Today’s guest post comes from Christie Osborne. Christie is the owner of Mountainside Media, a company that helps event industry professionals brands develop scalable marketing strategies that bring in more inquiries and leads. Christie is a national educator with recent speaking engagements at NACE Experience, WIPA, and the ABC Conference.

Christie Osborne, Mountainside Media

We’ve all been there: several weeks (or months) of consistent blog posting until, suddenly, you’re drawing a blank and have no idea what to write next. Perhaps it’s not your blog, but your social media feed instead. Regardless, it’s not long before you stop showing up consistently, and your engagement rate plummets without fresh content.

You’re not alone. Writer’s block happens to the best of us, but it doesn’t need to happen at all. A smart and cohesive content marketing strategy can keep you on track, constantly fueling you with topic ideas on a schedule that makes sense.

The key to an effective content marketing strategy lies in your core content pillars. These are categories that showcase your unique expertise. It keeps you on-brand while consistently generating new ideas.

These content pillars help organize your posts and eliminate writer’s block forever — but, first, you need to define these categories. While they should be specific to your ideal client, here are a few ideas that every creative professional can use to inspire content development.

Your work

This first one might seem obvious, but showing your work goes a long way toward showcasing what it’s like to work with you and the results you can deliver. This is particularly valuable in helping to set you apart from your competitors.

Your “why”

Sharing your values and beliefs is an effective way to attract prospective clients that align with your mindset. While you may do the same things as other industry professionals, nobody can steal your “why,” so hold it tight, and don’t be afraid to tell your story from a place of confidence.

Behind-the-scenes

Potential clients are just as interested in the people behind the brand as they are in the product or service itself. Offering a peek behind the scenes showcases your authenticity and gives your team some love, too. This may overlap with showing off your work, but it can also be as simple as showing how you and your team spend your time when shopping, planning, designing, setting up, or even just relaxing after a hard day’s work.

Happy clients

This idea is rooted in psychology: People attract people, especially when they’re full of positivity. Showing smiling clients and endorsements is a great way to attract new leads. Consider posting screenshots of good reviews, videos of product deliveries, professional photography of happy clients, and even video testimonials if you can get some. Share a mini case study that tells the story of what the client wanted, the challenges faced, and how you overcame those obstacles to achieve the final result: a happy outcome.

Industry tips

If somebody is browsing your social media feed or reading your blog posts, they understand that you are an expert in your area. Maintain this status by sharing valuable resources and tips to help your visitors and followers approach the planning process smartly and efficiently. As industry professionals, we must educate the market, and there’s no better place to do this than through your channels.

Notable collaborations

If you have collaborations running with industry peers, it’s always great fodder for content creation. Give a summary to showcase the partnership and make sure to tag and @mention their handle correctly. In many cases, your partners will share your post or return the favor with a post of their own, which provides added value to the content that is relatively simple to create.

What inspires you

As a creative entrepreneur, you are likely called upon to be creative with each client. It may be design-centric, or it could be a problem-solving challenge to tackle. Either way, talk about what inspires you and your team, whether it’s a new podcast, your favorite book, or a source of design inspiration from outside the industry. This gives people a look at the “method to the madness” and adds a dynamic approach to your brand experience.

To take your content marketing a step further, consider creating a unique hashtag (or category for blog posts) for each core content pillar to aggregate your posts into categories. This will help you to evaluate your content and gather insights from data so you can determine which topics perform best and focus your marketing efforts in the future.

Once you know what works best to drive engagement in your target market, you can take that winning content and find new angles to keep things fresh. Understanding what drives interest (and, more importantly, inquiries!), you’ll be inspired and motivated to continue churning out valuable content that hits the mark with your audience.

Thanks Christie!