Building the content system is stage 2 of Write to Sell. In this stage, you do 2 things in order:
- Build the Truth vault for your product, the place that holds every fact about it.
- Set up your first content funnel frame, made of 3 posts: a Know post, a Trust post and a Love post.
The stage ends when you have a solid Truth vault and at least one 3-post funnel frame. After that, you repeat the same process to grow the funnel.
Why do you need a content system?
The content system is where your brand starts to be built. Every post you publish is a mark of your brand on the Internet, and the posts follow a planned direction instead of being scattered.
In stage 1, you made the foundation pages. They say who you are and what you sell, but they are not enough for customers to find you. The content system puts out strategic posts. Each one aims at a need of your customer and leads them to your core product.
Your job in stage 2 is to repeat the process until your brand shows its first positive signals. To repeat it, you need to know which task comes first and which comes next.
Stage 2 follows stage 1
Stage 2 starts when your website is indexed. What you did in stage 1 stays as it is and keeps working:
- The home page, which says who you are and what you sell.
- The about page, which tells your expertise and your story.
- The contact page, so customers can reach you.
- The product page, which presents your core product.
Stage 1 put your website on the Internet. Stage 2 starts building a content system on that same website, so these pages are the base you start from. The most important thing you bring along is your core product, because the whole content system serves that product.
What does stage 2 include?
Stage 2 reuses the docs’ Content system, which has 3 parts:
- Truth vault, which holds every fact about the product.
- Content funnel, the posts that lead customers to the product.
- Publishing process, how each post goes out.
In this stage, you do the Truth vault and the Content funnel first, with the pages in the table below.
| Group | Pages | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Get it right | Entity keyword, Ranking keyword, Abandoned keyword | Knowing which post aims at which kind of keyword, and finding the keywords posts already have |
| Put into practice | Product Truth vault | Writing every fact about your product into the Truth vault before you write |
| Resources | Tools: Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, Google Search Console | Checking keywords and reading the numbers |
Two things decide how you move through these pages, namely the order between the vault and the funnel, and the order of the tasks themselves.
Vault first then funnel
You build the Truth vault first, then write the funnel. The content funnel only works once you understand your product through each group of the vault. Each group of the vault matches one funnel. The clearer the vault, the better you know what the next funnel should cover.
Different from reading the docs
The docs have every part of the content system, but a reader on their own must work out the order. The hardest part is knowing which task must come first, which comes next, and which part of the Truth vault you need before the marketing content. A wrong order costs time and means doing the work again.
In the coaching program, stage 2 is a to-do list in order, with guiding questions and tables for each task. You work through it from start to finish instead of studying the whole set of documents on your own. Every task aims at one goal, which is making sales.
What do you have by the end?
By the end of stage 2, you have 2 things you can count:
- A solid Truth vault for your product: one product intro page, 3 groups for 3 highlights, and the concept, guide and resource pages inside each group.
- At least one 3-post content funnel frame following the Know - Trust - Love funnel: one Know post, one Trust post and one Love post.
The funnel frame is what you build on as the funnel grows. Once you have built one frame, the next ones follow the same way. The Truth vault works the same. After the first guide, the rest of the work gets simple.
Along with those 2 things, you learn the process for publishing content and the strategy for making it. You also learn to read Google Analytics and Google Search Console, so you can tell which signals are good and which are bad.
The most common mistake
The place where learners most often quit in stage 2 is writing the posts in the first content funnel frame. The frame has only 3 posts, but building it the first time is very hard:
- The first post is hard.
- The second post is still hard.
- By the third post, many people quit.
Each week without writing slows progress further, and learners stay stuck at this step longer.