How To Scale Your Content Marketing

Why front loading your content marketing is more efficient and profitable

Hello Anon!

Tamarin here. This week BowTiedCoquito offered to put together a guest post on scaling content.

The point of the post is to get you thinking about how to scale without completely faceplanting or defaulting to what I will refer to as M.E.R.C.

Minimum

Effort

Required

Content

Yes, publishing more is generally better than publishing less, however it’s really easy to burn yourself or your bank account out doing this. It’s a lot of work and as Coquito points out in the post below, this is work on top of whatever it is you actually do in the business.

The MERC trap is where you let quality slide in favor of volume because after trying to do both, you end up sleeping 3 hours a night.

Asking, “whats the minimum I have to do to in order for the needle to move?" then working backwards from there seems logical, right?

Knowing this is good information of course, but you don’t want to default to the MERC all the time because that’s all you can sustain. Its weak first of all and when things really get tough, you will fall below the minimum and start to publish genuine garbage. Or you fall off the wagon completely.

You should experiment with MERC content, but also establish what your boundary is on the other side as well. What does high effort content look like for you? What’s your maximum? How do you scale that up?

I’ve certainly found that writing blog articles for my websites with more “spider food” like audio clips, videos, images, etc takes significantly longer to do well, but these article also tend to perform better.

Do you gain any efficiency by doing more of the high effort stuff that affects your MERC? For example, if you have the skills to edit a very clean, high production value video, you will have the chops and resources to throw together a couple memes pretty quickly if you’re having a hectic day but just want to get something out. Or maybe you can train/hire people to do this while you focus on the high end.

I’m a big believer that in order to scale content production, you need to have an understanding of both those boundaries. You might find that publishing less, but only high effort content performs better. So you focus on than and farm out the simpler MERC work to VAs.

With that said, by the end of this you should be thinking about what your scaling system will look like for your various tiers of content.

I’ll let Coquito take it from here.

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Dear reader,

Most content marketers struggle with scaling their content.

They’re too short-sighted, so they work on one really good blog. Or one really good Twitter thread. And then what? 

They’re either blocked with a lack of ideas, or they become demotivated when their content doesn’t attract buyers or go viral.

This mentality puts the pressure on coming up with more and more ideas to scale your content and expand your audience. 

It makes you fall victim to Bland Content Syndrome, where you face three symptoms:

• Spinning Wheels—making more and more content but getting nowhere.

• Empty Jar Trap—like a coin in an empty jar, makes lots of noise but holds no value

• POV Blindness—you never develop a unique POV that distinguishes you

If the above symptoms and challenges sound familiar to you, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

I can speak on this, and help you out of it, because I have also found myself in this rut. 

The good news is the best way to scale your content marketing is quite easy.

Rather than trying to come up with more and more ideas, take the time to frontload your content ideation and production. 

Front loading your ideation is all about taking the time to stretch out one idea ten different ways, rather than committing to ten different ideas in one way. 

This then sets you up to frontload your content production, too. Once you have a big content idea, it’s far easier to think of ten, twenty, or thirty ways of repurposing that. Especially when compared to thinking of thirty different net-new ideas.

This is what I call the Level Up Method:

• Identify your niche, topic, or subtopic

• Ideate a specific asset to create

• Level Up one or two notches (from blog to blog series, or blog series to a report)

• Plan how to repurpose that asset in tens and tens of ways

• Begin production and distribution 

I’m saying the same thing in as many ways possible right now so you can hopefully see it’s simplicity and impact. 

And if this seems plainly obvious to you, I agree. But ask yourself this: are you doing it? The answer is likely no.

Another way to think about front loading your content creation is to consider the power of the Content Clustering Model.

This visual helps illustrate why thinking of a big idea, or taking your current idea and Leveling Up, is a sure way to scale your content marketing.

Take a look:

I spoke extensively about the power of content clustering a few weeks ago, but the TL;DR is: content clustering is more efficient and effective at both scaling your content marketing and expanding your distribution, which means more eyeballs on your content.

Let’s further illustrate these points with example scenarios.

Disclaimer: This is a completely hypothetical situation, I’m just using a good fren to illustrate my point.

Level Up Method Hypothetical Use Case - BowTiedFarmer

Let’s illustrate the power of the Level Up Method by using BowTiedFarmer as an example. 

Overview:

• BowTiedFarmer’s a small business owner who sells honey and other organic goods at bowtiedfarmer.com

• He’s got 7.6K followers on Twitter, 221 on Instagram, 159 on TikTok, and 47 on YouTube

• And, I assume, he manages both content ideation, creation, and delivery on his own—likely while balancing actual farm work, too

This sounds all too familiar to other small business owners managing their own content marketing. It’s a lot for one or two people to take on. Making content ideation a huge stressor.

Problem:

• He wants to continue to expand his audience and sell more products

• He knows he needs to create more content to drive website traffic and brand awareness

• Yet he can’t constantly think of net-new content ideas all the time, let alone execute them

This isn’t a challenge for small business owners only, but for content marketers everywhere. Why? Because they fall into a trap thinking the answer to scalability is more and more content ideas. Instead of slowing down and thinking bigger…or Leveling Up.

Solution:

Let’s say he wants to write about the health benefits of honey.

Well, if he’s like most content marketers he might decide this is a great topic for a blog post. Maybe a few social media posts, too. 

Great. There’s only one problem; once he posts them, the content ends. And now he has to think of another idea to keep producing more content. See how that’s problematic? Especially for someone with minimal time?

It puts the pressure on him to continue to think of more and more ideas. Forcing him to spin his wheels with little upside. 

He’ll feel like he’s working hard on content marketing, but the results won’t be worth it.

Let’s Level Up his honey health benefits blog idea. Instead:

• Can he write a series of blogs? 

• Can he write a long-form digital report/ebook? 

• Can he produce a 3-5 minute YouTube video explaining the top benefits of his honey?

Suddenly, he’s taking one idea and stretching it out. And let’s see he decides to write a long-form digital report, instead of a single blog. 

Now he can:

• Publish this long-form digital report 

  • Ideally this is a web-based asset for SEO purposes, but it can be a gated PDF, too

• Publish 6-10 short-form blogs 

  • Ideally these blogs use the same research and premises for writing the digital report, and all backlink to it for SEO purposes

• Publish 12-20 snippet videos

  • Ideally these snippet videos take one point, or even sub point!, and share the same concepts in a different medium

• Publish 24-40 social media posts

  • Ideally you’re throwing in a mix of links to your posts, net-new posts, and focusing on one or two social media platforms

Another benefit of using the Level Up Method is it stops you from doing non-work.

Constantly thinking about more and more ideas is non-work because half the time you don’t even take them through content creation, let alone posting. It’s a waste of time.

Instead, Leveling Up your ideas to go bigger, first, sets you up to do the real work of writing, producing, and publishing lots of content at a time. It’s more efficient and effective.

Plus, it puts the pressure on flushing out one idea and chopping it up in unique ways, rather than continuously thinking of new ideas.

Do you see the power of the Level Up Method? 

It’s so easy to use, but when we’re hit from all angles everyday, it’s also easy to forget to use it. 

We kid ourselves into thinking creating more and more ideas is a better way to create content, as opposed to flushing out one idea at a time and seeing how much content you can make from it.

Conclusion

There are many ways to scale your content marketing. Yet this is the simplest, easiest, and fastest way to do it. 

It negates the concept that to scale your content, you must ideate new ideas and create rapid fire content over and over again.

Instead, it empowers you to front-load your work. Think bigger, and create more content faster, easier, and with far more impact.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Thank you, Tamarin, for all you do. And for doing a blog swap with me. The work you do matters. Video matters. And it’s great to witness your growth.

P.P.S. Go buy BowTiedFarmer’s honey right now.

BowTiedCoquito is putting the soul back in content and making you a better marketer. Coquito writes about content marketing on his Twitter and his Substack, Content Captains.