What’s your content strategy for 2020?

At my latest Blue Ribbon Mastermind event in Seattle, we got some advice on content and community-building from these two all-stars:

Laura Palladino, BOOM!’s very own Lead Social Media Strategist, and…

Anthony Mink, the always insightful and entertaining CEO of LiveBearded.com.

In this short video, you’ll get some tips for how to add more value to your audience, including:

• What my ecommerce brand is focusing on in 2020

• How Laura adds more value and increases engagement using the content we already have

• How Anthony built an irresistible culture at Live Bearded

• An important thing to remember about your customers

Watch the video, or keep reading to hear what they had to say.

Laura Palladino – Lead Social Strategist, BOOM! by Cindy Joseph

In 2019 moving into 2020, for our content and our social media we’re focusing on adding more “edu-tainment” — adding more fun back into our content strategy — and really connecting more with our audience.

I think a lot of people aren’t doing as much content marketing right now. Content is still king. Getting people to read your blog posts, emailing them about your blog posts, really bringing them into what you’re about as a company, reminding them what your viewpoints are or have been.

At BOOM!, we’ve noticed the same open rates and click-through rates today on a piece of content that went out a year ago. We’re getting the same amount of engagement now, which proves that it’s still relevant. People still want to hear about it.

Then we also add some new stuff as well. So our audience is being reminded what we’re about and they’re also seeing what we’re moving toward.

A lot of people focus on creating new stuff, adding new stuff into their content bank, right? But you’ve already created all this other good stuff. Why not reuse it? Either in a different way, or literally reuse it. Just send it out again with a different subject line.

People focus on creating new stuff, but you already have that bank you can pull from.

Anthony Mink – CEO, LiveBearded.com

At Blue Ribbon today, I talked about how we built an irresistible culture at Live Bearded, how we created an experience that led to a really passionate community of beardsmen, and how we used our community to facilitate the growth and expansion of the company.

I’d say the one thing that helps our community stand out from the rest is that, as a company, we really focus on how we can add value to our customers and how we can meet their needs in a way that is different from our competitors.

When we began the process of creating a company, we looked at the market place and asked, “What is available in the market place? What are our competitors offering? What value are our competitors adding? How can we add more value and in a different way?”

Asking those questions allowed us to create an irresistible experience and ultimately create a group of fans that love the brand and really want to be a part of the culture.

In my experience, most business owners are really focused on the transactional side of the relationship. In my talk, I shared a quote from a buddy of mine who messaged me and said, “Most people are so concerned about the money they’re trying to make that they forget the money they want is on the other side of the people they serve.”

And especially in a digital business, in the digital economy, we see followers and fans and comments and subscribers. We don’t see James and John and Ezra and Anthony. We don’t see the people on the other side.

I feel like, in general — and we’re guilt of this as well — we see the customers as just numbers and figures on a screen instead of real people with real problems who are turning to us for solutions.

So I think just constantly reminding ourselves as business owners that we’re serving people who are coming to us to find a solution to something that they’re dealing with in their lives.

(These conversations have been edited for clarity.)