“Content is really about advocating for your business [and] advocating for yourself. Yes, you can say you’re an expert, but how are you going to demonstrate your expertise? You’re going to do that through your content, via video, written, audio, etc.”
—Michelle Ngome
In this #ContentChat recap, Erika Heald is joined by Michelle Ngome, outreach director for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program and founder of the African American Marketing Association, to discuss how content helps businesses at all sizes scale. They explore how content builds authority and helps connect organizations with their ideal buyers or funders, and where to focus your content efforts at early stages for the greatest impact.
The 10,000 Small Businesses program is a 14-week, no-cost business program available throughout the U.S. with hubs in 22 cities. You can learn more about the program and apply at 10ksbapply.com.
Watch the entire conversation on YouTube or read through the highlights below.
Leveraging Content Marketing to Grow Your Small Business
Content demonstrates and reinforces your expertise as an entrepreneur or business owner. Start by creating content in your preferred format. Michelle started with audio content to build her business.
“Play to your strengths. And I knew early on I had a face for radio, so I started a podcast 10 years ago.”—Michelle Ngome
One-off content does not often result in sales, especially when you’re getting started. A consistent content strategy will build traction and eventually lead to the results you hope for.
“You have to be flexible when it comes to ROI, your return on investment. We know that to be a finance term, so we directly think money. But as a marketer, we should be very familiar of what the brand ROI will be, so sometimes you have to build yourself up and then you repurpose content as you go down.“—Michelle Ngome
“Content and funding, there may not be a direct correlation. This particular post may not yield you a $1,000 client immediately, but it will come, because it’s about building your personal brand and thought leadership, demonstrating your expertise, social proof, enhancing your brand visibility, and creating brand consistency.”—Michelle Ngome
Learn more about how content marketing influences business growth in this past chat recap with Chloe Thompson.
Prioritizing Content in the Early Stages of Your Business
Entrepreneurs have so many areas they can focus on. Prioritize tasks that directly support your revenue first.
“[Prioritize] revenue-generating activities first. That’s what you need to focus on. Answer those emails about ‘Hey, I’m interested in your service.’ Book those appointments. Whatever brings you money, do that first. If you gotta put packages together in the morning and go to the post office by 10 a.m., do all of those activities first.”—Michelle Ngome
Content should be in your top three priorities for attracting and retaining business, and you need a solid content strategy to guide your efforts.
“You got meetings, networking, and then content; and that’s between content creation and content marketing.”—Michelle Ngome
“That way, you’re not just doing those random acts of content. Because people can get so focused on the tactical ‘I want to do a thing.’ But why are you going to do the thing? How is it going to help you sustain your business?”—Erika Heald
Tailor your content strategy to your ideal client and how you solve their pain points.
“Who’s your ideal client? What is their pain point? That is your video, your copy on your website and your newsletter… all of these pain points you need to speak to.”—Michelle Ngome
“[A client] is a financial counselor. [The pain point is]: Have you struggled with maintaining your budget? Have you had the challenges of living paycheck to paycheck? Well, my name is XYZ and I work with high-earning millennial women who are looking to save money and prepare for retirement. That’s the value proposition.”—Michelle Ngome
“When I hear a business center say ‘our audience is everybody,’ it just makes me want to scream—because that means your audience is nobody. No organization, no product, is a great fit for every person looking for a solution. That is not true.”—Erika Heald
Build a Minimum Viable Content Marketing Plan
Define your brand voice for content. Pick your preferred content format and platform to start. Then, you should document your content topics to guide your creation.
“Pick what your voice will be. [Decide if you want] audio, video, written. Select your platform, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, whatever. From there, come up with different ideas or topics. It’s just a matter of taking the time to write it down, maybe using Gemini, maybe looking at your competitors to see what they’re doing, and using maybe Google Keyword Planner to kind of hone in on those keyword tools.”—Michelle Ngome
Batch your content creation and set a realistic content cadence you can follow consistently. Repurpose content to maximize its value across channels.
“Batch your videos, batch your content creation, and drip that out over maybe two videos a week, once a week, whatever works best for you. If it’s long-form, maybe that’s once a week. And then you can run those clips through Opus, the AI generator that can chop up your long-form clips.”—Michelle Ngome
Video content, in particular, is great for repurposing into other formats and using snippets across your content.
“If you start with video content in particular, then you are able to have little snippets of audio if you want. You’re able to use quotes from the conversations. You’re able to get AI transcripts through something like Otter.”—Erika Heald
How Content Can Help Secure Funding and Recognition
Michelle explains how a solid content foundation helped her secure a sizeable donation that fueled AAMA’s success in the full recording.
“There are things that are going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about, because of your personal brand, because of the way you position yourself in your business, because of the information that is available online about you and your business, which is content.”—Michelle Ngome
Consistent content creation builds your reputation and can unlock more opportunities than you may realize.
“That’s the joy and the aggravation about this kind of approach. Content is not an overnight or immediate kind of thing, but over time, it shows that you really know your business. It shows you know who you actually are.”—Erika Heald
“When you are a content creator, you’re showing, not telling, people that you are that expert. Especially now, with the way people are using AI, they’re going to find out who the actual experts are who can do for them whatever that thing is based on what you’ve put out there. Like when you publish a case study, or when you talk about how you helped a customer or a client, those kinds of stories that you share start to have that aggregated weight in ways that they really didn’t even before.”—Erika Heald
Tackling Common Challenges in Content Creation and Entrepreneurship
Pick realistic goals and set benchmarks to measure your success.
“One of the big mistakes people make is they start focusing on everything they can’t do that someone else is doing. I’ll never have a million followers on Instagram. Do you need a million followers? Are there a million people that are going to reasonably want to purchase whatever it is that you have to solve?”—Erika Heald
Define your purpose.
“It’s really about how you define purpose and success. What kind of business do you want to have, and if you desire a million followers, how are you going to serve those million followers, and what do you want to receive in return?”—Michelle Ngome
Follow a schedule.
“Whether you have an actual business or you’re a content creator, you need a schedule. Just like you have a schedule at a nine to five, you need a schedule with entrepreneurship. Are you creating content four hours a day or for 40 minutes? You need a schedule, you need a process.”—Michelle Ngome
Prepare your financial foundation and seek resources like the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program to support your growth.
“Goldman Sachs has a 14-week no-cost business program. We have classes on money metrics, which is about financial statements, growth, opportunities, HR, leadership, sales, and marketing. We partner [entrepreneurs] with the business advisor, and then at the end of the program, they have a strategic growth plan. [Financials are a major consideration], the organization of financial statements, balance sheet, income, statement, things of that nature.”—Michelle Ngome
Know how you want to scale.
“The second most common problem is HR, hiring/retaining, building a team, all of that kind of goes in together.”—Michelle Ngome
Make your content engaging and entertaining.
“How can you make your industry fun and possibly sexy? How can you bring your personality out? Because all content doesn’t have to be boring.”—Michelle Ngome
“No matter what it is you’re selling or who you’re selling to, you’re still a human being, and you’re selling to other people. They’re choosing you to be that person that they work with and that they give their money to. So whenever you have an opportunity to show your personality and show what makes you different, to show that you have empathy for them, that’s how people decide that they want to work with you.”—Erika Heald
Recommended Tools and Resources for Content Marketers
AI transcription tools like Otter can help you repurpose audio content.
“I get AI transcripts for most of my meetings. It’ll summarize things for me for Content Chat; that’s how we get transcripts that we write the recap from.”—Erika Heald
Generative AI tools like Google Gemini can help with content creation and research. Michelle prefers Gemini over ChatGPT.
“Google Gemini over ChatGPT for me. What I like about Gemini is it provides better sentence structure, or provides me with more cohesive writing for my content, especially the long-form content, web email, cold emails, newsletters, things of that nature.”—Michelle Ngome
Grammar and spelling tools like Grammarly can be used alongside other generative AI tools for better content output.
“I use Grammarly for grammar. I can just sometimes bullet point my ideas or the actual paragraph and just put it in Gemini, and it sounds so much better.”—MIchelle Ngome
Michelle and Erika also recommend Opus and Descript for editing long-form video content. Content Marketing Institute also offers a wealth of resources to improve your content strategy.
The Power of Industry Associations for Professional Growth
Find professional associations in your field or city to connect you with more support and resources.
“Over the years, I’ve been a member of IABC, PRSA, and ASAE. In all of those kinds of situations, especially early in my career, I found so many great resources and mentors.”—Erika Heald
“Associations are so important. They’re so vital to professional success in general. And of course, there’ll be some personal benefits, long-lasting friendships.”—Michelle Ngome
“I encourage entrepreneurs to do two things: One, find and participate in the industry based association so you can learn [and] stay abreast on what’s going on in your industry. Two, whoever your client, your target audience, or ideal client is, find that industry association. Where are they? Tap into that as well.”—Michelle Ngome
Michelle explains how the African American Marketing Association connects its members to valuable support and expert resources.
“I have the association, and we have monthly programming. So we’re talking about any topic within the industry. We have guest speakers coming through. We have a partnership with Google and the certifications that they offer. So if you’re a member, you get free access to that, whether it’s project management, UX design, etc. We have our summit, we have our job board, so there are a ton of in-person and virtual networking opportunities that are available as long as you tap in.”—Michelle Ngome
