Stop Hiding Your Secrets (They’re not Secret Anyway!)

“How much content sharing is too much?” “What should I keep to myself?” “I can’t share everything, can I?”

Sharing your secrets online might seem like sharing the recipe to momma’s secret sauce but this is 2021, not 1951. The internet is here and nearly all the secret recipes are now on it already. Keeping things to yourself doesn’t protect you, it harms you. With content, anyway.

What on earth am I talking about? Content marketing. I’m talking about content marketing.

What is content marketing?

“Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.” Wikipedia

Sharing great content helps you attract more people to you. Sharing tips, hacks, advice, systems, and strategies brings people closer to you; it helps them build TRUST with you.

Trust is an essential ingredient in sales (not momma’s sauce) and it’s trust that you can build – en masse – with content marketing.

Content marketing is all about sharing and publishing content that will attract your ideal client/customer/audience.

But most people seem scared of sharing too much.

STOP! Stop worrying about sharing too much content because it’s killing your marketing.

If you hold back, you’ll miss out. If you keep some of your methods, ideas, strategies, or ‘how tos’ a secret, someone else will beat you to it and share it; gaining the attention you could have had.

“Can you share too much?”

“Will it be at the detriment of your business success?”

I firmly believe it won’t be and here’s why… (and also why I’ve spent my entire career as a marketer giving everything away for free)

The more you give out, the more you get back in return

Quite simply, from my extensive research (by posting thousands of blogs and probably hundreds of thousands of posts), I can categorically say that the more I share, the more leads I get.

The more blogs I post, the more enquiries I get, and the more emails I send, updates I post, and videos I share, the more our agency grows.

We still post on this blog weekly or fortnightly and send at least one email a week to our list for this reason.

Give value, get sales. It’s. That. Simple.

Why does sharing more content marketing grow sales?

Why? Because you’re building trust, creating conversations, adding more touchpoints, and generally being a useful resource on the social media timelines, inboxes, and search results.

Reciprocity is one of Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion.

“Humans value equality and balance to some extent. This means we don’t like to feel that we owe other people. Generally speaking, when people have these social obligations they try to settle them. For example, if someone sends you a birthday card, you’ll almost certainly want to send them one in return. You’ll do this when their birthday next rolls around so that you settle your sense of social obligation.”

Cialdini wrote an excellent book about sales… except it wasn’t really about sales – it was about human psychology and the powers of persuasion. He argued that there are six powers of persuasion and the first is reciprocity.

Content that helps people (for free) on some level encourages them to help you. This might encourage them to share your content or drive more people to it. It might encourage them to buy from you or just talk a about you (reciprocity).

I feel like content, when given freely and constantly, actively builds up your reciprocity bank.

It’s like, the more you share the more people feel in debt to you, and that makes them want to send more people your way.

Share more content, get more leads.

Giving value drives sales

I’ve mentioned this above but wanted to highlight it again here. Giving value in a free talk, a blog, a video series, a podcast, an email (not a newsletter) series will bring in more sales.

This isn’t always direct sales though. Direct sales from a blog post do happen, but they’re rarer than the indirect inbox message you get because someone who follows your posts recommended someone else to you.

(Well, that’s our experience, anyway!)

One way to look at free content is this:

“You don’t always know (if ever) when a prospect is ready to buy from you. Your free content can be the silent reminder, just popping up in the inbox or on LinkedIn, to remind them about you, your skills, your product, or service. Instead of hounding them on email or calling them every day, your content just keeps them warm until they’re ready to buy.”

Others share it anyway, so why not you?

You know those super-secret tips that you keep for you clients and customers? Your competitors are already sharing them on their YouTube.

You know the bits you took out of your PowerPoint talk as you didn’t want to show the audience too much? Your main competitor has a Pinterest board that ranks on Google all about that.

You know that blog you didn’t write because you wanted to keep those insights a hidden secret? Your competition has an email series on them… and it’s FREE to join it.

Content is king. Content is key. Content is the reason most people engage with you and its often the reason they enquire when they’re ready to buy.

Share it… all of it… before your competition does. And even if they do, write it better, film it better, and share it on your platforms anyway!

“But they won’t buy from me if I share it all online”

Great – that’s good!

If someone is going to spend all day long reading my content on here, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on my emails and on YouTube… they were never my client. They were never going to buy from me – they’re a freebie hunter!

They’re happy just researching, and if it wasn’t me they used for that research, they’d have used someone else. That’s absolutely cool.

Bonus: Researchers on your blog might never buy, but they will increase your SEO, increasing your chances of being found by people who will.

Give content freely because when someone who does want to buy from you sees it, it’ll just convince them even more that they need you. This is especially true in a service industry as they want YOU to do it. They don’t want to learn it all, apply it, and then realise they’re missing a bit.

Heck, you can often lay out the whole thing in a step-by-step way and they’ll still ask you to do it for them!

Content can clarify and validate

You might not go viral, but you might just validate a potential client or customer that you’re the right choice.

You do this, don’t you?

• Find someone you want to buy from or engage with.
• Check them out online.
• Decide if they’re worth a call.

You do, right?

So, doesn’t it make sense to have the right content on your website or social media for the times people do this to you?

Doesn’t it make sense to share a tonne of great value to show the depth of your expertise so the people who are willing to pay you or buy from you are so convinced when they skim it, they pull out their credit card and give you their digits?

Your content might just be there to validate their decision. It might be a simple title on a blog post that helps them decide that you’re the one for them.

It’s the reason we blog. It helps people decide we’re The One!

The content you create can help your keyword density (this is important)

Oh… and if you care at all about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) then adding a load of great content to your blog around similar topics will help you.

There’s a little more to it than simply uploading a load of brain dumps to the post pages but updating your blog with keyword-focused content will increase the number of times your main keywords and phrases are mentioned on your website, and that encourages Google to rank you for those terms.

Simples.

It’s not a secret; it’s already on Google in some form…

(And if it’s not, it should be!)

Get those hidden hacks, top tips, industry insights, and other such content out there on the internet.

Remember:

• If someone is going to scour the web for free tips, they’re not for you.
• If you don’t post it, your competition will.
• The more you share, the more you gain!

Content marketing can’t be overdone.

Some of the most successful marketers in the world are sharing more than ever. You’re gone in seconds now on those superfast timelines and searches. You need to be a content machine. Don’t hide the good stuff, share it out there.

We know that more content equals more enquiries.

Trust us and try it?

Do You Struggle to Create Content to Generate Sales?

We’ve Created a FREE Online Marketing Plan…

Use our simple ideas generator to help you make better content, over and over again…

Learn More

Tags associated with this article