Make content and build a brand

When you post publicly and can't tell why a piece worked, build each piece from three functions and scale short to long.

Use to write a headline that makes someone pick your piece, by stacking as many of seven attention traits as you honestly can.

When you can make content but have nothing to say, find topics through five lenses or the default do-then-tell method.

Once a hook has worked, keep people watching or reading by using lists, steps and stories, often woven together.

Use to decide how often to ask your audience to buy, where the ask sits, and what to ask for.

Use to choose which platforms to post on and in what order, and how broad a subject you can credibly talk about.

Use to set how often you post, run a twice-monthly filming day to produce it, and track audience growth each month.

Define a brand in terms you can act on, keep advertising and branding apart, and score any brand on reach, influence and direction.

When a growing brand needs more customers: pick one of five market directions, judge the move by net audience, and recover from bad pairings.

Before spending on a brand: see how a pairing becomes a premium price, then pick the ideal customer and list what they like.

Once you know whom you serve and what they like, make content that ties the brand to it and climb the three levels of authority.

Use when organic content wins most of your customers, to choose between ads or sales, more or better content, and calls to action.

Use when making personal content, to build the four things that raise your influence: status, power, credibility and likeness.

Use when organic content brings your leads, to make far more of it, make it better, and repurpose it from your easiest format.

Use when your organic posts should bring more leads, to place calls to action on each platform where people can act.

Use when content gets views but the wrong leads, to aim it at your ideal buyers and build a brand that lifts every channel.

When you need more content than you could ever film yourself, turn the calls, sessions and events of serving customers into a daily stream of clips judged by leads.

When you ask people for many things and few act, ask for one action and stack reasons and proof behind it, in content, copy and instructions to staff.

When you have a talk, webinar or workshop to give, build it around one problem and one named solution, in the order why, what, how, now, with proof throughout.