Founders know they need to create 'content,' but very few do. They know they need to tell their story but often get stuck in action by trying to create the perfect strategy or trying to emulate a unicorn.
"Should we start a podcast?"
"SaaStr said we should do a webinar a week."
"My friend said LinkedIn is driving a bunch of inbound for their business."
All of these channels can and do work, but a better place to start is by building a process of regular shipping. Focusing on the channel first can lead to starts, stops, and a lack of confidence when tactics don't immediately produce results.
Instead of focusing on channels or results, build a culture of shipping. An understood publishing schedule builds shared expectations inside teams and with customers.
The 1-1-1 framework is a simple heuristic that can get people across the company bought into contributing to the content strategy. All of this can be done in 2 hours per week.
1 email per month
At the end of every month, send out a newsletter to your entire database talking about what you shipped this month and why it matters to users. It's shocking how few companies do this.
An email like this delivered on a regular schedule builds trust with your audience and shows them how the product is evolving. In SaaS, customers aren't just buying your product for what it is today; they are staying subscribed because of the expectation that it will continue to get better. Deliver on that. Even the smallest details are interesting to your power users. Linear does these emails extremely well.
1 blog post per week
The post can be as abstract or specific as you'd like. Set aside 1 hour per week to write down an interesting insight you've uncovered in product research or a hot take on your industry. If you'd prefer not to write, make a Loom and send the transcription to an editor.
You can also use the monthly email as inspiration by providing more context to a new feature you shipped. This is where you start seeing how each piece of content in the framework can funnel into the next.
There is no length requirement, and it doesn't always have to be published, but make sure to share it internally on Slack. In the early days, ideally, this should be written by the CEO sharing their point of view that led them to create the company or why they made a critical decision. Over time, contributions can evolve to be rotated between multiple people in the company.
1 social post per day
Now you have 1 email and 4 blog posts to fuel 1 post Monday through Friday. AI tools like copy.ai make it easy to turn a long-form piece of content into bite-sized posts for LinkedIn and/or Twitter. The output is usually conceptually good, but you'll want to make sure to edit each post for authenticity.
You can use a scheduling tool to post these each day, or you can post organically as new ideas come to you. Choose your own adventure. As a bonus, if you see a post doing well organically, it's an easy win to throw $50 or $100 to promote it to your target audience. When the market tells you what they like, double down.
3-month challenge
If you're not convinced this will work, give it an earnest try for 3 months. I guarantee content will get easier to produce, and you'll see positive feedback in some way. It might be from new customers, easier recruiting outreach, a DM from an investor, but you will see something.
A secondary benefit is the feedback loop you create. You'll see which types of posts resonate and which don't. You can keep going deeper into a subject area that continues to perform. You can use that feedback to invest in a podcast, or weekly webinar, or a LinkedIn ghostwriter.
Brian Armstrong's quote works here:
"Stop trying to see 10 steps ahead. If you can only see a few steps ahead, just go do anything. It doesn't even matter what you do as long as you do something because... 'action produces information.'"