Welcome to the blog inspired by Uncle Ron's Porch! In this series of podcast episodes, Uncle Ron shares invaluable insights and strategies for growing your business using search engine optimization, technology, and social media.
Whether you own an independent insurance agency, a digital marketing firm, or any other type of small business, these episodes offer practical advice on creating and optimizing high-quality content that resonates with your audience.
Strategy for Content Creation
The content creation process involves developing ideas that resonate with your target audience. Additionally, it involves crafting engaging written or visual materials based on those ideas, and sharing this information through various formats. Examples of different types of content include blogs, videos, infographics, or social media posts designed to reach and engage your target audience.
In the first episode of the week, Uncle Ron introduces the concept of how to organize your plan for content ideas.
"Crates, Boxes, and Shoes" is an analogy to help you develop a structured content plan. The idea is that you organize your content by large subjects (crates), sub-categories (boxes) and then smaller categories under each sub-category (shoes).
- Crates
represent your main product categories or high-level ideas. Examples from the insurance world include personal, commercial, life, and health insurance. - Boxes
are the subcategories within each crate. For example, home insurance or auto insurance would be a sub-category under personal insurance. - Shoes
focus on specific features, topics, questions, problems, or stories related to each box sub-category.
Uncle Ron urges you to identify one or two key areas of focus (crates) to start your content plan. In addition, you should organize your content with an editorial calendar that will help to keep you on track. This sets the stage for a more organized and impactful content strategy.
Organizing Your Content: From Boxes to Shoes
Moving on to the second episode, Uncle Ron dives deeper into developing a content strategy by breaking down your "crates" into more precise "boxes" and "shoes."
For example, if you're targeting commercial insurance, you could create content around property insurance, liability insurance, cyber liability, and workers' compensation. Each "box" is filled with "shoes"—specific needs, questions, and problems that your audience faces.
Uncle Ron emphasizes the importance of leveraging tools like the Google search engine and artificial intelligence to find relevant questions and problems your audience encounters. These issues can be formulated into long-tail keywords. You can use a specific keyword research tool to help you. But, if you don't want to pay for an extra tool, you can also put these questions into Google's search engine to see what else people are asking about your specific topic. These "what people also ask" topics are a great way to find more content ideas for your blog content.
He also highlights the versatility of this approach. It can be applied to various industries, not just insurance.
Creating Initial Content: Utilizing AI and Personal Touch
In the third episode, Uncle Ron focuses on creating initial content. Ron has used this content strategy to continue to grow his insurance agency in the middle of Dallas/Fort Worth. His success underscores the effectiveness of a well-thought-out content strategy which includes both planning and deployment.
As part of your content creation strategy, Uncle Ron recommends using AI tools to generate outlines and rough drafts. Starting with an outline and incorporating stories or analogies that help to explain what you are trying to teach your ideal audience will engage them more effectively. He provides actionable tips on creating different pieces of content like blog articles, web pages, or videos.
Expanding Your Content: Optimization and Repurposing
In the fourth episode, Uncle Ron discusses how to grow your business by optimizing and distributing your content. He emphasizes creating a content plan for the new year that includes various pieces of content like video and written pieces, all optimized with keywords to enhance visibility and reach potential customers.
Tools like Frase for content optimization and Missinglettr for distributing content across multiple platforms are two resources that he uses. Uncle Ron also highlights the importance of repurposing content to increase reach and efficiency, advising the use of AI tools to convert between content formats—for example, turning a blog post into a video script.
Publishing content on multiple platforms, including your website, social media, YouTube, and Medium.com, ensures a broader audience reach. Uncle Ron also stresses the need to update your content over time to keep it fresh and relevant.
Daily Podcast Episodes for Business Growth
Listen to this week's episodes and get a daily dose of SEO wisdom from Uncle Ron. Continue listening to past and future episodes by subscribing to Uncle Ron's Porch wherever you get your podcasts.
Grow Your Small Business
For more detailed strategies and tips, Uncle Ron invites listeners to join his email list. Each week, he sends two emails. One on Mondays to introduce the topics for the week and one on Saturday to summarize what we learned. He also offers a downloadable content plan PDF and weekly insights in each email. You won't want to miss hearing all of his crazy stories either!
By following these structured steps and utilizing the right tools, you can create a robust content strategy to grow your business in the new year.
If all of this is too overwhelming or you don't want to be a content creator, hit up Uncle Ron. Through Sprocket Expert Optimizations, he offers a range of SEO services to help grow your small business.
Start a conversation today!