How to find content gold

Yo! Welcome to the next episode of The Content Strategy Reeder where over 9,600 marketers, sellers, and creators get better at content strategy and creation in less than 5 minutes.

Quick PSA: I’m working on a two-part series that focuses on marketing “dead ends” that’s going to show you how to find pockets of growth and convert more of your audience to consume your offers. Thing is, I didn’t get a chance to finish it yet. it’s too important of a topic to rush, and I want to get it right for you.

So to buy me more time while I put the final touches on it, today’s episode is a replay from May. It covers how to identify “gold” - aka winning ideas - so you can scale your content with relevant topics. Enjoy!

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Not many people know this, but I come from a family of California gold miners.

As a kid I remember hearing stories from my grandma and her brothers about “livin’ ‘n minin’ up in the hills”. Tales of gold nuggets the size of my first, Uncle Frank getting crushed by a boulder and living to tell about it (though needed a crutch to walk afterwards), and many more are part of our history. You never really knew what was truth, legend, or a mix. That’s what made it fun.

Anyways, I took this family history of gold mining and applied it to how I find and decide which topics make it into my content strategy.

Gold miners didn’t go around randomly setting off dynamite hoping to strike it rich. They intentionally prospected to find gold deposits first — aka signals there’s valuable resources nearby.

Once they found a gold nugget, they grabbed dynamite and mined every last flake until it was gone.

Applied to marketing, before you invest your limited resources in content assets and marketing campaigns, do a little “prospecting” — ie, look for gold nuggets in the form of audience signals — first.

Finding gold nuggets in our digital world is pretty easy. We look for engagement: views, likes, comments, shares, time on page, virality, etc.

The big dogs do this too. Check out this Netflix example: This week they announced their $2.5B investment in Korean content over the next four years — 2x the amount it has invested in the market since 2016.

In terms of taking bets, that’s as big as they come.

And they’re doing it because they found “gold nuggets” first in the form of major Korean hits like Squid Games, Physical: 100, and Parasite.

Once they confirmed this is the future — ie, there’s more gold in those hills and Korean content is joining pop culture vs being a passing trend — they went and grabbed dynamite to extract all the monetary value possible.

You and I can do the same but (obviously) on a smaller scale.

One way is to publish ideas and topics on social media before going with a bigger investment like a research post, industry report, or large-scale campaign.

This is how I consistently create hyper relevant content and avoid flops.

Here are a few examples:

From viral LinkedIn post to content asset

Andy, my CEO at Clari, wrote this post about how CFOs are making purchasing decisions to help his audience battle the tough macro environment:

When that post got 1M+ views, we knew there was gold in them hills. So we doubled down and created the CFO Approval Guide and put it on Runrevenue.pro.

It’s currently the top performing asset by a mile.

From second-hand experience to content theme

Ready to get meta?

When I realized that people were so interested in Andy’s journey and perspective as CEO (another gold nugget), I looked for an intersection between his experience and my expertise.

Just so happens, I’ve been working with Andy all quarter to get his LinkedIn strategy up and running, so I decided to share a look into that experience.

You might have caught the post this week:

Learning: People love to see behind the scenes LinkedIn strategy and results from executives.

Time to grab the dynamite and produce more on that theme.

(Bonus: the comments also validated messaging I used in the post, and validated a lot of the decisions that went into Andy’s strategy.)

If you want to find content gold

• Look for signals on which topics resonate

• Analyze WHY that content is being well received

• Use those insights to inform your content strategy

• Produce content folks are hungry to consume (vs guessing what they want and being wrong)

• Become a professional content gold miner

Once you get this mindset, your brain will “rewire” and you’ll see nuggets everywhere.

Then it’s time to grab the dynamite and strike it rich.

Holler at you next Saturday,
Devin

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