ABOUT THIS EPISODE
followers. Wa wa, right? Likes also not very interesting. It makes you feel good. You're like, oh God, I have so many followers.
But did they share your content? Did they comment on it? And who are those people?
This is Lee sma, a content marketing strategist and manager who has helped execute on marketing programs for a company that generates over 250 million in revenue
And today on Useful Content, she's going to share her super simple framework to create a content strategy using the rule of threes.
Think that companies may trivialize how easy it is to succeed on a social channel.
And then they get frustrated when they're not getting impressions, they're not getting leads, they get frustrated and they give up
She's going to share five different things you should focus on, including the right channels.
Getting a channel right is not trivial. Each channel has different requirements, different types of content, different um, patterns of usage, different algorithms.
what you should really focus on when measuring your results.
I've seen way too many teams get overwhelmed. They, they don't measure because it's overwhelming, so they just don't, it's like putting your head in the sand, right? I'm scared of it, I'm not gonna do it.
Why having an owned channel is so critical for your content and for your business.
So people raise their hand, they wanna hear from you, they sign up and then you are fully free to communicate with them in a personal way when you want to, about the topics you want to.
And in our conversation, she shares something that really gets me thinking.
That's such a good point. That is such a good point. 'cause people always think about
Let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast and today we have a returning teacher in the useful content classroom. Lee Sma. Hi Lee. Ola Lee. I should say
Hello, thanks for having me on today. Nice to see you.
Yes. Uh, it's good to have you
on. And, um, today we're gonna talk about some thoughts that you've been having on LinkedIn and some new things you've been developing in terms of frameworks for content marketing. Uh, I'm excited to talk with you about that today because I really love your content on LinkedIn.
I love what you've been doing. Uh, you are very, very active and people who are active on LinkedIn always catch my eye and it seems that in a short space of time. You've been able to capture this magic of developing and giving your content momentum. How has your growth been over the last few months?
Uh, thank you for, um, noticing my efforts online, my content. It's been a lot of fun Past few months. I have, um, really caught on that people are having trouble getting started with content marketing. I. Small teams are having hard time figuring out where to put their budget or who to hire, and people need a way to kind of reduce the overwhelm and just get started.
So I see a lot of people who are blogging or posting on social but not getting return, um, feeling like there's no strategic layer and they, they just need a way to get started without, like I said, all the overwhelm.
Yeah. And I know you like to keep things simple, so this is like a super simple framework that we're going to
talk about today. We're gonna talk about the, is it like a framework
of threes for small, these B two B marketing companies. Will this work for B two C as well, or it's just for B two B stuff?
Um, I'm gonna go B two. B two B because that's my area of expertise is B two. B two B, B two C. I mean, right. Marketers love to try things. Why not adapt this? See if it can be used. Mm-Hmm.
Okay, great. So let's talk a little bit about this interesting framework that, I'm probably gonna try out after this. This is gonna be like, you're teaching me about this thing, and I know it's an ongoing and developing idea. Uh, you know, to develop steady, purposeful content that provides value, right? So you don't really have to overcomplicate things. So let's, let's, uh, talk about it a little more. Could you explain to me what this, uh, framework of
threes is?
Yes. Um. It has several components. It and I'll, I can go through each. It has the component of goals, three of them. You're gonna get this pretty quickly. It has the component of buyers, three of them . It has the component of themes. Again, three themes, the component of distribution channels, and then the component of metrics.
So those are five components, but three of each. That prevents you from going too broad. It prevents you from overwhelming yourself. It gets you started in a simple way and allows you to grow and iterate from there. So shall I go through each in turn?
Okay, go
Share it. with the people.
So the first thing that I counsel teams to do is to write down their top three goals.
So the goals for their content that's, um, aligned with their business. And quite often the goals are similar. Teams wanna build awareness of their brand, they wanna drive leads. Of course, this is about selling product. They wanna improve engagement. So three things, awareness, engagement, and then eventually down the funnel of the leads.
Those are the most typical goals. Then teams need to profile their top three value top buyers. And I always say top value buyers. So it's not just the three you think you wanna have buyer stuff. It's not just the three buyers that are most noisy, it's your top value. And so I guide teams through the data.
Often in their CRM or their sales data, they, they know they can associate a dollar value with a certain category of buyers. It could be a procurement buyer, it could be a marketing buyer, it could be an operations buyer. But the, the, data you need to look at the data and figure out who that buyer is and then profile them.
Buyer personas can be a lengthy, complicated effort. And as we talked about, Jim, I'm all about simplifying it being, um,
being strategically simple, just not overcomplicating it. So you can do buyer personas pretty quickly, a week or two. With research, talking to the sales team, talking to the account team to understand that buyer.
And you're looking at things like demographics aside, we don't care very much how old they are and whether
they, I mean, just demographics aside, we care about why they buy. We care about their objections. We care about, um, how they search. We care about where they get their content. So you need to find out these things.
And I have a template. We can link to in the show notes or I can provide to people. You can even use AI to do some buyer profiling. You can even type questions into your, to your favorite AI tool. Um, what are the main objections of this type of buyer buying this type of product and see what you get.
You'll be amazed and then validate it with the sales team. So. Important to create, uh, profiles of your top value buyers. Three of them, no more than three, and then choose three themes that they care about. So, themes that they care about. You identify these in a couple ways. Um, what do they say they care about in the conversations with the sales teams?
Um, what questions do they ask in those conversations with the sales teams? What do they search for? So you need to find out how they're searching and how they're coming to your website. How they're coming to your competitor's websites, and then what does your business want them to know about? So it's a bit of a Venn diagram with what do they search for, what do they care about, may not be what they search for, and what does your business wanna talk about in there?
After you've got all that
on a white, on a whiteboard in, there are the topics that you wanna talk, talk about.
And those could be multiple topics inside of that intersection of the
diagram.
is gonna be. Yeah, it's gonna be, so then I would, I, I encourage my clients to pick three, pick the top three most important themes, and then you can build topics under each theme. I'm not saying a theme is not a topic. A theme is a, is a, let me think of an example. Um, if I run a dog food business, a theme is, um, is caring for older dogs.
That's what my audience cares about, helping their old dog live for a long time. I have a really old dog. So this is, this is near to my heart. And then topics under how to care for an old dog would be vitamins, nutrition, um, how often you need medical care, all, uh, illnesses to look for. So themes, and then topics fall under it.
Pick three themes. Okay? And you're gonna bang on that drum. You're not gonna go this way. You're not gonna go right or left. You're gonna bang on three drums. And then you choose three distribution channels. And most often that is one social channel, just one, because it's important to get one right? And to really, um, embed that channel before you spread yourself too thin and go broader and do more
channels. Why
Why is that? Why is, yeah, why is that important?
Why one channel or why LinkedIn?
No. Why is, why is it important to get one channel
Uh, um. Each channel has different requirements, different types of content, different um, patterns of usage, different algorithms. Getting a channel right is not trivial. You know, my own, my own LinkedIn presence has taken me 6, 7, 8, 9 months to really figure out, uh, I think that companies may trivialize how easy it is to succeed on a social channel.
And then they get frustrated when they're not getting impressions, they're not getting leads they get frustrated and they give up. So
I advocate for figuring out one channel, giving it time, figuring out one channel, getting to where you need it to be before looking at another channel. Don't give up. I see a lot of people giving up on social before they're, before it really has a chance to succeed.
They're posting the wrong
content. They're not posting often enough, they're not engaging on LinkedIn. Engagement is half the battle and they give up. So pick one channel, one social channel, and, and really do it right. Um.
Yeah, and that's one channel. The second channel I often is the SEO channel. It's the website channel.
Your content needs to be online and SEO optimized. After that email, you need to build an email list. This is its own show.
Ooh.
This is, its this is its own show. Yes. Why
do you not wanna know? Why
oh my God, I feel attacked.
I dunno. That was not my intention. let
let me tell people why
Go ahead.
you, um, social is not owned. You don't own it. You could get kicked off the platform, you could fall flat on your face.
You could, you could fall apart for you. It is not an owned channel. Um. Email is your own channel. So people raise their hand, they wanna hear from you, they sign up, they download your lead, lead magnet, and then you are fully free to communicate with them on a, in a personal way when you want to, about the topics you want to.
It's an own channel, and those are gonna be your most loyal fans over time. And ultimately the people who purchased from you. So that is why I think your three distribution channels should be one LinkedIn, one, one social channel, LinkedIn, most often for the customers I work with, um,
website.
two B,
right? Yeah.
And then, uh, and then email marketing Only pick three of those please, because each one involves so much strategy and so much work you don't wanna do LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, SEO, and so on.
Then the last thing to do is to choose three metrics to measure. Okay. I see a lot of companies measuring all the things. All the things, 20 metrics, that's overwhelming. It's really hard to tell a story from that much data. You just don't need that much data. Um, it's hard to track. It's hard to report on.
So pick three. So,
Why, why I, I,
have a question before you go on. Why is, why is you say it's really hard to tell a story from that much data. Why in this instance is less
Mm-Hmm, , that's a good question. Um, if you're choosing the right data, you will be able to draw the conclusions that you need from it. But if you're
choosing to measure all the data, it's, it can be noise. Somebody has a hard time synthesizing it or showing the themes or telling you why this means that and why this doesn't mean that.
So if you choose to measure things that are tied to your goals closely, the story will be clear in the choice that you've made. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
for example, if you are, um, really wanting to boost your engagement, that's one of the goals of your, um, . Framework of three is to boost engagement.
Then you wanna look at shares and comments on LinkedIn. Engagement on LinkedIn is what we're talking about. Shares and comments, impressions. Nifty, but not critical. Right? I know you're making a face. Wa wa followers. Wa wa, right? Likes also not very interesting. It makes you feel good. You're like, oh God, I have so many followers.
But did they share your content? Did they comment on it? And who are those people? So if you're measuring engagement, look at shares and comments. If you are measuring brand awareness, like on your website, you measure views, time on page, bounce rate, things that give you an indication that people are finding your content and checking it out.
Mm-Hmm, . If your goal was to increase leads, then you need to measure the number of leads. That one's straightforward. And there are different ways to measure leads, but um, I encourage my clients to choose three metrics, one metric for each goal, maybe two. You know, as you get more mature, there are a couple different things that you can look at and report on, but at the start, really map your goals to one, maybe two metric and measure that.
I've seen way too many teams get overwhelmed. They, they don't measure because it's overwhelming, so they just don't, it's like putting your head in the sand, right? I'm scared of it, I'm not gonna do it.
Or they hand it off to an intern and they don't know how to deal with the C of data. Right? So keep it simple so you can manage it.
yeah. So those are the, the three groups
of threes? No, it was five
I think it's five.
threes,
It's your
goals, your buyers, your themes, your channels, and your metrics. It's five
Five groups
of three. Very good. I I, I saw this and I was like, oh, this is great. This is great. This sim does
simplify the process of, um. Just deciding how you're gonna treat with your content. It, it does simplify the process. I want it to be very useful, and that's why I want you to talk about it. Let's go back all the way up the ladder to the top and talk about the three goals part
of it. And so sometimes goals could be, um. To drive leads to increase awareness and probably to improve your engagement. Uh, and so you would choose those goals based upon where your company is, is
at and how you know what's important to your company. Is there ever
a case where you could just say, okay, instead of these three things, and I know this is the developing ideas, can we just look at one main thing and just
stick with that?
Um, absolutely. So say, say you've got a category, lots of competitors. There's lots of noise in the market. There's lots of top of funnel content, right? It's there. Chat, GPT is answering buyer's questions about your category and um, the basic needs of the searchers being met. Then you're focusing on leads, right?
You don't need to focus on awareness of the business problem. You might wanna focus on brand awareness of your company, but you wanna focus on leads. To bring in business, um, that would be your top goal. Drive leads. Mm-Hmm, . If you're
a brand new brand or if you're establishing a brand new category, this is a category of software that no one's using yet, then you need to be, have a more top of the funnel focus, like brand awareness or educational content to bring your market to you.
You're not ready to sell. So at that stage of your journey, you've got one goal, and that's to build awareness. That's your first play. So, yeah, I can see situations where you're, you don't have three to focus on. You have one or, or two. Yeah.
Right. And so that will translate into what you. What you feel is important for your business at time. And it might be different, uh, from a business that is brand new as you,
as you mentioned, to a business that is probably in the market for some time and is now deciding, well, this might be a better approach for content altogether.
You know, I'm interested, I'm, I'm very curious how, what made you think of this in this way? Did you, it just did, it just hit you one day that, this is a way
to think of it.
Um, I am working on content strategy for 2024 with several of my clients, and we are doing retrospectives. Looking back, I mean, that's the right thing to do, is to look at your past year and figure out what you did and what worked. What was a bomb before you go into 2024 planning? So in looking at the past year and talking with my clients about what they need and what they thought was successful, it, it's always clear that you need to pivot, right?
And so I began thinking about what, what the trends are in 2024, how businesses need to pivot. There's more in common with my customers than is different. I. They frequently have the same goals and everyone needs to level up their content strategy. So I started thinking about ways to make it simple ways that I could guide my clients, um, to to level up their content and do better than they did in 2023.
And that's what it was born out of that. So you started to track the
patterns of what makes sense for
each of these clients in like, oh, I could simplify this thing.
I can
simplify this thing or this needs to, this needs to be elevated or this needs to go away, you know?
And in in many, you know, and in many cases, planning for your next year is, it's important to identify what needs to go away. Just simplify it, get rid of it, it,
didn't work. Move on. Right.
That's such a good point. That is such a good point. 'cause people always think about what they can
add. You know what, what's the next thing I need to do? What can I add into my, my software stack? What can I, was another strategy was another tactic as opposed to this, this is handicapping me. This is not, this is not doing well
for me. I need to get rid of this. This is
such a good point. and see This is what you tell your
clients as well, what to
I have a little name for it. You ready? It's being strategically subtractive.
Ooh, that's, that's nice.
So looking at what has not worked for you. Changing it or getting or getting rid of it. Yeah. Were you looking to place a lot of articles in, um, industry magazines and it didn't get you any traction? Well, that's a little bit expensive, so spend a year not doing that. You know,
you were on Pinterest, but it was a super huge effort and you don't have a great audience on Pinterest or not.
One sale has come in. Forget about Pinterest.
It's not embarrassing. It's not shameful, but you spent the money there and it's time to not spend the money anymore.
Agreed. I I, I think that's such a really. Great, great point. And I want to reemphasize that because, uh, marketers you wanna do all the things. Um, you want to try and, you know, clients too are sometimes very nervous about how they spend their money and what they focus on. And they want to know what works, but sometimes they would don't wanna take the time to go through the process of it. And you know, and they think if they try 10 things all at the same time, then they could eliminate it and they're just gonna do 10 things poorly as opposed to doing one thing well. And so you never really get the true results in the thing
you're trying, 'cause you never give it a real
chance.
I mean, that, that makes my like heart pound a little bit. 10 things. No, please. So, um, there's also shiny object syndrome, right? Juma, like this is the latest trend in marketing, or this is, and we have to, we have to do that. No, you don't. You don't have to pursue the shiny object just because everybody else is, or just because there's a lot of content on this approach on LinkedIn.
Don't do that. Move a little more slowly. Be a little more measured. Stick with what works and, you know, keep it, keep it simple.
I found that to be true 'cause, 'cause when you browse LinkedIn,
for me personally, when I browse LinkedIn and I find really great content creators, so I
follow you and one of the reasons I follow you is 'cause you provide great content, right? And you provide things that make me think, right?
'cause I like to think about things. I like people who, you know, you agitate and you
challenge. I like
people like that. Uh, and then you lead me to other people who. Do that as well. So you comment on
other people, so people you follow eventually
become the people I follow. But the thing is, is that if you kind of do that often you realize that you have a flood of different thoughts coming from different people, maybe saying different things, and you may get to the point where it's too much, you get
saturated.
Sure.
So you have to say, I'm not gonna try any of this. I'm gonna just focus on this one thing and I'm gonna do this and, and I guess this is what you
suggest to your clients that, you know, just try this one or two
things. Don't try many things.
Yep, absolutely. Um, and then they don't get overwhelmed and then their team isn't spread too thin and then they have the chance to test one thing and see success or not. It's okay if you don't see success. It's okay if one of your channels is, doesn't end up being great. You need to look at why maybe it didn't work out.
It's okay to move on in the next year and do something different. So, you know, a book, I'm a, I'm a student. I read a lot of books. I listen to a lot of podcasts to, to improve my craft and to evolve
my ideas. So I have a book recommendation and a podcast recommendation if I may.
I think I might know
what this
is. Go ahead.
My, the book that I love right now is Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina.
Was that it? Because I posted about it the other day.
That is it
it's an excellent book. He's very clear. There's lots of ideas in there, lots of, um, charts and graphs. It's a really good read. It's a good reference. And then the podcast that I'm liking right now, um, is just, it's a tactical podcast. Justin Simon, his thing is.
distribution first.
Yes, it's distribution. First. His thing is repurposing and distribution. So this is another thing that I like to look at when I start working with a new client is how much content do you already have? And most often the answer is a raft of it, a ton of it. And most often that content is collecting dust.
Not all of it is good, but. It can be audited and repurposed, and it may be true that you don't need to create a raft of new content. So Justin has really great ideas about how, how to do that, and that's a strategic move is to, to look at your old content and see if you can reuse it and repurpose it. In many ways, not write it from scratch.
Most, most businesses that I work with have I, I started doing work with a customer who had 1,512 pieces of content.
Oh,
Yes,
uh, are these are distinct pieces of content
yes. Mm-Hmm.
they were
like,
what period
it was insane. Solution sheets, blog posts, eBooks. And I'm not even talking about like videos, infographics. They had So ma it was a, a company that was 25 years old, so that makes some sense. We did a major effort to just get rid, like I said, get rid of the stuff that doesn't work.
Pull it off your website, get rid of that ebook. If nobody downloaded it for four years, just if it's older than 2020, please get rid of it and then
leverage and reuse the good stuff that you've already got. But Justin Simon is very clear on how to do that. So if you want, you know, tight, short, tactical bits, you can check out his podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. I recommend, highly recommend Justin. He's actually supposed to be on the podcast at some
Oh, cool. Yeah.
Yeah,
Yeah.
So I highly recommend him. And when you posted
about, um, content chemistry, I went, um, it's in my cart, so it's the sixth edition
as the most recent edition for Content Chemistry. And it's a picture book
You want me to grab it?
and all those different. If you wanna show it, you can show it. Yeah, sure. You can show
it if you like.
it's got a big
like beaker on the front. His theme is, is the chem, the chem lab.
yes. The CAM
lab, uh, I, I heard him talk too, so I'm, I'm really excited about getting that. He, I, I, I'm normally an
audiobook guy, but he recommended I
heard him talk. He recommended that get the physical book. It's much nicer
that way. It's hard to
translate
Right.
when you hear him talk about it. You have to look at the graphs and I saw you share screenshots when your, when your phone was a 9%, by the way, of, of of Andy's book, his funnel, the funnel structure and the, the content types that go
along with that, which I found to be very
yeah. I wonder why everybody
thought it was so funny that I shared a screenshot. An image is an image, right? Use images,
but I took, I was reading on my couch. I took a picture of the page, and then I posted about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you did, you did, you did. I was kinda like, where did this come from? What is it supposed to mean? And then I realized, oh, you just took a screenshot. It's literally a screenshot. Okay, I understand now. Uh, but it got, it, it got it. Once I got past all of the, you know, this, is this your signal strength
and
I should have, yeah.
your phone
Okay. See, Juma
you, you try something, you put it out there, you see if it resonates. If it makes people laugh, that's a good thing. I.
Yeah. Yeah, you do. You do. You do. And um, and then you get, and you get people like saying, oh no, this was good. So now I've
discovered, based on your efforts, I've discovered content chemistry,
which is good. Yeah. So that's, that's good stuff. So, all right, so we, so we talked about the, the framework
of threes, the five things.
I hope people got value from that and they were able to take that. Let's just run over it one more time and, um,
remind people because we, we We kind of meandered a little bit and and spoke about other things which were valuable as well. So could you go over it one more time, just really quickly so we have the list so people can know exactly what the, this framework of threes for content marketing strategy for B
two B is?
So five buckets with three items per bucket. Your first bucket is the goals. So three goals, like build awareness, then three buyers, your top value buyers, not all of them. Three themes that those buyer care about, which will, topics will come from the themes you choose. Three channels, social, website, email are the ones that I usually recommend.
And then three metrics, things to measure and go from there. Eventually, maybe you'll have five channels and five metrics, but start there. Go from there.
Yeah, so this is a super simple way to start building out your content strategy, things to focus on, to simplify and to get started without overwhelm. Great, great, great stuff. Lee. I hope that when you develop this more, we'll have a chance to talk about
this again and could you please share with the people, 'cause they may want to come and follow your excellent LinkedIn content. Could you please share with the people where they can find you
online?
it's, uh, you can just look me up on LinkedIn. LEE, Desser, D-E-N-S-M-E-R. I'm there on LinkedIn every day, sometimes weekends. And um, I respond to direct messages and please follow me and I look forward to speaking with you there.
Yeah. This is when you're not all hiking on the weekend, you, you're gonna
I do that too. I golf when the weather's good. I do leave my desk. I do leave my couch and you should too.
Yes, you should too. Excellent. Thank you so much students for joining us in useful content classroom to have this discussion with Lee and we'll see you soon. Useful content classroom dismissed.
Bye. Thank you.
And we are clear and we are clear. Oh, that was nice.
Good.
That was nice. Good, good
stuff. Alright, let's um, bump off this recording right about now.
