Beyond blogging: deep content to change your business and your life
For the love of deep content
All content is not equal.
There’s the content you create and share every week or month. Blogs, newsletters, social media updates - content that keeps you visible with your community, and keeps everything ticking over.
And then there’s deep content - a piece of original research, a book, an online training course - content that widens your reach and expands your horizons. Content that throws a spotlight on your expertise, takes your business to another level, and makes new things happen for you.
“There’s a place for shallow, and a place for deep. Twitter is shallow; blogs are deeper. Articles are deeper yet. Or books—books are real deep.”
Charles H Green
Ideally you’d have both in your content library. Regular snackable blogs and newsletters that speak directly to your client’s challenges. Alongside something chewier that helps potential clients really get to grips with making a change. A book, a guide, a course, a podcast or webinar series - something that takes more time to digest, and that delivers more nutritional value.
Stock and flow content
valuablecontent.co.uk/stock-and-flow-content
“Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today.
I feel like flow is ascendant these days, for obvious reasons—but we neglect stock at our own peril. I mean that both in terms of the health of an audience and, like, the health of a soul.
(…) I feel like we all got really good at flow, really fast. But flow is ephemeral. Stock sticks around. Stock is capital. Stock is protein.
And the real magic trick is to put them both together. To keep the ball bouncing with your flow—to maintain that open channel of communication—while you work on some kick-ass stock in the background. Sacrifice neither. It’s the hybrid strategy.”
Robin Sloan
We’re massive fans of creating stock content. It might feel counterintuitive in this age of twenty second videos and even shorter attention spans, to say ‘go deep’ but the effort pays off. Flow content gets you a long way. Stock content will propel you into clear water.
Why deep content is so good for your business
Deep content positions you, unequivocally, as the expert in your field.
Shows your commitment to your specialist subject.
Going above and beyond - not many people will do this, you have the edge.
You learn so much by doing it. Your expertise deepens.
Leads to other things. Never underestimate the serendipity factor of releasing deep content into the world!
Do you want to take your work in a new direction?
For many of us business owners, the last two years have been a catalyst to reevaluate what we do. It’s led to making some significant decisions on the focus and direction of our businesses.
Simplification has been a key theme for our community. The conversations we’ve been having have run along the lines of “We want a business that is more confident about what it does and doesn’t do.” “I want a business that’s less stressful and less demanding ” “I want the business to be more profitable, and leave me more time to enjoy life.”
For example:
Graphic designers, Gill Marles and Adrian Barclay want a more streamlined, niche business.
Change specialist, Jo Twiselton wants to only do the work she loves.
Clinical psychologist, Dr Helen McCarthy wants to stop doing 1:1 therapy and help more people.
Each of these decisions led to a different deep content project:
Gill and Adrian have focused in on graphic design for hospitals and invested in a brand new specialist website: www.hospitalgraphics.co.uk.
Jo is on a mission to improve wellbeing in change projects and created a piece of original research to highlight the issue and draw people in: www.twistconsultants.co.uk/downloads.
Helen has made the move from working one-to-one with clients to a model of one-to-many via a series of online Appetite Retraining workshops for nutritionists and other health professionals theappetitedoctor.co.uk.
And each of these content projects is helping to change the business.
Gill and Adrian’s content is attracting health trusts from all over the world, and their mission to make hospitals a better place to visit and work is going from strength to strength.
Jo is now having fascinating conversations with leaders who share her interest in wellbeing through change, leading to work in the area she’s so passionate about.
Helen has hit on a winning formula with her online workshops. She’s no longer taking on new one-to-one clients, and phasing out her work with long standing individual clients. Her new business and life is now within reach.
Deep content changes things for the better. (Nice work, all of you!)
Characteristics of deep content
Books, courses, website projects, a content series. Deep content comes in many forms but it shares some characteristics:
Time taken to create + time taken to consume both higher
More complex, more ideas
Multi-faceted
More processes involved in its creation
Takes more of a commitment: more determination, confidence, self-belief to complete
Cost involved - time + support
Harder to do it completely on your own
How do you carve out time to create this stuff?
Most of us don’t have the luxury of shutting up shop while we work on creating the new content; the day-to-day stuff still needs to happen somehow. So taking on these big content projects means managing your time carefully. Unless you build space into your schedule, a deep content project will never see the light of day.
The only way round it that we’ve found is to treat your own deep content project as if it were a project for your favourite client. Prioritise it. Make space for it. Give it your best energy.
We learnt this the hard way. We only managed to hit our book deadline once we’d committed to taking every Friday out of the office off to write. It would never have gotten to the publication stage without that commitment. These days we carve out big chunks of time to work on course material together, because the same rules apply. You just can’t juggle these big projects in snatched hours and minutes like you do with blogs and newsletters.
Why people avoid deep content
Because it’s time consuming, and hard work to create, it’s easy to find reasons NOT to write that book/build that website/create that course.
Here are some of the most common reasons people shy away from deep content.
It means turning down money now - you’ll have to say no to some opportunities for an unknown future reward. That can feel scary.
Risk - it doesn’t generate revenue straight away.
Self doubt - what if my ideas aren’t good enough, what if no one buys it?
Too busy - no time to think in my business
Too many moving parts - just can’t get my head round building a course/writing a book/building a website
Imposter syndrome - who am I to write a book/create a course/be the expert?
Being tied down - but I don’t want to be known for just one thing. Don’t pigeonhole me!
Fear - what if I change things and I don’t like it?
Deep content is content that changes things, big time. When it comes to content ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got’ is truer than ever. So, if everything is ticking over as you’d like in your business - enough of the right clients, enough of the right income, enough time to enjoy your life - then you probably don’t need to invest in writing yourself to a different level.
However, if any of those things need recalibrating, then writing yourself into a new position of authority or into a new business model makes good sense. Businesses have seasons, and you’ll know if you want things to be different, and if it’s time to push for change.
What you need to get going with it
A good reason: be clear why you’re going to invest in deeper content - write that down.
Permission: a gift to yourself - stop trying to do everything, just do one thing.
Time: put time aside - it won’t happen unless you get it in the diary.
And if you’re waiting for a sign that this is the right time for you to make the leap, this is it!
What will you create?
If you're interested in exploring deeper content for your business - maybe you've been harbouring a secret desire to write a book or toying with the idea of using a course to change your business model - come to our free webinar on 4th May, 1-2pm BST. Learn how to use deeper content to change your business and your life.
