How to Build Conversion and Connection Through Your Content – In Just 7 Minutes with Mariah MacInnes

Resources/Links:

• Interested in creating content that converts and connects? Click here: https://sales.contentqueenmariah.com/content-strategy-workshop

Summary

Is your content falling flat, leaving you with no engagement or resonance, and hearing crickets in the response?

When creating content, it’s essential to go beyond just posting for the sake of it. Three key elements need to be present for it to be relevant and strategic.

Mariah MacInnes is the Founder of Content Queen and a digital nomad. She is a professional marketer with a background in Journalism and Public Relations.

Get ready to lend an ear as Mariah shares her winning content strategy for captivating your audience, getting them to resonate with you, and ultimately converting.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 02:16 – Mariah’s ideal client: Small business owner and entrepreneur who is now being turned into a little bit of a content creator.
• 02:56 – The problems she helps her clients solve: This connection, conversion, and brand awareness elements that comes through strategic content.
• 04:16 – How to be strategic with your content: I break it up into three parts, which is research, the strategy element and the process.
• 06:24 – Symptoms to her client’s problems: They’re burnt out and in the hamster wheel of content creation.
• 06:45 – Mariah’s Valuable Free Action [VFA]: Sitting down and building out a strategy for your business that aligns with that sales plan.
• 07:54 – Her Valuable Free Resource [VFR]: Click here: https://sales.contentqueenmariah.com/content-strategy-workshop
• 08:41 – Q: What is one thing missing in people’s content strategy? A: And the answer is storytelling.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“If you're not sharing stories, you can't captivate your audience and you can't connect with them and build conversion.” -Mariah MacInnes Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. I’m Tom Poland, beaming out from the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Joined today by another Aussie, Mariah MacInnes. Good day. Welcome to the show! Where are you hanging out?

Mariah MacInnes 00:24
Thank you so much, Tom, for having me. So yes, I am Australian, but I’m currently not in Australia at the moment. I am dialing in from Bogota in Columbia, so that’s where I’m currently hanging out in Columbia for the next few months.

Tom Poland 00:36
Little birdie told me you’re something about a nomad. You’ve traveled, grabbed a car and traveled around Australia for months on end, and now you’ve been skipping from one country to another overseas. Amazing lifestyle. Where else have you been apart from Columbia and Australia?

Mariah MacInnes 00:52
Yeah, we did Australia in the back of our SUV, not in any nice van, literally with a tent and an SUV. And then we headed to Europe. We did Europe for three months. We did Morocco for one month, and so we started a year ago in November. We did do Vietnam first, but that was just testing the waters a little bit, just a two week kind of holiday. And now we’re in South America for five months. My partner’s Colombian, so he is home at the moment in his home city. So we’re exploring his homeland. And yet after that we’ll go to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, and then we’ll fly back to Australia in about April next year. So yeah,

Tom Poland 01:32
All of us listening to you probably feel right now that our lives are incredibly boring compared to yours. But anyway, let’s get on with this show folks, in addition to being a digital nomad, Mariah is the founder of Content Queen. She’s a professional marketer. She has a very convenient or handy background in journalism and public relations. So, public relationships, I should say. So she’s used to articulating words in such a way that people are influenced, if you like, or the perceptions are changed. So lead us nicely to the subject of the interview, which is How to Build Conversion and Connection Through Your Content. So Mariah, let’s kick off. Question number one is, who’s your ideal client?

Mariah MacInnes 02:16
Yeah, so my ideal client is the small business owner and entrepreneur who is now being turned into a little bit of a content creator because we see, we start our business, we want to be visible, we start on social media and all the things, and now boom, we are these like content creators and we’re sort of just running around posting things on social media and we’re not really sure what to do. So that is my ideal client.

Tom Poland 02:38
Right? So a lot of people are aware that that content connection is something of a honey pot to attract the hungry bee. So, the hungry bee, so to speak, but maybe they’re not quite sure how to go about that, which is where you step in. Tell us. Question two is, what’s the problem you solve? Do you want to illuminate us a bit more on that?

Mariah MacInnes 02:56
Yeah, so I guess like what happens with this content creation process and what I found is it is the most time consuming marketing activity there is because it is just, there’s so much work that goes into content creation. I mean, Tom, you have a podcast, you get it. So I do help a lot with the time, but one of the biggest problems that I solve is, yeah, this connection and conversion and brand awareness element that comes through strategic content. So not just creating content because we know we have to, doing it in a way that is intentional and strategic so that we can actually attract our ideal audience, get the eyes, get the traffic to our website or wherever our conversion happens, and then convert our client. And a lot of that comes down also to consistency, which I know is a problem that a lot of small business owners have because they’re doing all the things and they don’t have time to consistently show up on social media. So there’s a few elements, a few problems that happen with content creation, and I try to eliminate all of that with one key thing, which I’m going to mention in question four that you have for me. So people can stay tuned for that one because that is what’s going to help them.

Tom Poland 03:59
Excited to get there. Can you tell us and then give us an example of being strategic because I heard you, it makes perfect sense to me, but I’ve been doing marketing for more decades than I care to remember. So tell us what you mean by being strategic with your content.

Mariah MacInnes 04:16
Yeah, so when it comes to creating content, there’s a few elements that go into strategy and being strategic. And I break it up into three parts, which is research, the strategy element and the process. So there’s more than just having a strategy, but basically what it is, is knowing what you’re going to post, why you’re going to post it, and when you are going to post it so that you can attract your ideal client. Now this can come down to, okay, when are we launching, like aligning it with our sales? When are we selling? Like, I did a poll out to my audience whose content marketing strategy or social media content is dictated by your sales plan. And everyone said no. And it was just such a shock to me. I was like, what do you mean?

Tom Poland 04:55
So there’s a complete disconnect between sales objectives and strategy and content creation.

Mariah MacInnes 05:02
Absolutely. And even marketing objectives, like I find that there’s just, we are just, we’re just posting stuff because oh, that’s fun or that’s funny, or I had a good idea, which is awesome. I love the creative process, but when there’s no strategy, it just does not make sense and we’re not intentional. And then those Sunday brunch posts on our feed or in our stories kind of just don’t really make sense and we’re creating content for the sake of creating content.

Tom Poland 05:23
Yeah. The posts after the second glass of red wine. It’s quite interesting you say that there’s this disconnect because even a very large organizations, we’re talking multinational global organizations that I’ve consulted to, there’s almost like a wall between marketing and sales. Yeah. But in small businesses for different reasons that wall exists as well. And consistency is a problem. If you’re posting a lot, you’re not getting any response. So small business owners are going to be a heck a lot more consistent. If they pick up a new client everywhere from the content, they’re quite motivated. But if you just just throw blog posts or podcasts randomly, and you do that for a few months and you don’t get anything back, you’re tempted to give up. So let’s move on. I guess question three is, what are the symptoms of someone who’s listening to this that might need to find out more about what you do? One of them we’ve already mentioned is they’re hearing crickets, not nothing coming back for the content. Any other symptoms that would give people a heads up that they should be talking with you?

Mariah MacInnes 06:24
Yeah, they’re burnt out. Like they are just like on the hamster wheel of content creation. They’re a bit of a mule. Like I used to swear the other day, everyone is like, oh my God, that’s so funny. Like, you literally, yeah. Or you’re struggling to find that consistency to actually pose that motivation that you mentioned. And of course, as you said, crickets, low website traffic, all those things, no content going out at all. There’s a few of them.

Tom Poland 06:45
Okay. So just for the sake of time, I’m going to skip the question. Well, let’s go to the thing you said there was a top tip. Let’s go there rather than just follow my questions. I want to get to that and then we’ll finish off. What’s the one big tip you were going to share?

Mariah MacInnes 07:00
Yeah, well, having this strategy, actually sitting down and building out a strategy for your business that aligns with that sales plan. I had recently had people map out their 12-month sales plan roughly. And then we could map out when we could build marketing campaigns, which aligned to what our content’s going to be. I have one running at the moment and it is purely aligned to my sales goal and what I want to do in January. So having a strategy based off researching your content and your audience, building out what, when you’re going to post, what you’re going to post and why you’re going to post it. And then a process, how are you going to do it? What days are you going to dedicate to content creation? Are you going to outsource it? How are you going to get accountability? So it’s like my three kind of elements to a content strategy. But if you don’t have a strategy, now is the time to get one.

Tom Poland 07:46
Good stuff. Right now where can people find out more about your work and about this advice you’re giving us?

Mariah MacInnes 07:54
Yeah, so my website contentqueenmariah.com. There’s a top banner that says, my seven steps to a content strategy, if you click that, that is a workshop which I used to run live but is now do it at your own pace because people were sick of waiting for it. That is at the very top of my website. It’s not moving anywhere. So go there and you’ll learn what the seven-step process is to building your strategy. It’s very easy.

Tom Poland 08:18
Content Queen Mariah, top of the page folks. I’m looking at it right now. Content Queen Mariah, right?

Mariah MacInnes 08:27
Yep, contentqueenmariah.com.

Tom Poland 08:29
And there’s a free workshop. You can go get that and it’ll lay all this out for you. I’m just going to put this in the show notes. Thank you for that. Last question, one question I should have asked you but didn’t. In 25 seconds, what’s the answer and the question?

Mariah MacInnes 08:41
Well, what is one thing missing in people’s content strategy? And the answer is storytelling. If you’re not sharing stories, you can’t captivate your audience and you can’t connect with them and build conversion. Storytelling is a big part of my strategy.

Tom Poland 08:53
Big one. Mariah MacInnes, hope you enjoy Bogota, Colombia, and Ecuador and Peru and all the other places you’re traveling to. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you.

Mariah MacInnes 09:01
Thank you so much.

Tom Poland 09:03
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.