supposed to do. 

When I say that, I mean at the beginning of your business, especially when you’re creating content, it’s a lot of, oh, they’re doing this, so I gotta do it. Or this is what I’m supposed to be doing, what I should be doing. I see so and so do this, so I should do this. I should be doing reels because everyone’s doing reels and that’s the thing Instagram wants from me, right? Or my favorite coach is doing like a day in the life, so I have to do a day in the life as well. It’s very much just like, I need to do this correctly. Those are just a few examples. 

It involves a lot of studying business and studying marketing and studying social media. That’s a lot of it, I wanna try new things, I wanna do what they’re doing, I gotta do what they’re doing because that works. That’s the energy of it. And it can invoke a lot of inspirational posts. It can invoke funny, right? Something funny, something very relatable. It could be entertaining.

And sure it’s thoughtful. Sure it can help you too, but it’s more entertaining than it is actually useful. Beginner content is very focused on that. You do beginner content when you’re on a hamster wheel of looking at trends and trying to just do what the trends tell you to do.

When you’re really focused on the Instagram algorithm, you’re probably very focused on beginner content, and it doesn’t mean you’re a beginner, by the way. Like if you’re doing this, it doesn’t mean you’re a beginner. It’s just a different focus. It’s a beginner’s focus. Meaning if people could go viral in beginner content, right?

I’m not saying that you don’t know about content. What I’m saying is the difference between beginner content and advanced content is the focus. Different things and the result of it is money. The result of of it is revenue, right? So it’s, it is different. It’s not the same as beginner content.

When we’re thinking about beginner content, the result is typically followers. The result is typically engagement, comments, likes, right? The result is more people in your community and knowing what you do, which is very important to business, and I don’t wanna disregard that. So beginner content is focused on those things, and I, like I mentioned, beginner content isn’t going anywhere as you transition to advanced content, okay? You’re still going to create that type of content. It’s just going to shift as you evolve and grow and really focus on making more money in your business. 

In the beginning of my business, not only did I study business literally in college and I graduated with a business degree, but I love business. I’ve studied business. And when I decided to create an online business, I literally studied people. And what I mean by that is I would find people like Jenna Kutcher and Amy Porterfield, which were some of the first coaches I found online. And I would listen to all of their podcast episodes from the beginning, and I would just soak myself in knowledge of like, how did they create what they created?

I could literally tell you their whole story because I fucking know it. I studied them, right? Like Amy Porterfield worked for Tony Robbins before she went off on her own business, and her first programs and products were all about selling on webinars. I believe she wrote a book about like Webinars for Dummies or something like that. I could be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure it was something like that. And she ended up making a lot of money on basically teaching people how to market through webinars, and that transitioned into courses and so forth. 

And same with with Jenna Kutcher. She was a wedding photographer and wanted to find ways to scale her business. And she did that through making different courses and programs that she started selling, and continued growing her following. And now they’re both multimillionaires. 

So I studied everyone that I was inspired by. And when it came to content, I really just did what they said and I talked about the same things they talked about, just in my different way I am in language and personality. I tried it myself, right? So a lot of my podcasts in the beginning when I started this podcast, it was called Follow That Fear.

In the beginning episodes, I really just had it in my mind that I’m going to teach everything I learned about business, but I’m gonna implement it first. So I’m gonna learn something, I’m gonna go implement it, try it on my own, and then I’m gonna come back to my podcast and tell them what it was really like.

That was my goal. And I did that over and over and over again, and it was great content. And I, I’ve shared this on Instagram too, but it wasn’t advanced. It wasn’t what was bringing me money. I made some money with it and I probably could have went on to make some more and more and more money. But the way I see beginner content, and I, maybe I should think of it a different word for beginner content, but the way I see beginner content is you can make a lot of money creating this type of content that is very likable, very relatable and all that, but, you’re going to have to market for a really long time or have some type of audience that you’re selling to, to make the kind of money that you want to make likely. This is what I’ve learned. While advanced content marketing is really what solidifies you as a leader, that really it shows how much of an industry like expert you are and how much you know about your craft because you’re sharing different things.

Okay, so let’s talk about advanced content marketing. Where beginner content marketing was very focused on community building and the goal is I want to build a community of people to sell to, the focus for advanced content marketing is all about, I want to create client results. I want to learn what it takes to create client results. That’s the goal. We want people to take action, not just to be inspired. We want them to take action, so the meat of the content is just going to look and feel different.

Okay, so when we think about advanced marketing, how beginner content is very focused on trends, how-tos, what you’re supposed to do correctly, right? It’s looking at the algorithm, it’s creating content that is likable and shareable and relatable and all of that, advanced marketing is very focused on connection with you and your ideal clients.

Your clients literally, and the the feel of it is you sharing your ideas and your own concepts and your points of views on the industry or within your niche. It’s really you being vulnerable. And really sharing what you think. And the reason it’s advanced is because you have to have a level of confidence to actually share what you think.

Because sometimes what we think about the industry we’re in can be very disruptive and people, it could be very polarizing, right? Like, people might not like you. I have an episode in 2021 where I remember, it was right after I made six figures, and I was really just think my content was just getting more and more and more advanced and I had a thought of like women of color love to invest in themselves and I named an episode, Women of Color Love to Invest in Themselves, and I posted it on Instagram and I remember people disagreeing with me. They were like, but wait, women of color are a part of these communities that are super marginalized. And, but wait, like da, da da. But wait, but wait, but wait. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all, two things can coexist. 

The honest truth I learned is that my ideas, my concepts, my points of views started forming into things that were much more polarizing. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it takes a level of confidence for you to go out there and be like, Hey, I believe this about my industry. Right? 

I’ve seen this a lot in money coaches because I’ve worked with a lot of money coaches, now and in the past. I have two money coaches in my. Mastermind currently, and all the money coaches clients that I’ve had are very different. They’re not all teaching the same concepts the same way. Right? Sure, two people can talk about investing, but their points of views are so different, right?

There are some money coaches that are going to tell you that you should keep your money in stocks and you should never take it out, and you should wait until you’re 70 years old or 60 years old to take it out because you wanna get everything you need out of it, right. And then the other one could be like, no, what’s the point of investing?

This is if you can’t take out money when you need, like this is your money, you have power over it. Right? Same with like debt, people can disagree on debt a lot as money coaches because some people are like, no, no, no, no, you can have debt, invest and save all at the same time.

And then other money coaches might be like, no, you need to get rid of all your debt. Right? And all of them can go to battle on what’s right. But the truth is that you can’t get mad at somebody for their own experience in learning how to get their finances together. I mean, you can actually, cuz fuck Dave Ramsey, but that’s a whole other story.

But here’s the thing. What I’m really saying here is that as you mature as an entrepreneur and as you mature, as a coach, as a teacher, your ideas are going to grow into points of views that can be controversial, and that might not make sense for everyone, right? And that’s okay. 

When your content becomes more advanced, it’s going to take another level of vulnerability. It’s going to take another level of just willingness not to be liked or to say the wrong things. It’s going to take coming up with your own concepts or sharing your perspective on a regular basis. That’s advanced marketing.

It’s what invokes people to actually think differently because the goal is, I wanna get client results. That’s the goal. So if the goal is client results, then your actual content is going to be very different. Like advanced content stands out among other content. It stands out because it has conviction. It has a point of view. It doesn’t look like everyone else’s point of view. Even if it’s similar to other people’s. It has a personal like touch to it. It’s storytelling.

It’s storytelling while also like being the leader. It can feel inspiring, but it can also feel polarizing. And the result of it, the result is revenue. I have a whole curriculum I’m creating around advanced content marketing. Because I have realized there’s such a difference in the people who are making money off of their content.

I know this because I have clients who have under 2000 followers and are making the same amount of money that someone with tens of thousands of followers would have. And the difference is the quality of the content and the differences of the content. And might I add that the beginner content still has value as you grow your business to, to multiple six figures, millions and beyond.

You’re not going to stop doing that in some way, shape, or form. Maybe you might slow down, but you’re not going to hundred percent stop thinking about building community. You’re always going to want to create new leads and you’re always going to want to want people to know who you are and be more visible to people, but your content will change because you will evolve as a coach and you will learn how to connect through your content because it has conviction behind it because you’re sharing your very unique concepts, your process, how you teach, right? You’re actually sharing things that don’t sound like everyone else. 

So when we talk about like beginner content and advanced content, advanced content is just a form of content that is much more vulnerable and also takes a level of experience and a level of vulnerability and leadership because you’re going to piss some people off sometimes and that’s okay. 

That is okay. I think the biggest difference between advanced content and beginner is advanced content makes you have a shift in like your feeling, it provokes either action or provokes you to think something differently. It might ruffle some feathers, right? It just feels different and very fresh and innovative versus beginner content is what social media is filled with.

There is a difference. And the way I want you to think about this when you are thinking about your business is I really wanna ask, I want you to ask yourself, what is my content look like now? Well, one, am I getting the results I want in my business? Right. And if the answer’s no, or, or if you have a bigger goal that’s ahead, I want you to ask yourself, what does my content look like right now? What’s the experience? And I really want you to look at your content from a lens of a potential client or someone who’s interested in working with you. And I want you to look at your content and really see the story that you’re telling.

How can you make it easier for them to take action from what you’re reading. Can it be simpler? Can you use less words? Did you have to explain all of it? Maybe you have too many trendy things, right? Maybe you have a big following, lots of trendy stuff that you share, but you’re not getting the results you want and people aren’t getting the results in through your content.

So then I would ask yourself like, what do I need to do to help them get results? And here’s the biggest differentiator, I think between both. I mean, yeah, here’s the biggest differentiator. The beginner content really involves studying business. Thinking of your ideal audience, a part of your business, right?

Saying, oh, this is my ideal audience. I need to serve them, so I’m gonna create content that serves them. But it also serves you, right? And I’m gonna do, you know, X, Y, Z trending reels or posts or whatever, right? You’re gonna do what you’re supposed to do. And it’s not that you’re not thinking of your ideal audience, but it’s very much focused.

It involves like studying business. Like you’re always on a mission to like study what’s hot and study what’s trending. Like studying business, studying what this coach is doing, what that coach is doing, you’re studying that. Versus when you are an advanced content marketer, you’re studying your clients, you’re studying your own content, and the way you come up with new content is by thinking about your clients and asking yourself, what is that missing?

What am I not saying? What am I not saying that’s gonna help them actually make the leap or going to help them get to the next level? Like it’s advanced marketing is heavily focused on like, what do my people need versus beginner content is focused on how do I get people to be more relatable, how can they see me as more relatable or how can I tell this story?

Which is all great, like in your storytelling through all of it, the beginner content is important and there’s gonna be some of that as you make multiple six figures, millions, et cetera. But, advanced content is so deeply rooted in your client results in helping your audience actually get results from listening to your podcast, from watching your IG lives, or your stories, or reading your content like they’re actually seeing shifts happening because you are doing the work to think about them and really think about their biggest challenges and why things are difficult for them getting to the result. 

When you are thinking about that more, your content will become more and more and more advanced. And when you add that with making offers, with taking care of your business and all of that, you’ll make more money. It’s just inevitable. 

I hope this was helpful. Show Up and Lead Mastermind opens June 8th. If you are a woman of color coach, course creator or online educator, I wanna invite you in so I can teach you how to get fully booked in one-on-one coaching. How to make your first and second six figures and really help you feel like the CEO your business needs. Doors open June 8th. Get on the list here.

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