I don't do things the way other SEOs and content marketers do things.
Other SEOs have their focus totally centered on the data, the Robots, the numbers.
And yeah, those things are super important. Without them, you don't have search traffic or a passively growing audience of readers.
Yeah. The Robot-y stuff is important. But it's not the be-all-end-all.
Because we're passionate, purpose-driven, ambitious, creative people. We have Spark.
And the way I do things, Spark is at the center of everything. SEO and Strategy are tools to bring Spark to center stage.
What is Spark?
If you have a mission, a passion, a purpose in the world and your online business has a message that you believe in and are driven by, you have what I call Spark.
If your online business was a living body (with, like, social media hands, and a systems nervous system), your Spark is the beating heart.
It’s the inner motor that got you started on this road of entrepreneurship.
Spark is the driving force and energy that inspires you to do what you do.
It’s the core value that influences everything you do and every choice you make. When you’re feeling in the zone, creative flow, rattling off excitedly in conversation, and truly aligned in your business, that’s a good sign that you’re working in Spark.
We all started on this road of entrepreneurship with lots of Spark.
But as we learn more and try to grow our businesses, we sometimes get distracted by Strategy and what we’re “supposed to do” to market and grow and succeed.
Instead of creating and working from a place of Spark, we start creating and working from a place of Strategy.
That’s when we start buying every course we find that promises to be the missing key to our business’s success, or researching and reading all the free blog posts we can find about SEO until we’re cross-eyed and suddenly realize it’s 4am, or start checking our stats and bank accounts everyday, desperate for something, anything to work, or forcing ourselves to create whatever type of content we’re being told we’re “supposed to” create, and hating every second of it.
We lose touch with our Spark, and everything that used to come so easily to us becomes a struggle, especially content creation.
Even though Spark isn’t in any marketing course or “proven method”, trying to market ourselves without Spark just plain doesn’t work, and it’s not healthy for our business or our personal well being.
Spark matters. For a lot of reasons.
Why does Spark matter for your content marketing?
1. It works better
First of all, for a creative online entrepreneur, marketing without Spark just plain doesn’t work.
There are plenty of businesses out there that write purely strategic content with absolutely no Spark, and they profit from it.
But what they don’t have? Meaning. Purpose. Impact.
Those businesses are creating for the money (which is totally fine, by the way, no judgement. Money is pretty great.)
But if you’re here reading this, I’m betting you’re in it for something else (in addition to money, if you want). You want to connect with people, to help people, to have an impact, to share your message, to create and express yourself and encourage others to do the same.
So when you sit down to create purely from Strategy, without your Spark, it just doesn’t work.
It doesn’t flow as you’re creating it, and it doesn’t draw people in when they’re reading it, and it doesn’t connect with them or inspire them to whatever action or engagement you called them to.
It just straight doesn’t work.
One of my all time favorite business-related quotes is this golden nugget from Simon Sinek:
“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”
By creating from Spark, you’re creating content that will connect with people who it resonates with, and they will stick with you and want more and want to support you and your business.
2. People are starved for connection
People are starved for connection. And as creative online entrepreneurs, we’re in a unique position to be able to connect in ways that non-personal-brand type companies simply can’t do.
It’s also one of the things that sets bloggers and independent content creators apart from larger companies that may feel like competition.
The truth is, they’re not really competition.
They just serve a different purpose for people.
The thing is, by connecting with people in our content, we’re not just serving our businesses. We’re making people’s lives better.
Connection, community, being a real live human, these are all things that the world needs more of.
And by keeping your Spark alive in your content and really truly connecting, people are more likely to really respond to your business’s message. They’ll really hear you.
3. You started because of your Spark. Without it, what’s the point?
You started your business because you really deeply truly believe something, and believe other people need it and will be better for hearing it.
If you’ve lost touch with your Spark, you might start feeling (in addition to all the desperation that you keep buying courses to try to solve) lost, listless, and uninspired in your business.
You might start thinking “What’s the point? Why am I even doing this anymore?”
I’ve been there. It’s a sh*tty feeling.
Forcing your business to keep moving without that beating heart of your Spark feels gross and awful, and the longer you keep doing it, the quicker you’ll burn out.
It’s important to sustain your Spark so you can stay in love with what you do and avoid burnout.
How does Spark interplay with Strategy in your marketing?
First, let’s specify what I mean by capital-s Strategy.
When I say Strategy, I don’t just mean SEO.
Strategy can be SEO, strategic content formulas, a proven method or marketing technique you learned… Pretty much anything you’re imposing onto your content creation from outside with the intent of achieving a specific business goal.
Now, I say “impose”, but Strategy isn’t a bad thing.
Far from it!
Strategy is what can make your content work its ass off for your business and help you reach your goals, fulfill your ambitions, and spread your business’s Spark!
Strategy gets sh*t done. I’m a huge fan of Strategy.
But I’m also deeply personal with the weird mental wrestling match that can happen between Spark and Strategy.
It’s been something I’ve struggled with my whole life, in every aspect of my life, and I've seen it play out for my clients, too.
It can suck.
I’ve seen this wrestling match play out negatively in a few different ways:
Squashing your Creative Spark to try to play to the SEO Gods
If you're in the business of blogging (as opposed to blogging to support and market your business), your whole income model hinges on site traffic.
Whether your revenue comes from ad views, affiliate link clicks, sponsored blog posts, or some combination of those, the money you make is directly tied to the number of eyeballs that visit your site.
This can be a HUGE amount of pressure on something that was supposed to be your freedom business!
So after a while, you start trying to figure out “how to SEO” so Google will like you more. You start making posts based on keyword research, even when you don’t care about the topic. You even stop writing in the way you love because you’ve been told it’s not what Google wants.
In short: you’ve squashed your creative Spark in order to appease the Strategy Gods.
And after doing that for too long, eventually you get to the point where you absolutely dread writing your posts.
And this breaks my heart.
You’re a blogger! You’re a badass! You’re a creative! You took a risk in life, started your blog so you could be creative all the time and live on no one’s terms but your own.
And now you feel like you can’t or you’ll fall behind and stop making money.
But it doesn’t have to be like that.
You’ve just got to figure out a way to weave SEO Strategy into your content creation process without disrupting your creative process.
It’s not an easy path. You’ll have a lot of mental rewiring to do to stop self editing before you even get to the keyboard.
But it’s worth it to fall back in love with your blog again.
Stuck in Analysis Paralysis trying to find the Right Strategy to market your Spark-centered business
If you want to use blogging, content marketing, and SEO to market your business, but have never really done that before, you might be like some of my clients who are paralyzed with fear of starting wrong.
You constantly research, reading about this strategy, watching a webinar about that method, buying a “proven” course (or three), all promising to be the key to your business’s success, the last course you’ll ever have to buy, the only method you’ll need.
The truth is, that’s all bull. It’s marketing lingo designed to get you to fork over your hard earned cash.
That’s not to say that all those methods and strategies don’t work; they very well might!
But they might not work for you.
Because they might not mesh with your creative process. Which you don’t even know yet because you haven’t started creating content.
The true key to your business’s success is to start.
Start marketing, start creating content, start something! Do it imperfectly, f*ck it up and fix it later, and keep doing it.
The more content you create, the better you’ll get at creating it, and the closer you’ll get to figuring out the Strategy that works for your unique business and your unique creative process.
And as you keep creating content and keep publishing, and as you figure out your creative process, whatever it turns out to be. From there, you’ll have a much clearer idea of what Strategies definitely won’t work for you, and can start to experiment to figure out how to incorporate the Strategies that do work for you into your creative process.
You’re all in on Spark, but uuuuh you have no idea how to Robot or to combine Spark and Strategy…
I see one this a lot with intuitive service providers and with creatives.
You’re all in on authenticity and vulnerability and visibility. You’re slaying at Instagram captions and Stories and developing connection with your people.
And when you create content for your blog, you carry over that intuitiveness and creativity and flow and Spark.
But…
No one is finding that blog content. No one is reading it. That content isn’t converting anyone like it is on Instagram. And you’re kind of at a loss.
But when you research SEO or how-to-content-market, you have trouble imagining how to create in these strategic ways without totally not being yourself or giving up your creativity and authenticity. It doesn’t feel Spark-centered. And that’s a no-go.
The key is to make sure you don’t go too far into one while totally neglecting the other. You have to maintain a balance between both, and how that looks will be completely unique to you and your business.
Maybe that looks like keeping Strategy in mind when making your content calendar. That way you can make sure you create content that hits different stages of the buyers’ journey, and you can brainstorm content ideas specifically designed to be SEO-focused as well.
Maybe that looks like taking content you’ve already created in the format that feels most natural to you (what I call your Spark Zone), and weaving them together into an SEO-tastic blog post.
Or maybe that looks some other way of combining and balancing Spark and Strategy.
Everyone’s brain looks different. Everyone’s creative process is different.
So you’ve just got to find the way that works for you.
Connecting Spark with Strategy & SEO
My goal is to make sure you can create your content with Spark and then weave Strategy and SEO in a way that works for your creative process.
That way, you’ll be creating content you love that actually works to connect with your audience and support your business goals.