Last week, I told you that one of the 2025 trends will be treating content like a product, not just like a marketing asset. ​You can read the issue here​ if you missed it.

So let’s talk about how to do just that – treating our content like a product.

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Content as a marketing asset — the traditional approach

In traditional businesses, the regular approach is:

  • Build an offer (product or service)
  • Create the content that supports it, promotes it, and sells it

It usually happens in this order too. And it works — to some degree.

However, the cracks are obvious. You can tell when people try to cram a CTA for an otherwise unrelated product in a blog post/newsletter/YouTube video. You can tell the experience is fractured.

This happens because content and products live in separate ecosystems.

Let’s flip the script because

Your content is the first thing people see, not your products

In a way, your content is your brand.

You get judged through it and you’ll rarely get a second chance to make a better impression.

So you have to treat it at least as well as you treat your products. Start here:

Think about WHY you build a product/service

Ideally, a new product/service has to meet two BIG criteria:

  • There is demand for it.
  • It can be profitable (expenses < revenue).

An even better product/service meets a few other criteria:

  • A long lifespan — you can sell it for years to come (there are lucrative exceptions here).
  • Built-in virality. People talk about your product online, without being prompted to do so. Dickie Bush’s Ship 30 for 30 or Katelyn Bourgoin’s and Neal O’Grady Un-ignorable Challenge are good example here.
  • You can generate sales for it without actively working on it. For example, you can sell it through affiliates. BTW, it’s why I offer a 50% commission for my ​Audience Accelerator​ affiliates.
  • It generates multiple opportunities for you. For instance, you can buy the ​Guided Strategy Framework​ on its own or you can receive it as a bonus if you schedule ​a strategy session​ with me. Another good example here are bundles and packages — can you bundle several of your products together or create a package of complementary services?

See where I’m going with this? You can do the same for every piece of content you create.

Apply the product-building framework to content

Let’s look at everything above in a content-related context.

Is there demand for your content?

Are people actively looking for that piece of information? ​Answer the Public​ is a good place to start understanding what questions your audience has about your core topic.

Better yet, you can survey your audience directly. Speaking of, if you want to suggest the topic for the next Ideas to Power Your Future issue, ​you can do so here​.

Other places to mine for relevant topic ideas:

  • Every call you have with your clients — what questions are they asking?
  • Every Zoom coffee you have with a peer — what are their challenges?
  • ​Reddit — an in-depth playbook for it here​.
  • Social media comments on your posts and those of your peers/competitors — what are people asking?

Is your content profitable?

Every single piece of content you publish has to have a goal. Don’t just publish just to check a box, there’s plenty of white noise out there already.

Before you write or record anything, set a goal for your task. Typically, any piece of content should do one or more of these things:

  • Help you sell (directly or indirectly) — customer stories, case studies, outcomes you got for your clients, discounts.
  • Grow your audience — actionable how-tos, funny stuff, contrarian takes, commentary on current trending topics, in-depth proprietary research, and more.
  • Establish you as an authority — podcasts you’ve been on, speaking gigs, highlighting your experience, talking about how in-demand you are, and so on.

Each of these things ultimately leads to profit, either through direct selling or through ​building your credibility​.

Invest in content longevity

Our partner today is all about human longevity. She teaches you ​how to increase your lifespan​ and I teach you how to increase your content’s lifespan.

Not all your actions will lead to increasing your lifespan (we all crave junk food every once in a while), just like not all your pieces of content have a ton of mileage. Some will be flops, others will be time-sensitive.

However, most of them should be evergreen.

You should be able to repurpose, re-use, and repost them as often as possible. You can find ​a good primer on re-using and repurposing content here​.

I’ll tell you how I do it — you won’t be able to replicate everything because your systems likely look differently but there are surely a couple of tactics you can implement:

  • I link to previous newsletter issues, as you’ve seen here. The goal: getting you as much information as possible and keeping readers within my ecosystem.
  • I publish all issues on ​my blog​ — this adds a new traffic source, organic traffic through SEO.
  • Every issue gets published on social media 3 days after you see it in your inbox and then again, 3-6 months after the initial publication date. Overall, some issues have given me at least 5 social media posts.
  • I re-publish on Medium, which gives me two things: discovery (people subscribe to my newsletter after they discover me there) and revenue (you get paid when your articles are read on Medium). I wrote about ​how I use Medium here​.
  • I re-purposed some meatier issues into workshops (free or paid).
  • From every single newsletter issue, I can carve 10-15 social media posts. This will happen next year, I haven’t invested time in this yet and I should.
  • What I write here is the basis for nearly everything I say in podcasts and interviews.

These are a few of the things I do with my core content, this newsletter. I could do way more and I plan to.

If you publish any kind of long-form content, the world is your oyster. Get the most mileage out of it before you start writing/recording your next piece.

And don’t let older, evergreen content gather digital dust. Most of your audience hasn’t seen it yet and they should.

Build virality into your content

This one is trickier and it will take longer to work. However, after a while, people will start talking about it.

The first condition: your content has to be GREAT. Not good, great.

The standards are high AF these days, so you can’t half-ass your content anymore.

For a while, nothing will happen — people won’t share your posts in droves, they won’t quote you, and they won’t talk about you.

It took me ±15 months to get that ball rolling. I got some mentions here and there after 3 months or so but they were inconsistent.

These days, however, I get mentions, podcast invitations, “good” gossip at least once a week — that I know of. I’m trying really hard to keep track of these things because I’d like to thank everyone, but it’s nearly impossible. Some of these discussions take place on private channels and social media notifications are fickle.

Still, people are talking about my content (mainly my newsletter) without me asking them to. I’m incredibly grateful for every single one of these conversations — thank you!

While you can’t force people to mention you or talk about you, you can nudge them and incentivize them:

  • A referral program (if you scroll to the end of this email, you’ll see mine).
  • Ask! Yes, simply ask them to share your posts/newsletters/podcasts with their peers.

How do you distribute your content without actively working on it?

The biggest business dream is having your products sold on auto-pilot, through email automation or affiliate marketing. While that’s never enough to build a solid business, it’s something.

And the same can happen for your content. We already covered some of these tactics above:

  • Ask people to share your stuff.
  • Build referral programs.
  • Quote other creators or tag them (don’t go overboard!) so that they feel incentivized to share.
  • Create partnerships with your peers so you can tap into each other’s audiences.

Reality check: the bulk of the distribution is still on your plate and there’s no changing that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get some passive distribution too.

Generate multiple opportunities through content

This part essentially boils down to diversification and using multiple channels. I talk about this a lot because it’s important (here’s ​a list of 20 channels to choose from​).

I also get a lot of pushback on this with most people quoting the lack of time as the main reason why they stick to one or two channels.

It’s a very valid reason!

The truth is that, in the beginning, you can rely on a single channel. Or two: one social media platform and a newsletter is the most common setup.

In the long run, however, you need to be on a few more.

The good news is that it gets easier. Once you master repurposing your content from one platform to another, you can do this for 3-4 platforms with a relatively low lift.

Consider this:

  • A core piece of content (newsletter, lead magnet, long-form video) takes you the most time to create.
  • Re-purposing it for social media takes up to 1/10 of the time you spend creating it.
  • Re-purposing it for another social media platform takes you up to â…“ of the time the first repurposing took (less if you don’t have to change the format).

The more of these you do, the less time you invest in each of them.

Of course, there is a threshold. There is a point where even 5 minutes is too long or it’s not worth it.

But there are at least 3-4 channels to go through before you get to that point.

Think of your content like a product, not like a marketing asset

This simple (not easy!) mindset change will help you get the most mileage out of your content. It won’t just simplify things for you and save you hours every week but it will also help you sell more.

Think back to the first criteria for building a product OR a piece of content: demand and profitability. Check these two boxes and you will sell more through your content without spending ages creating something new every damn day.