When James Watt invented the flywheel in the 18th century, he would have never imagined that the concept would be used in the business and marketing world. The flywheel effect is a recent phenomenon that many marketers prefer to grow and sustain their customers through endless customer satisfaction. 

This effect can be used by the content creators who want to publish, grow their audience, and build a loyal community who will consume their content without skipping. The content flywheel concept helps content creators speed up their growth with fewer efforts and a well-planned flywheel strategy.

This article will briefly explain the content flywheel concept and analyse how effectively a content creator can use it. 

What is a Content Flywheel?

A flywheel, in general, is a wheel attached to a rotating shaft to supply power from a motor to a machine smoothly. This invention came as a turning point in the way motors work, as flywheels made the engines work at very high speeds in an incredible energy-sufficient way. The amount of energy the flywheel stores depends on how fast it spins along 

Similarly, the content flywheel concept will help the business grow steadily, where the energy is helpful when acquiring content consumers and sustaining them for the future. When you think of content creation as a flywheel, you add different decisions and adjust your content creation strategy accordingly. 

 

Source: Hubspot

These decisions will be made according to the different stages of bringing audiences to your content. There are broadly three stages – Attract, Engage, and Delight. 

You have to plan content strategy and publish content according to these stages in the flywheel with an ultimate goal to provide your audience and community with the best customer experience. As fast as you spin the flywheel, you will see a better result. 

To understand the content flywheel more quickly, we should first know how the content flywheel works. 

How does the Flywheel Work?

As explained above, the momentum of your flywheel will depend on three main things – firstly, how fast you spin it; secondly, how much friction is there and lastly, how big your content flywheel strategy is. As a content creator, you should adjust your content strategies to address all these three things. 

Speed of Your Flywheel

The speed of your flywheel increases when you add force to it. The force is the content and strategy that you implement to speed up your flywheel like free resources, freebies, membership offers, freemium models and a well-planned community engagement. 

It will help you build your community extensively and you can acquire the basic contact details, as they are potential leads. It will add strangers to your community and convert them into prospects who will consume your paid content.

The friction of your Flywheel

When you apply force to your flywheel, you should make sure that you eliminate elements that can create friction from your content strategy. For example, not engaging or improper communication channels with your audience/community, inconsistent content publishing, or misalignment between your team and community. 

The more you increase your speed and eliminate friction, the more you will see your loyal and paid content consumers turning into promoters of your content. There is no more significant promotion than your content consumers promoting your content to their peers. There is a high value for testimonials and word-of-mouth promotion. These promoters will again become a force that will spin your flywheel with increased momentum.

How big is your content flywheel strategy?

You can reduce the friction by looking into issues that churn out your audience and issues that stay as an obstacle in growing your community. It will help you engage with prospects in your community to convert them into your loyal, primary members and paid content consumers.

Now that you understand the basic workings of a content flywheel (that is, its outer layer), we will analyse how the flywheel’s inner stages work. As mentioned above, there are three stages to bringing audiences and building a strong and loyal community. 

You should plan a content strategy that will add force and avoid friction in all these three stages, respectively and also as a whole flywheel too. To be more precise, each stage needs its own momentum and the flywheel as a whole also requires speed, based on the results of these three stages. You can do it by applying force to three stages and provide an amazing customer experience. 

Here are a few forces that you can apply in each stage.

Attract Stage

In the attract stage, you will attract visitors by providing useful, entertaining or valuable content and eliminating barriers to the potential consumers in finding your content. You should also let your visitors and consumers learn about you and your expertise. 

The key motto of this stage is to gain people’s attention but not force it. Some forces you can apply are consistent content publishing, SEO, content marketing, and availability in multiple publishing channels.

Engage Stage

In the engage stage, you should make it easy for your visitors and audience to engage with your free content and get them persuaded to buy your paid content. You should also eliminate the barriers that will stop your visitors from turning into regular content consumers and the regular content consumers from turning into paid content consumers. 

In this stage, you should mainly focus on building relationships with your audiences and visitors to understand them personally. It will help you know their problems so that you can help them solve those problems. Through building and maintaining the relationship, you can convert them into paid content consumers or loyal members of your community. 

Some forces in this stage include community meetups, email personalisation, newsletters, resource freebies, and free workshops that can promote pain content or membership. 

Delight Stage

In the final, the delight stage, you will be helping, supporting and empowering your community to reach their goals through your content, knowledge, skillsets and expertise. Your community’s success is your success. 

Few friction points in this stage can be many elements that can cause hindrance in assessing your paid content like website optimisation, proper landing page, advertising and marketing the content. Some forces can be loyalty programs/workshops, free but exclusive content, free mini-courses in exchange for feedback, one-on-one consulting, multichannel availability (chat, email, phone), personalised communication systems (being there for each and every person in your community) and community centred content. 

In this stage, you will be focusing on providing paid content and making your community buy them. You should also leverage your content to convert your community members into promoters in this stage. 

That’s an effective way to attract new audiences and retain the existing ones. The content flywheel concept will let you strategise exclusive content for each stage that will also help eliminate friction and reduce clumsiness between the audience at each stage. 

If you can effectively use a content flywheel concept in your content creation strategy, you can provide the most valuable, holistic and delightful experience to everyone who engages with your content.

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