A content ecosystem is how you connect all parts of your content marketing to create a bloomin’ bad-ass customer journey. Let’s say you have a blog and you do a bit of LinkedIn for your business. Maybe there are some ads running as well, and you’d like a bit more organic traffic. That’s all your content. In an ideal world, they’ll work together to create an ecosystem where one piece of content flows nicely into another. But, most of the time, this doesn’t happen.
Instead, businesses have a lot of disconnect between their content. So a potential customer will come along and see one thing, then go away again. Maybe they’ll check out your newsletter, but not really feel connected with it enough to buy from you. Or they’ll hit a webpage and disappear again.
Content ecosystem
The problem is usually that when you started creating content marketing, you didn’t have a content ecosystem in the first place. And that ecosystem was probably not tied to a content strategy. Instead, you decided to bring people to your website with SEO, so you wrote some lovely blogs. But these blogs don’t connect to anything else going on in the business, so while they bring traffic, they don’t necessarily bring customers.
So, you figured you should have a lead magnet because that’ll make these people more sticky, right? And up pops your freebie (isn’t a PDF, isn’t it?) and that gets some of these folks onto your list. Except, it didn’t work as well as you’d like, so you built another one and then another. Before you know it, you’ve got 17 lead magnets, lots of blogs, and you’re also on the ‘Gram, TikTok and LinkedIn.
It’s exhausting, and none of it is really paying off because most of your actual leads are coming from recommendations or going out and finding people, right?
In the end, content marketing feels a bit like something you should be doing, but you suspect it might be a waste of time.
This is where I’m going to show you how to create a content ecosystem that actually works.
Disclaimer time
The advice in this blog is generic advice. I’m going to use some real-life examples, but these are from businesses that I’ve worked with. That means I understand their goals, what resources they have, how much time they have and everything else that’s going on in their business. I’m not giving out advice willy-nilly to them or making their content ecosystem fit into a template of a plan.
So when you read this, you need to apply it to your business. Not sure? Book a call with me.
Right, onto the good stuff.
How do you create a content ecosystem?
Step 1 – Understand your customer
Yes, I know that’s the first thing you need to do with any marketing. This isn’t about where your customer is hanging out. The truth is, people use several social media apps, they talk to people, and they use search engines. They also read, watch videos and listen to podcasts. Your potential customers are everywhere.
Instead, it’s about what your customer needs. What are their burning issues that they can’t do themselves or don’t have time to do? And what is the best way you can deliver this to them with the resources you have?
Step 2 – Plot out their journey
How is your lovely new customer going to get from their starting point of not knowing who on earth you are to buying from you? You might not know the full journey yet, or the possible options they can take but you can have a good crack at it.
If you’re unsure, talk to a customer. Ask them how they discovered you. What did they look at on your social media, website, or any other places you put your content? Map out what that looks like and where there might be opportunities or holes for someone drop out.
Step 3 – Create a strategy
You know how your current customers found you, but how can you make that process easier and stronger? What can you add to or take out? Your strategy needs to look at what’s working now, what you’d like to do and any campaigns that can push this along a bit.
I realise that this step is pretty vague, and that’s because a strategy looks different for every business. Plus, there are so many options that it’s hard to say which is right for you. But let me tell you about a client of mine. They are a consultancy that helps businesses embed great work cultures. The strategy was to move beyond word-of-mouth referrals and have potential businesses come to them.
Like many businesses, they had lots of content sitting on their website that wasn’t doing very much. And a couple of blogs that were. The strategy was to support paid media with organic SEO. From here, the website needed a fair bit of work to make the next few steps illuminatingly obvious and to make their current freebies convert a few more leads from the mailing list.
It’s a chunk of work that needs to be done in a particular order. But the outcome was that eventually, the best leads were coming in from organic traffic. There were still more opportunities within the email marketing list as well.
Step 4 – Work out what content you already have
Like the client above, many businesses that I work with already have a lot of content that’s not doing very much in its current form. A coaching business that I took through this process found that they were wasting a lot of time on efforts that didn’t lead very far, and yet, at the same time, had some lovely bits of content that could become lead magnets.
You see, they didn’t need to create loads of new content; they just had to make their existing content work for them in a new way. This meant converting videos into a course and creating three new lead magnets from things they already had.
This was then mapped out so that one piece of content took the potential customer into the next stage. Each time, they solve one small part of their bigger problem.
Step 5 – Work out what content you need
Of course, a content ecosystem is likely to need new content to plug in any gaps. This is especially true if you’re a newish business or if you’ve started some content marketing and then given up.
Here, you need to look at that customer journey map and decide where you might be missing a step. This can often be piecemeal and only comes as you start doing. Or you might already know what you have the capacity to work on and a clear picture in front of you.
Let’s say you want to have a podcast to reach a new audience. These will be cold leads, so you need something alongside that podcast to bring them closer to the business. You’ll also need content to promote the podcast itself.
Once they’ve listened to an episode or two, then trust you enough to buy into your lead magnet, you then need supporting content around that. This might look like emails or a workshop, or something else entirely. From there, you might want them to make a small commitment. A book, perhaps, or to book a call with you. Depending on your business (and your ideal customer), it might be that a small trust-building or tripwire product is needed before they shell out the big bucks.
Erm… what’s a tripwire product?
If you’re not sure what a tripwire product is, it’s something small that they can test your services with first. Think of those free 7-day trials. I bought a workout app on the back of this recently. I did some research online, looked at reviews, thought about what I wanted and how I wanted to use an app. Then I ended up getting a week’s free trial with one that I’d seen Facebook ads for in the past and knew a couple of friends used. The trial was the tripwire. I had to take action to download the app and enter my details. I liked it enough that I stuck around and bought.
In my own business, clients sometimes like to buy something small first, like an SEO audit, before they commit to a big retainer project. Sometimes they know what they need and jump right in.
Step 6 – Make sure it all connects
This is the trickier part, as you can often be creating your content in short burst,s and it’s easy for there to be a disconnect. I like to map out content so that I know it all links into the right customer journey.
At the moment, I’m adding some more content to the ecosystem for my Blog Confidence course. It’s going to be a free book that works alongside the course, and I’m creating an email delivery for anyone who isn’t a fan of live group sessions. The book takes you so far, the main course takes you a bit further, and the video reviews I do are the big game-changer. Outside of this are blogs, sales pages, emails and social content.
It all leads to the same place. So everything in the content ecosystem has a purpose.
Content with purpose
Now, if you’ve been reading my Thursday Brew newsletter or following me for a while, you’ll know that I am always banging on about content with purpose. And this is really why you need a content ecosystem, because everything you create has a purpose. It all leads someone to the next step.
At the same time, it’s leaving you room and headspace to do some of that nice reactionary content. It’s even good to know what kind of reactionary, off-the-cuff content you want to do and how that fits into your overall message. You can’t predict this kind of content, but you can build space for it in your plan.
Plus, each level of content talks specifically to cold, warm or hot leads. Personally, I don’t like calling people “leads” or “prospects”, but for the sake of this blo,g that’s what they shall be. I much prefer to think of them as people who don’t know you, who kind of know you and who want to work with you.
Each part of your content ecosystem should nudge them through from not knowing you to wanting to work with you. Sure, it’s not going to work for everyone ,but as long as it works for enough people to make your business viable and growing, then you can review and improve.
And that’s another thing
The kind of content ecosystem you need for, say, five big clients a year is very different from one where you need to sell hundreds. And that’s what you need to consider because it’s easy to get caught in a trap of creating needlessly for the hundreds when you could just get away with the fice.
What is a content marketing ecosystem?
Once more for the skim readers and those who definitely want to make sure they’ve got everything in place for a content marketing ecosystem. Your content ecosystem should neatly flow from one content piece to the next, taking your potential customer from not knowing who you are to wanting to work with you. Removing friction from this process is absolutely essential.
Ready to find out more? Book a call.