What’s the best lead magnet for your business?
The answer is: IT DEPENDS!
I often preach the rule that your audience ought to be able to consume and/or use your lead magnet in 10 minutes or less. Cory Huff, however, is the exception to the rule, as he has a massive — and massively useful — tool for his audience that converts really well.
I absolutely LOVE these sorts of examples that break the rules, because they prove that rules are made to be broken! (And they aren’t even really rules — they’re guidelines.)
Back in college, I was a film major, and we had to take an intro to film studies course as a freshman. I remember some punk kid suggesting that he wanted to experiment and not follow the rules. And our professor said to him, “You have to know the rules so you can break them on purpose.”
And that’s great advice for content marketing, not just punk film students. 😉
Check out this great conversation with me and Cory Huff. We talk about everything from lead magnets to sales funnels to membership communities, as well as some ideas for artists and other makers for innovating with their content marketing.
- What should you blog about as an artist, author, or other maker? Try “work in progress content” — pictures, video, talking about the experience of creating the work. Include photos of unfinished work, time lapse videos, live painting/creating, etc.
- One innovative idea for artists is taking a live experience from brickspace to the digital space — like the feel of visiting an artist in the studio or visiting a gallery, or a similar in-person experience.
- “In the end you can talk about whatever you want, but what I’ve seen popular artists do is talk about the emotions that go on during the creation process.”
- Talk about other topics that influence your work and are tangental to your work or products.
- “If you’re afraid of alienating your audience, be really clear with yourself and ask: is the audience for my art the same audience for these issues [that are important to you]?”
No matter what your business, I’m curious: What in-person experience could you bring to the digital space as part of your content marketing? Let us know in the comments below!
Then go check out Cory at The Abundant Artist.
It’s funny, I was an author before I was a blogger, and the advice authors often get is…don’t blog about your process. Don’t blog about how the novel is getting on. Because the only people who would care are raving fans…and you need books and a readership first. So I blog about topics related to my genre – I write Gothic horror and dark fantasy, so I write about folklore, or history, or weird stuff like witch bottles and ouija boards, and right before someone finishes the article, I ask them if they’d like a free copy of a short story collection. They’re all weird stories so they relate to the weird article. I only get 30-40 signups a month that way, but those people do actually reply to my emails!
Excellent! I am all for the slow-and-steady approach!
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