Search the word content on Google and you will see a gazillion websites and blogs mentioning how content is the core of your marketing and your business. So, no I won’t bore you here with the unnecessary definitions and basics about content marketing. I want you to know that YOU can be the content marketing superstar. YOU can become a champion at the art of content creation and dissemination. YOU are the ‘You’ in YouTube. YOU are what TIME called the person of the year. And I want you to know that you can master this skill just in 30 days. Yes, you can! And I am about to prove it to you. Ready? Brace yourself and let’s dive right into it…

Day # 1 – Discover your writing space

Literally! What you most comfortable with? MS Word document? Evernote’ also a great alternative. There are also online tools that give you your writing space like, Scrivener or Markdown. Or if you are an old-school and prefer pen and paper, do it by all means. The idea is to set up the stage for you to write content.

Day # 2 – Discover your content inspirations

What content do you like reading online? Where is it hosted – A blog? A vlog? A podcast? An e-magazine? An e-Book? What you are really trying to discover here is your voice. Your style of content writing.

Day # 3 – Dissect what you like

So today, you spend your whole time finding out what is it that you like about these pieces of content you discovered during your quest. Can you identify the uniqueness in terms of tone of content, subject matter, etc.? Try and identify the common thread that gives you your foundation of content writing.

Day # 4 – It’s time to be a spy

It’s called developing your content marketing competitive intelligence. Go to your major competitors’ sites and their blogs. Dig deeper into search and find all types of content about and from them that you can identify. Take a look at the language they use on their website vis-à-vis blog. Establish a benchmark for your content marketing work.

Day # 5 – Find the right style guide.

A comprehensive guidebook on content writing and content marketing is what you’re looking for. You need to start creating a list where you compile all the content related tips you come across. I’m sure you’ll find ample options on the first page of Google alone if you searched for ‘Content Marketing Style Guide’.

Day # 6 – Follow the prominent writers

Every niche has a number of writers who are considered as influencers. These people are the most read and the most heard. Start following their blogs. Follow them on social media. Create a huge RSS list with as many writers as you can include.

Day # 7 – Watch a content marketing video

About 9 in 10 people are visual learners. You are too. You can read enough blog posts that give you the best tips on content marketing. But, the best and the fastest way is by watching what the experts say. This will expose you to news ways of looking at content, faster.

Day # 8 – Ask yourself ‘why’

Okay, so you’ve set the stage to get started with your content marketing. But hold your horses and take a pause to ask yourself – why do I want to create content? What’s the main goal? Answer this from the point of view of your business and product relevance.

Day # 9 – Gather data

Don’t just settle for “…because it’s useful for my business.” Find data and stats about the significance of content in the success of your business. You know what the best part is? You can always use-reuse-recycle such stats in your content later on.

Day # 10 – Create a timeline

A mindmap or a timeline will help you establish your important milestones in terms of how you want to proceed with your content marketing plan.

Day # 11 – Pen something down

Write, erase, type, delete, repeat. There’s no time restriction or any word count. Get loose and pour your heart out. What’s the idea? To get you into the habit of writing.

Day # 12 – Review what you wrote

So, you spent your entire day in trying to come up with something decent in terms of content. Now, today you spend time in critiquing what you wrote. Do you like reading what you wrote? Why or why not? Do you come across as an authentic writer? Are you likeable? Ask yourself these questions.

Day # 13 – The beauty is in the detail

Today, you observe things. You observe your workspace. Your family. Your friends. Your clients. The news anchor. Your favorite blogger or vlogger. So, take a cup of coffee, sit back and relax, while you notice everything that they do.

Day # 14 – Time for some self-scrutiny

Take those bits of information pieces and try to thread them together. Identify the common patterns and the contracting themes.

Day # 15 – Describe what you observed

Create a story out of all that you have gathered. Write about you – what you like, what you do, why others like you, what your business is about, who is your client, or anything else you feel like describing.

Day # 16 – Summarize what you just wrote

It’s time to chop chop… By now you would realize that writing is not a very difficult thing when you don’t have any restrictions. But, here comes the tricky part. Cut your story short and summarize.

Day # 17 – Break day

It’s important to take a break so as to not overwhelm yourself. So what you do on this free day? You read, of course! You watch TV. So grab your popcorn if you like and binge read or watch. But, make sure you observe what you’re liking really while you’re at it.

Day # 18 – Your first blog post

It’s time to write professionally. Your goal is to come up with one blog post that is of 1000 words on a topic of your choice. Have a structure – title, introduction, body and conclusion. Good luck!

Day # 19 – Become an editor

Review your blog post from yesterday. Look at the format. Look at the style. Read it over and again. Use Grammarly to check your spelling and grammar.

Day # 20 – Rewrite it

If you identified the major areas of improvement in what you wrote, then it’s time of implement those changes in your content. Rewrite that blog post.

Day # 21 – Social media day

Today, you spend a good amount of time on your favorite social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. See what you find related to the content for your niche. See how they present it. Do they use plain text or visuals too? Imitate by creating some trial social media posts.

Day # 21 – Design some visuals

You don’t have to be a PhotoShop expert. No, there are plenty tools available online that let you design the web visuals with ease. Piktochart lets you design an infographic and so does Visual.ly. So, use any of these two and create a basic infographic. If could be a picture story or some graphs and charts of stats. Familiarize yourself with the size dimensions for the image posts of different social media platforms and try to create some samples.

Day # 22 – Record yourself.

Try to audio record yourself first. For example, read out your summary you wrote on Day 16 aloud. And then listen to yourself. Find the tone, pitch and rate. Now, try to video record yourself. Repeat the same exercise again. And then look at some influencers in your niche and see how they behave in their videos. You’ve set yourself a stage to create podcasts and videocasts.

Day # 23 – Solve a problem

Pick one problem that your business is facing and spend much time trying to find possible solutions. Filter out the unnecessary ones and narrow down to a few practical solutions and then pen down those solutions as potential tips, as if you are debriefing someone. This is important because a major part of business content creation revolves around solving a prevailing problem. That’s how it becomes more relatable and personable.

Day # 24 – Write an email

Today, you spend time in writing one email. That’s it. Just one email. In this email, you describe the solution to the problem you just discovered on Day 25. Give it an impactful subject line. Do feel free to use visual in your email to make it more engaging. Consider using email templates from email marketing tool like Mailchimp. This will get you into the practice of email marketing.

Day # 25 – Write a news piece

Wear the journalist’s hat today and write a news story about your business. If you don’t have anything that’s newsworthy, then make one up. Say that you’re launching a new product. Read other PR articles in your niche to get a hang of what and how to write.

Day # 26 – Familiarize yourself with SEO

The major part of your content online depends upon SEO. It’s what makes it more visible on the search engines. So, make sure you spend most of the day today in learning about how search engines work… what are keywords… how to integrate them in your content… how to include relevant links in your content, etc. Take a tour of Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You don’t need to be a pro at using them, this is just you have an idea about how to use them to get the important search and social signals pertaining to marketing your content online.

Day # 27 – Learn to read the metrics

Today, you learn about what are the performance measures of your online content. Familiarize yourself with terms such as impressions, actions, click-through rate, conversions, and so on. And then write an insightful summary of the performance of your content. Draw meaningful strategies out of the numbers and make sure they are actionable.

Day # 28 – Create a single piece of finely tuned content

So, here’s when you create your first full-on content piece including everything that you’ve learnt so far. Use a perfect combination of text, images and insights. Create a piece of content that you believe will add value to the lives of your readers. And this will be your first official online content work.

Day # 29 – Come up with a catchy headline

You spend the full day 28 on writing down a good piece of content. But, today you try to come up with a winning headline that makes your entire content work instantly attractive and engaging. And if you trust me, this is the hardest part of your content marketing job. Coming up with a catchy title and that too incorporating the SEO keywords, believe you me, will keep you busy for the full day. And by the end of the day, you will feel proud to have spent a day coming up with a winning title for your work.

Day # 30 – Listen

The most important thing in being a successful content marketer is to listen. Listen to what others have to say about your content. Listen to what others do to make their content successful. Listen to their ideas of seamlessly integrating content marketing into other parts of their business practices. And that’ that. It’s all about keeping yourself inspired.

And did you realize that you’ve now become a content marketing pro? Now, cherish the moment and then time to get out there and toot that horn.

I want you to try this 30 day plan. Take it as a challenge if you wish. And at the end of 30 days, leave your comments below about whether and how it worked for you.

Thank you!