Content Guides

The frustration-free framework to content marketing

An efficient, scalable way to publish high-impact content.

Imagine if you had…

…a content marketing plan with an endless supply of topics and formats your audience can’t get enough of.

…an easy-to-update system to amplify your content’s impact by distributing and repurposing it across channels

…and a foolproof way to guide writers in saying exactly what you would say exactly how you would say it (so content comes through in your voice even if you’re not the one writing it).

For a lot of overloaded professionals, this sounds like sci-fi.

Maybe you spend hours second-guessing your content topics. Or worse, staring at a blank cursor and wondering what to write about at all.

Maybe you struggle to keep track of what you’ve written and where it’s published. Never mind figuring out how and where to repurpose it.

Maybe you’re way too busy to keep writing everything, but you can’t take content off your plate. No one else ever gets it right, so if you delegate, you end up rewriting pieces anyway.

But how can you grow your business if content management keeps eating up your time?

More impact. Less effort.

Growing a business is all about efficiency – getting the biggest bang possible out of the smallest spark.

Your content needs to resonate with your audience, build your position and reputation, and amplify your brand. To do that, it needs to be carefully planned to cut the fluff. (That’s the content that takes time and energy to produce but doesn’t deliver any results.)

To scale, you need processes that let you replicate your best results.

A content guide is the framework that makes sure every piece of content pulls its weight. It combines elements of a content strategy, a brand voice guide, and an operations manual into a single, efficient tool.

(OK, so maybe it sounds a little sci-fi after all.)

“But I don’t have time to build a content guide.”

Wrong. What you don’t have time for is pumping out random content without clear goals, starting from scratch every time you make something new, or rewriting content you paid someone for because it just doesn’t sound right.

Investing time in a content guide up front ensures you’ll have a repeatable framework for creating, repurposing, and delegating content forever.

“I don’t need a content plan. I know what to create.”

That’s awesome. But if your entire content strategy lives in your head, you will never be able to pass the reins to someone else. That means you’ll never be able to focus your attention on bigger things. Which means your business can’t grow.

A content guide clearly lays out your company’s values and goals, your customers’ pain points and motivations, and how you position yourself in the market. It also contains processes and frameworks for producing and distributing high-impact, on-brand content.

Documenting all this information in a single place lets new team members hit the ground running like Usain Bolt on a caffeine buzz.

“I can’t delegate content creation. My voice is too unique.”

No matter how unique your voice may be, it can be replicated.

Because voice can be measured.

Your content guide will analyze your unique voice and break it down into three measurable elements. Once a good writer has been trained to match your word choice, your tone, and your cadence, they can mimic you with spooky accuracy.

It’s like cloning yourself, then leaving your clone to write the blog posts while you take care of bigger issues.

Your guide will also have a voice scorecard you can use to pinpoint just where a writer missed the mark. Your writers will be overjoyed to get back specific, targeted feedback they can use to improve instead of the very unhelpful “this just doesn’t sound like me.”

How We Build Your Content Guide

Building your content guide involves a brief series of calls so I can learn about you, your business, and your content. (The actual number of calls may vary depending on how much information you already have and how much we build together.)

With this information, I’ll craft a document to guide all your content creation efforts from here on out.

Your content guide is delivered as a humble Google Doc. Why? Because your company will keep growing and evolving and your guide needs to grow with you! I chose a shareable format you can easily update (without having to hire me to come back and do it for you). Add elements, change links, tweak terms – your content guide is a living document that should adapt to serve you for years.

Now it’s time for a breakdown

Here’s what’s in your content guide:

• About Us – your company’s vision, mission, values, target audience, unique selling proposition, and what customers say about you
• Content Overview – your content objectives, challenges, and metrics
• Content Plan – pillar topics, subtopics, and a process for brainstorming endless streams of new content ideas
  • Includes a content brief template to give writers a head start on creating high-impact pieces
• Channels – where you distribute and promote your content
  • Includes a content matrix so you can keep track of where each piece was distributed and how it was repurposed
• Brand Personality – a deep analysis of who your brand is and how that personality comes through in content
• Bios – historical facts about your company and anyone whose byline might appear on ghostwritten content so writers keep the story straight
• Signature Products – how to talk about your work
• Voice Analysis – measurable breakdown of how you write
  • Includes a video walkthrough of the tools I use to analyze your voice so your writers can use them to check their work
• Your Style – the nuances that make your writing sound like you
  • Includes an interactive scorecard to give writers actionable feedback to refine their work
• Content Examples – samples of best work to emulate
• Brand Comparisons – samples of competitor content rewritten in your voice to highlight the differences
• Lexicon – the unique language of your brand
• Submission and Review Process – a reference to help writers remember how to format and submit work to you
• Content Checklist – elements to check for in every piece before hitting “submit”

$6,000

Click that glowing orange button below to schedule a live demo where I’ll walk you through an actual content guide.

Due to NDAs, IP protection, and specific processes, I cannot email sample guides. Lots of people want to copy this. But like wiring your house based on a YouTube video, without a proper understanding of the underlying fundamentals, things can blow up.