Streamline and (Almost) Automate Your Content Development and Distribution

by Trish Lindemood on October 16, 2009

This week, we’ve been talking about how to incorporate consultative selling principles into your web copy. The goal, of course, is to strengthen and solidify relationships with your prospects and customers.

To recap – the first step in the consultative selling process is to first understand your audience – their likes, dislikes, goals, concerns, etc… What makes them tick, more or less. The fact they are attracted to your site (content) in the first place is the most obvious place to start. If you blog about how to maintain your weight by eating healthy, your visitors have at least a passing interest in that topic. (Or they just want to beat themselves up for what they are currently doing wrong… ).

What might not be as obvious, however, are all the tangential connections related to your primary topic. Individuals interested in healthy lifestyles may also be interested in exercise equipment, nutritional supplements or even active vacation options. If you aren’t sure what appeals to your readers – ask. Include questions in your post script message asking for what they’d like to see covered. Conduct surveys (offer a free report or other incentive to encourage participation). Get involved in (or follow) conversations on forums and blogs outside, but connected to, your primary topic. You don’t want to get off topic – but do want to be able offer information and products that will appeal to and benefit your readers.

This doesn’t need to be some big formal undertaking or yet another thing to add to your “to-do-but-never-will” list. Instead, view it as an ongoing learning process. Train your brain to look for interesting and useful things related to your niche or industry that make life better, easier, more profitable or more fun for your readers. Remember, your goal is to provide value – and the content you provide is the primary means of accomplishing this online. The process of building an online business and a devoted following is a long-term project – so you will need fresh content ideas for a long time to come. Developing a better understanding of your audience is a great place to start this process and get your brain thinking in this direction.

Ok, great. This all sounds wonderful in theory – but how do you possibly pull that off when you also, um… have a business (and a life) to run?!

Simple. You adopt a “Set It and Forget It” mentality. You want to automate and streamline these tasks as much as possible so that you aren’t reinventing the wheel for each new visitor to your site.

Here are 3 Ways you can accomplish this:

Set Google Alerts to have information on the topics of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. This is a great way to pick up relevant and timely topics without having to spend time looking for it. I keep all my alerts in one folder so I can find them quickly when I need information. (I also organize my bookmarks by topic and use an email folder titled “article ideas” to capture ideas from incoming email messages). Anything to prevent me from having to spend time “looking” for relevant information.

Rebrandable reports are also a great thing to offer to your readers. If you don’t have the time (or inclination) to create your own value-added reports – or you want to supplement your offerings with broader topic selections, rebrandable reports are a great way to accomplish this. Here is an excellent article by Lynn Terry on the topic of rebrandable reports from the perspective of how to create your own. (An outstanding idea, by the way!) There is also a lot of value in using reports created by other authors as a means of offering great content on topics you don’t normally cover yourself.

Autoresponders are the epitome of “set it and forget it” technology. Create a set of messages one time, schedule their delivery frequency, and have them sent to every new email subscriber from the moment they sign up for your email updates.

This list is just a starting point to get you thinking of how to streamline and automate your online content development and delivery. In future posts, I will cover both rebrandable reports and auto responders in a lot more detail.

Til Next Time,