How to Connect the Dots that Can Make You a Star

So, it’s nearly January 1, the day we make our annual vow that this is definitely the year we get our shit together.

Before Christmas, I wrote about why productivity advice can be tricky for creative people.

And yesterday, I wrote about what I consider the most powerful tool to improve your creative output — a robust set of creative processes.

But it doesn’t matter at all how productive you are — if you aren’t working on the right things.

And if you are focused on the right things, you can afford to be a lot lazier. (Or you could always explore that thing called Having a Life. It’s good.)

That’s where our friend strategy comes into play.

Now, since no one is reading this (after all, it’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, which Copyblogger is officially taking off), I can share a secret with you: We’re going to be talking a lot about strategy in 2018.

The kind of advanced content strategy that makes people use words like gangster and rock star and wow you just doubled your rates.

But advanced content strategy needs to be built on a simple foundation.

The most important thing to understand about content is that no single piece of content is going to meet all of your goals for you.

No one piece of content can attract an audience, engage their interest, deepen their trust, inform them about everything they need to know to do business with you, ask for the sale, address the objections, and nurture the ongoing relationship.

Content strategy is a constellation

Even a wonderful piece of content is a single star in the sky. It’s strategy that connects disparate stars to form something with shape and meaning.

Again, since it’s just you and me here, I can let you in on a secret: Our ultra comprehensive content marketing library is going to be shape-shifting next year. It will be more streamlined, more targeted, more bite-sized.

It will solve the problem you need, when you need it, without boiling the ocean.

But you’re reading Copyblogger when it’s not even officially publishing. You’re apparently what my Canadian friends call a keener.

Keeners thrive on that kind of dense resource.

So if you want the in-depth, super meaty version of how content strategy works, get yourself into the content library and grab Brian Clark’s collection of strategy ebooks. They’ll give you that solid foundation for how the dots connect together.

Not everyone likes submerging themselves in a book to solve a problem

I do, but plenty of people don’t.

So very soon, we’ve got a resource that will help with that.

It’s called Creative Foundations. Unless we come up with some sexier name, like The Unicorn Collective, or Lucile.

It’s going to help you:

• Develop your own productivity best practices so you can get more done
• Design smart creative processes so you can get the most out of your creative time, and
• Master the foundational content strategy that the more “advanced” stuff all rests on.

But right now the Copyblogger team are chilling the champagne and crowdsourcing the confetti for New Year’s Eve. So you’ll have to be a little more patient.

Stay tuned, and we’ll let you know how you can get in on it.

(Spoiler alert — since it’s just you and me. The price is going to be very budget-friendly. That’s why we’re not doing a mega launch for it, and why I’m talking to you about it during the absolute deadest time of the year for content readership.)

OK, now I really am going to go take a couple of days off, so this is my last post for a few days. But keep an eye out for notification on that Creative Foundations project. I think you might dig it.

Have a great New Year’s Eve. 🙂