Organic short-form content is free advertising
The following is an excerpt from my weekly email called Freelancers Only! It goes out every Tuesday at 2:00pm. Interested? Sign up here!
Organic short-form content is free advertising.
For decades, if you wanted someone to distribute your content to their audience, you had to pay them to do it. You had to pay a radio station to run your jingle after the hit song. You had to pay a TV network to play your commercial during the big game. You had to pay the publishers to print your ad in their magazines. That’s called paid advertising, baby.
Don’t have enough money to pay the big guys? That’s fine. You just won’t get access to their audiences.
Instead, you can develop your own audience with content marketing. You can publish blogs, send emails, make guides, or write reports. This would earn you the attention of people who are interested in what you have to say and sell. The growth here is slow—most organic content only spreads by word-of-mouth. You have to trust your audience to love it enough to share it with more people.
Now, something amazing is happening.
Organic short-form content is free advertising.
Creators on Instagram complain incessantly about how their content isn’t being shown to their followers anymore. They complain so much about this, that they miss the opportunity right in front of them. Instagram (and other short-form platforms) will distribute your organic content to brand new audiences, for free.
The only catch? It has to be really good. And by “really good,” I mean instantly engaging, valuable, or entertaining. You can’t phone it in. You can’t half-ass it. You have to play the short-form game, and you can win some short-form prizes (free views from new audiences).
So, a couple questions…
Are you willing to find a way to package up your work in short-form video?
Are you willing to test that out for 6-12 months until you find a format that works?
Because if you are, there’s free advertising for your freelance business available.
