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Content Strategy

The 4 Cornerstone Activities of Building Your Content Empire

Hailey Dale

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I’m Hailey – content strategist and founder here at Your Content Empire where we help you create more profitable, purposeful and productive content — and hopefully enjoy yourself more while doing it too. Learn more about me here >>

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The 4 Cornerstone Activities of Building Your Content Empire

What's your plan for building your content empire? Last year, while creating my annual plan, I started, as always, by reviewing Danielle Laporte’s Desire Map. I chose four core desired feelings to help choose my goals for the year – Intentional, Consistent, Brave and Connected.

Throughout the year, I realized that these four words that I’d chosen to guide my year were also a perfect representation of what I’ve always considered to be the cornerstone activities of a content empire. Keep reading to find out what content activities have the biggest impact on growing your business using content.

What is a content empire?

A content empire is any business that leverages content to intentionally build an engaged community, increase trust and create connection by offering high-value information throughout the entire lead-to-customer journey and experience.

Benefits of treating your business like a content empire

  • Allows you to truly be of service and put generosity at the centre of your business plan (and generosity ALWAYS comes back to you)
  • Increased traffic and visibility
  • More affordable than relying on paid marketing and more consistent than relying on word of mouth (although, it helps you build up your word of mouth referrals too)
  • Allows you to prime your list into being ready to become a client or customer
  • Saves you time once the systems and your funnel is in place

Here are the four cornerstone activities of building a sustainable content empire:

(1) Crafting (and Maintaining) compelling and trust-building sales funnels

Related Core Desired Feeling: Intentional

Getting back to the heart of your business and its whole raison d'être is to be of service through your products and services for YOUR people – the people whose lives will be made better, easier or more delightful by what you have to offer.

Sales funnels can get a bad rap for being pushy and manipulative, and that can be true. I know I’ve been stuck in a sales funnel vortex that made me feel icky and looking for nearest exit, but that’s not the sales funnels that we’re talking about here.

A sales funnel (more accurately described as a trust funnel or value funnel) is about being intentional with your content. It’s about providing a journey from discovery for your audience – from welcome, to learning more about you and eventually inviting them to work with you or to buy your product. Used this way, sales funnels don’t come off as sleazy or salesy – they come off as caring and thoughtful.

So while the other cornerstone activities bring people to your website, crafting your funnel allows you to create an intention for that traffic and provide a meaningful journey

Want an easier way to create your sales funnel? Sign up for my FREE Funnel Mapping Workshop Here:

(2) Creating core content bundles on subjects that boost your subject matter expertise

Related Core Desired Feel: Consistent

Core content bundles revolve around your weekly blog posts*. When used this way the topic guides the rest of your content for that week and what you’ll be publishing on your social media accounts, your email newsletter, your live videos and other type of content you create on a regular basis.

*Note – insert your frequency and type of core content you create. It could also be videos or podcast episodes.

Publishing regular content supports your business in so many ways, such as bringing in new leads, establishing you as an expert, preparing and educates your readers for something you’re launching or doing a promotion for in the near future.

By thinking about your content as core content bundles you can build in workflows and systems into your content – making them more manageable and proactive. This is a HUGE piece of the $10K Monthly Content System – content systems that help you get consistent. It helps you take something that many people find to be a really daunting task (content creation and strategy) and transform it into buckets you just need to fill with your content each week. Here’s an example of the weekly buckets in my own content strategy – 1 blog, 1 newsletter related to blog post, 3 tweets per day based on blog post, 1 Facebook page and Instagram post.

Content bundles help you take something that many people find to be a really daunting task (content creation and strategy) and transform it into buckets you just need to fill with your content each week. Here’s an example of the weekly buckets in my own content strategy – 1 blog, 1 newsletter related to blog post, 3 tweets per day based on

Here’s an example of the weekly buckets in my own content strategy – 1 blog, 1 newsletter related to blog post, 3 tweets per day based on blog post, 1 Facebook page and Instagram post. Seems simple, but it has a really big impact on my own business.

Want to learn how to systemize your content so staying consistent is inevitable? Sign up for my EASE Content Method Workshop here ↓

(3) Engage and Experiment with Different Types of Visibility-Boosting Activities

Related Core Desired Feeling: Brave

One of the best ways to leverage your content and grow your own audience is to include Visibility-Boosting Activities in your strategy. These include anything where you’re being introduced  to new audiences by a third-party and providing value through sharing your knowledge.

Things like: guest posting, being interviewed on podcasts/videos/blogs, participating in summits, speaking at events, participating in collaborations, hosting join webinars, Facebook ad campaigns to cold traffic, being a guest expert in a group or program

These things immediately establish you as a vetted expert by someone their audience trusts.

(4) Actively Seeking Opportunities to Engage and Connect with Like-Minded Entrepreneurs

Related Core Desired Feeling: Connected

And finally – the pièce de résistance – is connecting and engaging. Not just with potential customers but also peers and like-minded entrepreneurs (even those in completely different industries).

Cause even with all the perks of getting to be your own boss, running a business can be lonely business. Content is a window to connect with other people and to be of service.

By connecting with people, talking to people, just getting to know your peers, other entrepreneurs and the people you serve will allow you serve from a place of compassion and generosity.

Plus – there are so many opportunities that come out of connecting (collaborations, partnerships, relationships and more). It’s the true wildcard cornerstone activity of the bunch – the unexpected extras that will come from focusing on this cornerstone, will be magical for your business.

Want to Learn to Put These Strategies Into Action and Start Building Your Content Empire?

Get instant access to my E.A.S.E. Content Strategy Workshop where you'll learn the 4 content platforms and strategies to focus on to scale your results and sales from content. Plus you'll get my exclusive EASE Content Planning Spreadsheet for FREE ↓

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Hailey Dale
The 4 Cornerstone Activities of Building Your Content Empire
Why Your Marketing Stopped Working (& How to Fix It)
Steal My Daily Writing System That Generated 260 Posts (In Just 25 Mins a Day)
Done-For-You Price Raising Campaign
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