This post will utilise my knowledge of marketing to guide you to create a sustainable content marketing plan tailored for author-publishers.
Are you experiencing the core challenges of running an indie/micro publisher: limited time, limited budget, and the need for high-impact, long-lasting content? Some muck about on Instagram, even when they are not connecting at a heart level on there.
If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to keep up momentum and gain a niche audience. So I’ve mocked up a Content Plan to tweak below. Plus, always remember that comments are key to any social media.
Make the most of groups by having your books in a banner and mention of authoring in your bio (INCLUDING ON YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE!)
30-Day Content Marketing Outline: Niche Platforms for Indies
This plan focuses on creating a single, high-value piece of foundational content (your blog post) and then repurposing, distributing, and engaging with it across relevant niche platforms for maximum, sustainable reach.
Week 1: Audit, Ideation, and Foundation
Goal: Determine your core content pillar and where your audience lives.
| Day | Task | Platform Focus | Output/Deliverable |
| Day 1-2 | Niche Platform Audit | Quora/Reddit/Industry Forums | Identify 10-15 highly-viewed questions/threads related to your topic. Note the exact language/pain points used. If writing fiction, it’s more about seeding a shareable story. |
| Day 3-4 | Content Pillar Outline | Blog (Your Website) | Draft the detailed outline for your blog post. Integrate the pain points and questions discovered on Days 1-2. Flesh out the post and make some images. |
| Day 5 | Quora Profile Optimisation | Quora | Create/Update your Quora profile. Ensure your “Knows About” topics and Bio clearly identify you as an Expert Author/Publisher (linking back to your book/blog). Ensure you use the right Byline when posting. |
| Day 6 | Rest & Research | Focus on Reading | Read and upvote the best answers on Quora/Reddit found in the audit. This helps train the algorithms and subtly signals your authority. Comment where you can add value and create good ‘Karma’ (a Reddit term). |
Week 2: Creation and Initial Distribution
Goal: Publish the core content and prepare it for distribution.
| Day | Task | Platform Focus | Output/Deliverable |
| Day 8-10 | Write Core Blog Post | Blog (Your Website) | Draft and edit the full, detailed blog post (The “Deep Dive”). Prioritise evergreen content that will remain valuable for months/years. |
| Day 11 | Content Repurposing: Quora Snippets | Internal Prep | Extract 3-4 distinct, high-value sections or bulleted lists from the blog post. These will be your Quora answer drafts. |
| Day 12 | Post & Announce (The Hub) | Blog/Email List | Publish the blog post. Send a brief email newsletter linking directly to it. |
| Day 13-14 | Quora Distribution (The First Wave) | Quora | Use your first extracted snippet to write a genuine, high-quality answer to one of the most popular, relevant questions from your audit. Do not spam the link; only link to your blog/book at the bottom as an authoritative resource. |
Get my Book: Set Up as a Micro Publisher
Week 3: Niche Engagement and SEO
Goal: Expand reach on niche platforms and establish long-term SEO benefits.
| Day | Task | Platform Focus | Output/Deliverable |
| Day 15-16 | Niche Community Engagement | Reddit/Forums | Search for 2-3 active, relevant subreddits (e.g., r/selfpublish, r/nonfictionwriters, r/selfpublishingaustralia). Answer questions in a non-promotional way (this is necessary on Reddit, who will ban promos). Use the core blog post’s philosophy to guide your answers. You can ask ChatGPT or Gemini to summarise a longer post for you. |
| Day 17-18 | Quora Distribution (The Second Wave) | Quora | Answer two more relevant Quora questions using your second and third pre-written snippets. Focus on questions with high follower counts/viewership. |
| Day 19 | Internal Link Building | Blog (Your Website) | Go back through your 3-5 most popular old blog posts (e.g., the Bio template, the course post) and add a relevant internal link to your new “Sustainable Content Marketing” post. |
| Day 20-21 | Repurpose for Niche Visual/Audio | Pinterest/YouTube/Audio Snippets | Create a branded graphic (e.g., a “3-Step Quora Strategy”) or a 60-second audio clip summarising a key idea from the blog post. Post this on a visual platform like Pinterest/LinkedIn. |
Week 4: Sustainability, Repurposing, and Tracking
Goal: Create a repeatable system for the next month’s content.
| Day | Task | Platform Focus | Output/Deliverable |
| Day 22-23 | Analyse Initial Engagement | Analytics (Quora/Website/Email) | Check Quora/Reddit answers for upvotes, comments, and views. Check your website analytics for traffic referrals from those sites. Identify which specific content snippet performed best. |
| Day 24 | Focus on the ‘Winner’ | Quora/Blog | Post a follow-up answer on Quora, expanding on the best-performing snippet. Or, update that specific section in the original blog post to make it even more robust. |
| Day 25-26 | Proactive Quora/Niche Outreach | Quora/Forums | Look for “Answer Requests” on Quora and answer 3-5 of them, continuing to establish your authority. Post a brief, helpful tip on a niche forum, and you can include your own backyard variety photos if it relates. |
| Day 27-28 | Idea Generation for Next Month | All Platforms | Based on the comments and questions from Weeks 1-4, generate 3-5 core ideas for your next blog post. The comments on Quora are free market research! |
| Day 29-30 | Systematise & Schedule | Calendar/Trello/CMS | Batch the next 2-3 Quora snippet answers based on the next blog topic. Block out time in your calendar for next month’s consistent engagement (e.g., 30 minutes every Tuesday/Thursday for Quora). |
This sustainable Content Marketing plan ensures your effort is concentrated on one quality piece of content (the blog post), which is then leveraged strategically across platforms like Quora. It may not work straightaway, but Quora and indeed YouTube are places where high-quality, long-form answers have an excellent chance of being discovered via search engines for years to come. If you can work a camera and do edits to ensure cohesion efficiently, YouTube is another great place to post longer content.
You can keep your base content ideas in Notion, using the pull-downs to mark the date, topic and places it is to be posted.
