What’s The Difference Between A Blogger And A Content Marketer?
If bloggers create valuable content for a specific audience, and content marketers create valuable content for a specific audience, is there really a difference between them?
Yes!
There is a huge difference between them!
A difference that you must know if you are using content marketing (sharing your hard-won secrets) to promote your business.
A difference that you need to understand if you want your content marketing to grow your business.
A difference that you need to know before you write your next blog, or record your next video or podcast.
Just as a side note, every business should be using content marketing to promote themselves.
Why?
Because you need to create trust before you can make a sale and content marketing is a powerful way to create trust.
The Critical Difference Between A Blogger And A Content Marketer
A content marketer shares information, insights, hard-won secrets and stories to create trust and promote a business.
A blogger simply shares insights and information without a strategy or direction.
So the critical difference is vision, strategy, and direction!
Let me ask you a question, are you writing a blog regularly with a clear picture of how the content promotes your business?
Can you see how your consistent publishing builds your brand in the mind of your ideal customers?
If not then you’ll love what I’m going to share with you today.
The Magic of Results In Advance
As you know, blogging and content marketing is not selling. Its purpose is to deliver results in advance. It is to help your ideal customer see a problem from a new angle or to show them how to solve a specific problem faster or easier than what they are doing right now.
In other words, once they have read your blog, they can actually do something different. When you do that, your blog delivers results for your customers before you have asked them for anything in return. When you deliver results for your ideal customers, you earn their trust, and they will follow you for years.
But…
How does that help you promote your business?
If your content creates trust and demonstrates your expertise AND is a natural stepping stone to the sale of your product or service, then you are using content to promote your business.
Let me illustrate this point with my business. What does Roland Eva do?
I’m a marketing consultant, mentor, and trainer that turns leads into happy paying customers. What does that mean in the real world? What are the specific ways that I can help you grow your business?
Well, I can do the work for you – consultant. I can do the work with you – mentor. Or I can show you how to use my simple system to turn leads into happy paying customers – trainer.
But…
What is the process of turning leads into happy paying customers?
That process starts with understanding who is your ideal customer. This is the first and most critical part of marketing because if you don’t know who you are writing to, then you cannot write a personal and persuasive message.
Most marketing messages fail because they do not immediately grab your ideal customer’s attention. To do that, you must know your ideal customers’ fears, frustrations, hopes, and dreams.
You won’t know that I can help you identify your ideal customer unless I write about it. And you won’t trust me to do this for you unless I share part or all of the process that I use to Paint A Portrait Of Your Ideal Customer.
If you’d like to Paint A Portrait Of Your Ideal Customer then you can read this blog: How Sharpening Your Axe Will Murder Writers Block And Jumpstart Your Sales
The blog title doesn’t mention Painting A Portrait Of Your Ideal Customer because it highlights what this process will do for you. Once you do this, you will murder writer’s block and jumpstart your sales, so it’s worth checking it out now.
What else is involved in the process of turning leads into happy paying customers?
You need to get leads right?
So, I’ve written about lead generation. I haven’t written about it as much as I should have and I’m creating a video series that will feature this so there is more to come.
If you’d like to know more about lead generation right now, then you can read this blog: The Secrets Of Lead Generation
What else is involved in the process of turning leads into happy paying customers?
Trust!
As I’ve already mentioned, the first step to making the sale is to earn the trust of your ideal customer.
There are several ways to do this and the most overlooked, and the most powerful way is to tell your inspirational personal story.
You might be thinking “But, I don’t’ have an inspirational personal story.”
I know that’s not true! How do I know that? Because you are reading this blog. That means you are carving your own path in life. That means you are building a business and there's an inspirational story in there.
You might also be thinking “But, I don’t know how to tell a thrilling tale.”
Here’s the good news: storytellers are born not made. You don’t need to be a voracious reader or have an English degree to tell a thrilling tale.
To prove it to you, I’ve written this blog post: 5 Simple Steps To Tell A Thrilling Tale
And to prove that anyone can write a compelling story regardless of how bad they think they are in English, I've written a blog about my writing fears and doubts. You see, I got 10% in an English exam, and it took decades for me to stamp on those fears.
Despite that terrible result, I've gone on to write sales letters that made £50,000 in a few days, and a year later I wrote a sales letter that made £120,000 in 48 hours!
If you’d like to read how I overcame my writing fears and doubts, then you can read it here: From 10% English Exam Humiliation To £50,000 Sales Letter
What else do you need to turn leads into happy paying customers?
You need a proven process to make sales!
I’ve written many blogs about specific sales vehicles such as sales pages and webinars. I’ve also written different blogs about the overview of the entire process of turning leads into happy paying customers.
There are too many blogs about the sales process to list them all here are there are 2 that I would like to show you that give you an overview of the entire process:
Why Product Launches Are The Fastest Way To Turn Leads Into Customers
And
How To Build A High Performing Marketing Funnel
Why am I sharing all of this with you?
Because I want you to see how your content creates a stepping stone to working with you.
Your content must create trust in your areas of expertise. The areas that you can help customers get results faster than anyone else. The areas that you want to be known and remembered.
In my case, there are several steps in the process of turning leads into happy paying customers, so there are several topic areas that I can write about.
The more specific your business, the more focused your content needs to be in that area.
For example, SEOMoz is a blog that promotes SEO software tools and SEO consulting. So, all the posts are about SEO. This can be a beginner level, or it can be an advanced level that will appeal to your fellow enthusiasts.
SEOMoz started out as a blog that shared advanced SEO secrets. This appealed to enthusiasts and made it a niche destination. It was only when Rand Fishkin (the founder and CEO at the time) wrote some beginner content that the site attracted huge traffic volumes.
Why did SEOMoz switch from creating advanced to beginner content?
It was a happy accident. Time Magazine ran an article on SEO and interviewed Rand for their feature. Rand created beginner content for the Time Magazine readers.
What happened when the magazine hit newsstands? Not much. There was no great spike in visitors and certainly no spike in consulting sales.
But…
Within a few months, their traffic exploded. When I say exploded, I mean a 100x jump in visitors.
How did that happen? Lots of other sites started linking to the beginner SEO content. The more sites that linked to this content, the more traffic they received.
So get clear on what your business does. What problem you solve for your customers. If there are many steps to solving that problem, then you can easily write about a broad spectrum of topics. If the problem you solve is very specific, then you need to focus your content creation in one area.
What Does It Take To Be A Great Content Marketer?
To be a great content marketer, you need the following 6 skills:
To be a great content marketer, you need the following 6 skills:
- Vision
- Expertise & Generosity
- Dedication
- Persistence
- Patience
- Listening
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
#1. Vision
A content marketer uses stories, insights and hard-won secrets to create trust and promote a business!
To do that well, you need a vision of how your content will be a stepping stone to the sale.
You need to understand how your content will grab your ideal customers attention, deliver results in advance, and position you as an expert.
When your content does that, and the obvious next step is to work with you, then you are using your content to promote your business.
#2. Expertise & Generosity
Content marketing shares hard-won secrets and delivers results in advance for your community.
So the starting point is your hard-won secrets. That’s your expertise and hopefully your passion.
If you love your subject, then you will enjoy writing about it on a consistent basis.
You need generosity because you are giving away some of your hard-won secrets for free.
If you give away secrets that other people charge for, then you will attract a vast audience, and earn their trust. That’s the first step to making the sale. That’s how you use content to promote and grow your business.
#3. Dedication
It takes time to create great content.
One of the reasons why content marketing strategies fail is because the content is not good enough!
If you are writing a 300-word blog in 20 minutes, then let me tell you now, that is not good enough! It will not position you as an expert, and it will not cut through the clutter in the market.
Poor quality content is the new spam! Too many people think that quantity is the secret to success. So, they start publishing every day and to maintain that level of output they sacrifice quality. The result is a tasteless soup that no one wants to drink.
If you want to stand out, then you must give real value. So, cook a meal that looks appealing and tastes delicious. That’s something everybody wants and will talk about.
Sharing your hard-won secrets is harder than it looks. What you do instinctively, is difficult to write about.
To share your secrets in a way that helps your community, you need to write what you do in a step-by-step process. Stephen King calls writing Organised thought.
The process of organising your thoughts and actions into a step-by-step system that your audience and community can easily understand helps you and them. It helps you because you can explain what you do clearly and easily to prospective clients. It helps your community because they learn how to do something to grow their business or achieve their desired result. And it helps your business because it positions you as an expert.
So take the time to make something great. Do it for yourself. Do it for your community. Believe me when I say that, your future self will thank you for it.
#4. Persistence
If you write one great blog post, then a handful of people will read it.
Content marketing is about creating trust with a community. This could be entrepreneurs, 40-year-old Dad’s who want to lose weight or people that want to invest in property.
To build trust with a community, you need to publish regularly. The more you show up, the more likely they are to consume your content.
And when you create a content library (also known as a blog), then you have a huge trust building asset. You see, you grab someone's attention with the title of your blog or video. You create trust by sharing your hard-won secrets and delivering results in advance.
Once you’ve earned your reader’s trust, do you think they are going to click away and get on with the rest of their day? They might… or they might start binging on your content. Watching as many videos or reading as many blogs as they want to. Every additional blog creates more and more trust. Every additional blog takes you one step closer to the sale.
So…
You’ve got to view your content marketing efforts as a process of building assets in your business. Assets that will generate income for the life of your business. Assets that will compound over time. And as Alfred Einstein said
Compounding is the 8thwonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it… He who doesn't, pays it!
#5. Patience
Content marketing is not sales, and it's not direct response marketing! So you will not see an immediate and direct link to sales. When you start publishing, you will not see an immediate and direct link to website traffic.
So why invest time and energy into an activity that doesn’t generate instant sales?
Because it does something much more powerful. It creates trust! Trust is the first step to making the sale.
#6. Listening
Successful content marketing is about giving your audience the tools to help them achieve their goals.
It doesn’t matter how good your content is, how powerful your hard-won secrets are… if no one reads your blog or watches your videos.
So…
You need to listen to the needs of the community that you want to help. How do you do that? That’s going to be the topic of my next blog.
For now, the one thing you can do is watch the traffic that each blog receives. And… the average time spent on the page.
If you get a massive traffic surge and the average time on page is under a minute, then you know you've missed the mark. If you've written a 2,000-word post then you know it hasn’t been read. There may be a keyword in the title that attracted a lot of traffic, but your content did not hold the reader's attention.
If your average time on page is 10 minutes, then you know that most visitors are reading your content.
Read and respond to the comments on each post. This is another indication of the value of your content for a particular subject area. The social proof of many comments on a post will attract more comments so don't let this skew your decisions about what to write about in the future.
Success Is Found In Writing AND Publishing
A content marketer shares information, insights, hard-won secrets and stories to create trust and promote a business.
30% to 50% of this process is creating the content!
If you have a large email database, then 50% of the process is creating the content, and the other 50% is sharing it with your community.
But…
If you have a small email database (less than 10,000) then writing the blog post and creating a custom graphic is ONLY 30% OF SUCCESS!
The other 70% is promoting your content!
The foundation of every great publishing company is excellent content. But great content without an audience is a waste.
Your content marketing efforts will only grow your email database, your sales, and your trust and authority in the market if you spend time promoting your blog.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t spend 70% of my time promoting my blog and videos.
Why?
Because I’m pushed for time. Aren’t we all.
I know that if I want to use content to build my business that publishing needs to be a priority. A priority that needs to be outsourced, because if it is outsourced, it will get done!
I’m not standing here pretending to be perfect. What I am saying is that if you want your trust building asset to attract new customers and position you as an authority in the market, then you need to spend more time publishing your content.
When someone takes the time to comment on your post, then respond to them. Thank them. That personal attention will make them feel heard, it will demonstrate that you care and build your brand.
Now It’s Your Turn
You now know the difference between a blogger and a content marketer. You also know the 6 skills of a content marketer, and that content marketing success is found in writing and publishing.
Before you write your next blog post, or record your next video or podcast, stop and ask yourself if your content is a stepping stone to the sale. If it is, then focus on giving results in advance. That will create trust and build an asset in your business.
Additional traffic will come with additional resource or a relentless hustle.
If you’ve found this useful then please leave a comment below.
If this blog can help anyone you know, then please email it to them.
Until next time…
Carpe diem
Roland Eva
P.S. if you'd like to start or grow a business then you need a proven system to turn leads into happy paying customers.
After many, many failures, I’ve created a simple 5-step system to turn leads into happy paying customers. This system made me £672,989 in just 9 days!
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About The Author
Roland Eva is a copywriter and marketing trainer, mentor and consultant.
For the last 5 years, Roland has helped authors, coaches, mentors, and trainers in the property, technology, finance, personal development and business opportunity markets to fill seminars and sell high-end programs ranging from £1,000 to £6,000 by telling true stories that inspire people to change their lives. Many campaigns have made over £500,000 in just 9 days.
Roland’s marketing journey began when he lost his first business, a photography and graphic design studio. The pain of watching his business slowly die, motivated him to discover a proven system to find your ideal customer, earn their trust and make them feel good about buying.
Today Roland’s mission is to prevent every business owner from suffering through the same pain as he did. Roland wants to take entrepreneurs on the ecstatic ride that comes with having a proven system to turn leads into happy paying customers. Roland helps entrepreneurs in 3 different ways:
- Training– Roland will teach you how to use his simple 5 step system
- Mentorship– Roland will do the work with you
- Consulting– Roland will do the work for you
To contact Roland, please email him on: Roland.Eva@RolandEva.co.uk