You know what’s the worst? 

When you try so hard to come up with an idea for your blog so you can increase visibility for your business and actually get found online—but then you put it off and put it off and the moment passes (argh!), and the gap between posts is super obvious and super public, and content agencies just cost sooo much, leaving you feeling totally overwhelmed and stuck.  

What’s a small business owner to do? 

It doesn’t matter that you found the perfect template and now have a gorgeous website! And dedicated social media accounts for your business!  And the skills to blow your competitors out of the water! (Though your professional business-envy has made you quite literally consider blowing up a few people at some point.) 

Alas, the dirty, low-down truth is this: small business owners, especially solopreneurs and extra especially solo-femme-preneurs with kids to raise and too much shit to do on a good day but who are still totally crushing it professionally by offering amazing products and services, are always going to struggle with staying on top of their content marketing. But it doesn’t matter because all the customers currently shopping with your competitors down the street—with their tweets and their insta-stories and their flashy “we’re hiring” signs and mediocre service—will eventually realize that you’re just as good, in fact you’re much better, and you’re offering exactly what they’ve been searching for and they’ll ditch the bozos down the road and come straight over to you. Eventually. Right? I mean, customers will always seek out the best providers for the services they need. 

But, are we sure about that strategy? Do we want to bet the farm on it? 

Because here’s what I often see happen: 

• Small business owners spend a ton of time and money making their website look amazing, but the whole concept of building an online presence gets thrown into a (well-meaning) junk yard full of “maybe next week’s.”

• They decide to bite the bullet and hire an agency for help, fill up their blog and socials with a lot of great content but then don’t see results overnight so call it quits with the agency because of the huge cost involved and slow ROI. 

• Marketing’s not really their thing—as is common in businesses where they’re flying solo or working with a super small team—so as a result, it never gets done.

• There’s never been a true focused effort on figuring out how to build a community around their business online—to know what makes their business different or special or important and to interact with all the people who have been searching for exactly what they’re offering to get them to like and trust you enough to make a purchase. 

And you know what that means?  

• Perpetually feeling like you have to lower your rates in order to compete with the guys down the street when a new client happens to stumble upon your biz (there is a better way!)

• Irregular bursts of light when you try to work on your content game, followed by months of darkness when it gets put on the backburner again.

• And a stressful, painstaking approach to content creation that’s stressful and painstaking in ways it doesn’t have to be, so long as you know how to do a few things right.

This is precisely why Content Tonic was created: because I know that we can fix all of that, and more. 

Content Tonic is an online content marketing company that specializes in content strategy and creation for solopreneurs and we know two things to be true: 

(1) You don’t have a lot of money to spend on big, expensive marketing agencies in order to compete online;

(2) You don’t have a lot of time to devote hours and hours to building out a strategy or banging your head against the wall trying to come up with ideas for your blog.

But what do you have? 

Words. 

Words are the one thing that can be changed instantly, at no cost, with little effort, and dramatically impact the health of your business. The words you put on a page can determine whether or not someone decides to hire you...or pass you over for one of your competitors. 

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? All you need to do is give your potential customers a way to get to know you, then they’ll hire you once and realize that you really are so much better than the guys down the street, and they’ll like what you’re offering so much they’ll recommend you to all their friends and refer to you as their go-to-gal (or bruh, bruh) and you’ll win repeat business and referrals and never again have to suffer through a dry period where you’re wondering if you’re really cut out for this whole business thing and how the hell you’re going to pay the hydro bill. 

So that’s why Content Tonic was developed. At first blush, templates and ready-made strategies seem like a terrible idea and will make you sound boring and bland and just like everyone else. But rather, the concept here is simple: you don’t have to spend a ton of money, you don’t have to spend hours trying to figure it all out on your own and you don’t have to be the world’s most creative person in the world to pack your calendar with enough pre-loaded content to get Google to take notice and for potential customers to get an idea of who you are and what you’re all about.  

All you need is to take the same pre-made checklists and templates that corporate copywriters, like myself ahem, use to stay on track. Then put your spin on them with your company’s unique voice, and you can DIY a content calendar that’s so filled out and so engaging it rivals the creative teams of larger companies. And I would know, I’ve worked on the creative teams of larger companies.

***

Naturally, it all started when a family member asked for a favour. (Because this is inevitably what happens when you make the mistake of telling one of your family members what you do for a living. I should have said Clown College Instructor or something but it’s too late now!)

“You’re, like, a writer or something right? Can you help me figure out what I’m supposed to say on my blog?” Said family member had a small business they were trying to promote, had all the right intentions about how to promote it, but no clue what to say or how to say it. 

After all, the possibilities seem endless. How do you know what the right words are? What information is supposed to go where? When are you supposed to post? What exactly are you supposed to post? It’s not like….an online diary or something is it? *gasp*

Most small businesses start their content marketing off this way. They know they need a website, so they get one. If they’re tech-savvy enough, and brave enough, they do it themselves and save. But then it just sort of sits there. So, they do some research online and find out that Google won’t really pay any attention to your site or list it in searches unless you feed it a steady diet of fresh content. So, they start a blog, because blogging is one of the easiest and cheapest and fastest ways to do that. They write a blog post called “Hello world” and then blank. Months go by. 

Then they remember that they’re supposed to be blogging regularly and they Google some stuff. And there’s no shortage of advice out there, but that’s part of the problem isn’t it? There are so many tips and tricks and hacks and advice and competing opinions that it’s completely overwhelming. 

People like my dear aunt are left with no idea how to move forward with any of it.

Furthermore, every option feels like a major time-suck—like it would require learning a bunch of expensive new software, learning some new techniques or skills, or it would just be a hassle or a huge waste of money or be so insanely time-consuming to execute that it would be impossible to sustain anyway.  

So, what do you do, as a person who’s just trying to hang out your hat and do your best to make a living?

Nothing. 

You give up and focus on the thing that you’re actually good at…and figure that plenty of businesses thrived and survived before the internet even came along so if you just tough out the tough times, eventually, you’ll do just fine without all the online mumbo-jumbo and digital snake oil. 

Like my aunt… she had potential customers all around her, looking for someone who could provide the service she was providing, and they couldn’t find her! Because Google doesn’t prioritize websites with stale content. And because people judge businesses they haven’t worked with before solely, and completely, and 110% by the just the words on the page. It’s all they have to go on! So there was my aunt, great at what she does, but not getting seen or picked for no other reason than she lacked the right words to connect with potential buyers. 

It felt tragic!

And so that’s when I began researching what options were out there for solopreneurs to market themselves. As a marketing professional, naturally I was curious—but I was surprised to find that, for most of the little guys? 

They’re on their own to figure it out. 

They don’t have marketing people, and website people, and social media strategists. Hell, they’re lucky if they remember to send out a Christmas card once a year. 

Because, of course, all of those things require money. Lots of money. And most small business owners—people who are knowledgeable and passionate and dedicated and smart and cool—don’t have that kind of budget to spend on things like content. And you know something else? Most agencies, and even some freelancers, straight up refuse to work with small businesses below a certain annual sales threshold. Why? Because they know you don’t have the budget for big projects or an ongoing monthly commitment, and therefore won’t be a steady stream of income for them, and are therefore, not worth the bother.

That’s when I thought: what if there was a better way? What if I could create a system that would help the little guys stand out from the crowd, compete online, and stop losing so many customers to the competition, and be the obvious choice, over and over again? 

Enter: Content Tonic