Welcome to the first edition of Leveling Up (formerly Growth Weekly.)

Leveling Up is your weekly dose of valuable content curated for high-performing marketers and founders to help you - that’s right, Level Up.

In today’s email:

• The best content strategies for startups to go viral

• How to use ChatGPT to 10x your productivity

• A HUGE copywriting tip

• And more…

Here are the top 10 most interesting links to check out this week:

1. ✍️ This copywriting tip explains how to call out your ideal reader

2. 🤖 Here’s a new way to create “undetectable” AI content for Google

3. 🎆 Video commerce platform Fireworks tests generative AI

4. 🎟️ 15 B2B social media trends you can’t ignore

5. 🧑‍💻 Google Search to become more “visual and human”

6. 💸 Publishers get a 50% stake in TikTok’s new ad product

7. 👬 How to clone yourself (a quick and sobering guide)

8. 📑 The 5-minute reading habit to hunt for viral ideas

9. ▶️ Stunning results after just 100 days of YouTube Shorts

10. 🧠 Key takeaways from an 8-9 figure business mastermind

Deep Dive

The Best Content Marketing Strategies for Startups that Drive Viral Growth

Startups like Blue Apron and Design Pickle became very successful by using content marketing, which means creating valuable and interesting content (like blog posts or videos) to attract customers.

If you use a good content strategy, you can also get great results for your business.

In this week's deep dive, we will talk about the best content marketing strategies for startups to help you grow your business quickly.

You will learn the most effective ways to study your audience and competitors so you can make a smart content plan.

We will also cover how to create content that is better than what your competitors are doing, which will help you succeed.

Understand Your Audience Before You Start

Before you start creating content for your startup, it's really important to know who your audience is.

If you don't know who you're writing for, it's almost impossible to create content that they'll find useful or interesting.

If your content isn't helpful to your readers, they won't become leads for your business.

You don't want to waste time and money creating content that doesn't matter to your target audience.

So the first step is to get to know your audience better by doing audience development and persona research.

Here are some important things to figure out:

• Demographics: Find out your audience's age, gender, location, income, and other basic details

• Psychographics: Learn about their hobbies, beliefs, interests, and habits

• Pain Points: Identify the problems they're facing that your product or service can solve

• Challenges: Figure out what kinds of challenges they face that make them look for products or services like yours

• Information Sources: Determine where they go to find solutions to their problems

• Content Preferences: Understand what kind of content they like to consume

• Your Solutions: Think about how your product or service can help them

Once you know who your audience is, you can come up with ideas, topics, and keywords that will help you create the right content for them.

Analyze… Then Beat Your Competition

Look at your direct competitors.

Once you know who you’re competing with, there’s a lot of information you can find out by simply paying attention to the type of feedback that they receive from customers.

Pay particular attention to the relevant comments, ideas, and solutions that they get from your ideal audience.

Ahrefs will help you gather data so that you can connect the dots and figure out how you can improve on the current state of affairs within your niche.

Now that you know your competition’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunity gaps in their content marketing activity, you can start to create better content than theirs.

Every piece of content you create should be of the highest quality, but here are some other tips to help you outrank your rivals:

• Skyscraper Framework: To create popular content, build on existing topics or ideas that your ideal audience already likes. Look for content that has already been proven to be successful and then improve upon it by making it even better

• Fill Content Gaps: By creating content that answers questions or provides information that no one else has covered, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche and attract an audience that values unique insights

• Include Eye-catching Visuals: Grab attention and make your content memorable. Studies have shown that content with compelling visuals gets more engagement than text alone

• Increase Content Length: Go in-depth and provide more value. While shorter content can be effective in certain contexts, research has shown that longer content tends to perform better overall

• Reach Out to the Right People: This means identifying influencers or websites in your niche that might be interested in your content and reaching out to them with a personalized pitch

• Make Sharing Easy: Encourage your audience to spread the word. Including social sharing buttons on your website or blog posts can make it simple for readers to spread the word on their own social networks

By following these steps, you will be able to create high-quality, engaging content that will outrank and outperform your competitors.

Nurturing Content Success with Other Platforms

Social media, email marketing, video marketing, and analytics can help make successful content even better. Here’s how:

Social Media

Social media is an essential tool for expanding the success of your current marketing campaign.

But it's not just about sharing your blog posts on different platforms multiple times. You can use social media to repurpose your blog content into different formats to cater to different segments of your audience.

For instance, some prefer to watch a video or listen to a podcast instead of reading a blog post.

You can also use social media to engage with your followers, build brand awareness, and increase traffic to your website.

Additionally, you can use social media to conduct market research, gather feedback, and stay up-to-date with industry trends.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful way to keep your audience engaged and to promote your content effectively.

To get the most out of it, you must consistently offer value to your subscribers.

This means sharing high-quality blog posts, videos, or any other content that is relevant to your audience.

One of the key ways to grow your email list is to offer your best content in exchange for your visitors’ names and emails.

Make sure to use a quality landing page builder that helps you create an attractive and engaging opt-in form.

Additionally, you can segment your email list to target specific groups of subscribers with content that is tailored to their interests. By providing valuable and relevant content to your subscribers, you will increase your

Analytics

Without analytics, you're essentially flying blind, with no way of knowing which types of content are effective and which ones need improvement.

By analyzing the results of your campaign, you can make data-driven decisions about where to allocate your resources and budget.

This can help you double down on what's working and scale your business for explosive growth.

Use tools like Google Analytics or other marketing analytics software to track your progress, set goals, and refine your strategy.

With the right analytics in place, you'll be able to create content that resonates with your audience and drives real business results.

Final Thoughts on Content Marketing

You now know that the only way to outperform your competition is through the creation and implementation of an effective content marketing strategy.

All that’s left is for you to test, measure, optimize, and scale.

Just keep this in mind:

Quality is more important than quantity.

Many startups make the mistake of trying to create content for every possible channel, but this approach can actually hinder your ability to provide value and see real results.

Instead, start by focusing on just two or three tactics that play to your strengths.

For example, if you're a skilled writer, start with blogging and choose a couple of channels for promotion.

Master those few strategies before adding more to your plate.

Remember, less content can sometimes be more.

Especially if you're able to provide high-quality content that resonates with your audience.

By focusing on a few strategies and continually analyzing your analytics, you can scale your processes and achieve explosive growth.

Creating Content on Autopilot: How to Use ChatGPT to 10x Your Productivity

In this episode of Leveling Up, Eric Siu shares his process and the top software that he uses to produce high-performing content.

Tune in and don't miss this week’s video to learn:

• A 3-minute content marketing hack

• How pillar pieces of content work in 2023

• Eric’s content process and the tools that he uses

• Do you still need human editors when using AI content software?

Click here to watch the full video.

Top 3 Available Marketing Jobs

1. Senior Paid Media Manager (Single Grain). Remote | F/T | Manage and optimize ad campaigns on Google and Facebook, develop and lead strategic presentations to clients, including media strategies, QBRs, and year-in-reviews. (Full job description here.)
   

2. Director of Social & Community Marketing (Agency Analytics). Remote | F/T | You are a thought leader who can merge digital, cultural, and social trends with analytics into a strategic vision and lead a team to execute it. You love building and nurturing lasting digital communities and creating unique and memorable experiences for our community of marketing agencies. (Full job description here.)
   

3. Head of Growth (Toggl). Remote | F/T | You will lead all revenue-generating teams within Toggl (marketing, sales, and customer success), closely collaborating with the product growth team on PLG experiments and the product department on product road mapping. (Full job description here.)

Until next week,

The Leveling Up Team

———

P.S.

Here are more ways we can help your business grow:

• Listen to our Marketing School podcast for daily marketing tips

• Subscribe to the Leveling Up YouTube channel

• Read the Single Grain blog for actionable marketing playbooks