Content business: what opportunities does it offer Hustlers?

Content marketing, a content business or even a content platform? What is the difference and which one should you choose? You can read it here!

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Content business or content platform. Two terms you may have heard of and we find very interesting. In fact, we recently started our own content platform under the name HUSTL. This makes the topic super relevant to ourselves and to you. Why? You too can start a content business or even a content platform yourself. We take you through the lessons we have learned so far in starting HUSTL. This way you can learn from these lessons too. Go for a flying start!

Content marketing vs. Content business

Content marketing has been a familiar term for quite some time. Nowadays companies go a step further than that and choose to build an entire business model around content. Some companies, like ourselves, go one step further and create their own content platform. More on that later! Now first the difference between content marketing and a content business:

Content Marketing

Many entrepreneurs are now using content as a marketing tool for their business. Content marketing is growing in popularity. In our current society, content plays an increasingly important role. The number of hours people spend per day consuming content is still rising. Young people are flooded with content on social media all day long. Companies are also starting to realize that content is a good way to reach their target audience. This is how content marketing came into being. Frankwatching even started a whole category around content marketing. You can read more about it in their relevant articles!

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Content business

My favorite entrepreneur and motivational speaker is Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee. He specializes in the power of content and advises other entrepreneurs to get started with content. He has shown that in addition to applying content marketing, you can build an entire business around content. This means that you do not create content to sell a product or service, but that content creation is your service. Are you also considering starting a content business? Gary helps you get started by posting daily videos full of tips!

How does a content business work?

A content business is a business that engages in content creation for a specific target audience. A content business often has a specified target audience who are looking for content within a certain theme. In our case we create inspiring, motivating and informative content for young and ambitious entrepreneurs. They follow us to be able to consume content created by us every day.

So a content business creates content for a particular target group. It is important to have a clear picture of this group of people, because otherwise you might spend a lot of time creating content that does not meet the wishes of the target group. Therefore, in order to meet the content desires of the target group, you need to create content that is relevant to that group. So make sure you do research on what relevant topics you can cover. In addition, timing is important! If you want people to consume your content you will have to share it with them when they want to. The video below explains the above points and their value in more detail.

Content platform as a basis for your own content business

As I mentioned, some entrepreneurs choose to take their content business a step further. Then, like we did, they build their own content platform. This goes beyond a blog on a website or a company’s social media channels.

A content platform serves as a kind of content hub where all your content comes together. For example, we create blogs, photos, videos, podcasts and music playlists. All this content is published on all kinds of channels: Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud, etc. In addition, the content is also bundled on the HUSTL content platform: the central hub.

The pros and cons of a content business

A content business is not the easiest business model. It takes a lot of patience and takes a lot of time to build, but then if it succeeds it can offer you a lot of value. It also often has no fixed revenue model, but allows you to make money on multiple fronts of your content platform. This does create risk, but can work out very well. To determine whether it suits you, you can weigh the pros and cons below:

Pros

• Authority: an entire platform filled with content is more likely to be seen as an authority who creates reliable content, than if you apply a content section to your website.
• Visibility: Since you create a lot of content for your target audience this also ensures a high degree of visibility. All this content is often also good for findability.
• Identity: filling a content platform offers the opportunity to create a lot of content. In that content there is a lot of room to express your corporate identity to the outside world, so people can identify more and more with your company.
• Community: if you address a specific target group with your content platform it also opens doors to a community. People follow your content for a reason. They have the same interests.

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Cons

• Long startup time: it takes a very long time to build a loyal fan base. Therefore, it may take a very long time before you notice that your content is appealing to the general public.
• Investment in time: content creation takes a lot of time. Therefore, you will need to invest a lot of time in creating new content. In many cases this will be daily, to stay relevant.
• Responsibility: when people start following your content, they also expect you to keep creating new content. Therefore, you have a responsibility to keep creating content, even if you don’t feel like it for a while.
• A lot of manpower needed: if you create content every day you will need a large team. So it is not a business model for when you want to work alone, or with a few colleagues. You will need to hire many content creators.