How to Produce Premium, Resonant Content at Scale

A Warning: Content for the Sake of Content

Publishing a steady flow of premium, value-driven content to your market, is one of the absolute best and most unassailable fortifications you can build around your brand.

Whether it’s through a blog you feed regularly, a Youtube channel, a weekly/monthly newsletter, a private community on a platform of your choice (Meta, Circle, Slack, Skool, etc)… an excellent content strategy will differentiate you from your competitors and allow you to lead the pack.

It’s also a double-edged sword.

Because if you half-ass it, that content can become just as detrimental as it is helpful.

There’s this weird idea floating around the coaching and consulting industry that when you’re building a content “moat” around your business, your approach should be “publish, publish, publish” at all times. Whether it’s your best material, or a hot, steaming pile of horse manure… DOESN’T MATTER.

In the next few minutes, we’re going to not only show you why this is a very, very stupid idea, but also a better way to think about publishing content.

A rubric for creating content that will allow you to be consistent, while also crafting content that will resonate with your ideal clients and build an engaged community.

What You Feed the Algorithm Matters

Content platforms like Youtube, X, and Facebook are built on powerful algorithms. The goal of these algorithms is to find what’s getting attention and “boost the signal” on it in an attempt to keep users on the platform.

• The longer they keep people on the platform, the more ads they can show them
• The more ads they can show them, the more money the advertisers make
• The more money the advertisers make, the more they spend on the platform

The user gets content they love. The advertiser gets their money’s worth from the attention. And the platform gets those sweet, sweet advertising dollars.

Everybody is happy… Except for one group that we didn’t list.

The content creators. The only way for them to pull money out of the attention they received is to push out content consistently in hopes that something they produce “hits” with an audience and causes the algorithm to give them a boost.

If the algorithm is a “beast,” and your job is to keep it fed, WHAT you feed it is just as important (if not more important) than how often you feed it.

Boring, unoriginal, forgettable content will never be honored by the algo.

So, how do we begin to structure what we publish to be more meaningful and build a connection with the audience we want?

Let’s talk through 3 principles of excellent, resonant content that works at ANY scale: Timeliness, Specificity, and Personalization.

Timeliness – Evolving With Your Audience

People will normalize a message the more that they hear it. At that point their reticular activating system will no long notice it, because it lacks novelty.

It’s no wonder, then, that some of the best performing content that you can possibly create opens with a contrarian statement. Something that cuts across the grain of what is commonly accepted inside of your industry or “slaughters a sacred cow.”

For this type of approach to work, you need to be in tune with the current experiences of your audience – meaning that your content should always be “timely.”

No, we’re not talking about tying your content into current events or pop culture (although doing either of these things in small measure can help with this).

We’re talking about keeping a close eye on what your market is thinking about, worrying about, talking about… and finding unique ways with your content to address those issues through the LENS of your expertise.

A quick example. One of our most popular blog articles of this entire last year was focused on the impact AI is having (and will continue to have) on the consulting industry.

We noticed questions about AI coming up constantly on client calls, and in workshops we were hosting. That was a quick clue that this was a topic worth addressing for our market.

So, we approached it through the lens of this question: “Does the rise of AI spell the END of the consulting industry?”

A simple question, that unlocked more page views on one single blog post than we had all year.

Specificity – Get Closer With a New Angle

The most resonant content is specific, cutting deeper into a broad topic and allowing you to approach it with a new angle.

The broader you go on a topic, the harder it becomes to talk about that topic without venturing into the territory of things that have already been said about it by others.

However, by zooming IN and getting closer to a specific facet, you unlock thousands of new ways to talk about something that most people will have never heard or even considered.

A great example of this is Dan Martell, who tackles the very broad concept of “business growth” through the specific lens of TIME. He positions business growth as a byproduct of buying back your time.

By getting specific, he manages to insert an element of newness and novelty into a topic that is most certainly not new.

Personalize It – People Get Closer to You as You Get Closer to the Topic

For any piece of content to be truly resonant, the reader must be able to see themselves and their own thoughts/feelings/struggles reflected in it.

One of the easiest ways to do this is through inserting your own stories and experiences into the mix. When people connect with you on a human level, it changes the way they interact with your content.

Here is a basic outline we use for everyday effective story-telling in content (this works for both short-form and long-form content):

• Why this? (Purpose)
  • This is essentially your thesis statement – the introduction of the big idea that makes this piece of content worth reading/watching/listening to. It’s usually the opening line of the content. Example from Taylor: “If you are building a business that you hate now while it’s small, the very worst thing you could do is make it big. I’m about to show you why.”
• Relatability (Detail)
  • The background details of your experience that undergird your thesis. This is a chance to build authority with your audience by giving them a play by play of how you dealt with this issue personally. GET DETAILED here… let them know what it felt like, sounded like, smelled like, etc. The more detail you include, the more you’ll have the audience (if they are in your TAM – total addressable market) nodding along and agreeing.
• Learned This (The turnaround)
  • Describe the tipping point, or series of events that led to a discovery or observation. This is where you insert a little bit of “weight” to your insights by showing how much it cost you personally to figure them out.
• Use This (The benefit)
  • Show how you turned what you learned into a useful process, framework, model, tool or other benefit that directly addresses the big idea. Then give them an opportunity to learn it as well. This can also be a good spot for a call to action.

Don’t Be Afraid to Go “Dark”

Speaking of personalization – a warning…

Do not sterilize your story. Be as vulnerable as you can and don’t be afraid to “go dark.”

There is no relatability in your story if it lacks depth, and going deep often means going to some dark places. If life has gifted you the opportunity of walking through darkness and coming out on the other side, don’t abandon that.

USE IT.

Remember that a lot of your audience is in the dark right now and is looking to be told that there is a better way. A way that takes them away from how they’re currently feeling and improves their quality of life. Don’t rob them of the opportunity to engage with something real.