CARDINAL (“The Influencer”):

If your chart has mostly CARDINAL signs, you may best connect with your audience through:

CONTENT (Blog & Newsletter):
• Have friends in high places. Share "insider" advice from a small, curated group of elite influencers handpicked by you—and tell WHY you picked these specific people (feature them in blog-style interviews, podcasts, lives, hanging out together on your Instagram feed)

• Work the influencer angle. Appear as a special guest on an influencer, thought leader or "celebrity" platform—anywhere that's considered aspirational in your industry (e.g., Well+Good or Mindbodygreen for wellness). Start with whatever's within reach and build from there!

• Don't hide your preferences. Take a strong stand about your tastes and why you like one thing over another (cardinal is the tastemaker)

• Employ FOMO (gently, please). Use headlines that create a little bit of scarcity or FOMO ("You won't want to miss this ONE event in 2019..." or "The secrets nobody tells you about X")

• Visuals matter! Share about your new content on one or two selective social media platforms (e.g., a beautiful Instagram if your followers are there)

• Give access, not discounts. It's all in the language! Cardinals should never deign to make their readers feel cheap, even if they ARE secretly thirsty for a good deal. Add insider access codes and earlybird rates, but to preserve a sense of exclusivity, don't call them "deals" or "discounts." If you were a retailer, you'd be Nordstrom—and maybe Nordstrom Rack—but never the dollar store.

• Create A-list content. Consider giving your newsletter some subscriber-only content ("you get it first!" or "early access—won't last!")

• Be the Alpha. Bottom line: You are an Alpha and your audience wants to feel that they are too. By associating with you, their reward is that they get to feel "in the know" and sophisticated...part of your in-crowd.

SEO FOR CARDINAL CHARTS:
• Adjectives are magic. Create a new niche that’s a spinoff of a mainstream interest (e.g., vegan ice cream, artisan cheese, sustainable yoga Ts).  For cardinals, the riches are in the niches.

• Search for "long tail keywords” in SEO keyword finders (suggested in B-School week 3) that help you narrow down to a niche ("breastfeeding for yoga mothers" or "facial with organic products" or "cruelty-free skincare line")

• Create "custom audiences" You could have success with Custom Audiences in Facebook Ads or Google Ads  (if you're at that point) — narrow down a set of traits for the people you want to retarget and serve up ads to them

FIXED (“The Expert”):

If your chart has mostly FIXED signs, you may best connect with your audience through:

CONTENT (Blog & Newsletter):
• Share how-to videos and DIY blogs with step-by-step instructions

• Write opinion posts that are thoughtful and thought-provoking—and could be reposted by respected sites in your industry or shared widely by followers who feel you are "speaking their truth" (think Brene Brown, Oprah)

• Share success secrets and "how I did it" posts. Tell your step-by-step journey of overcoming an obstacle and triumphing. Fixed signs are the self-made pros, here to save the rest of us from repeating their mistakes!

• Use numbered and listicle-style posts ("7 Ways to Make the Holidays Meaningful Again" or "5 Surprising Lessons I Learned from My Teenage Daughter" or "9 Fair-Trade Coffee Growers")

• Give a mini-masterclass or webinar that positions you as the skilled pro sharing one of your tricks of the trade ("The right way to mince garlic" or "How to make your own organic massage oil" or "Blend your foundation like THIS to avoid the dreaded two-tone effect")

• Publish "special reports" on your specialty topic (e.g. Brene Brown and vulnerability) to show off your research and expertise

SEO FOR FIXED CHARTS:
• Pick your ONE THING and specialize. Choose one or two keywords (or keyword groups) to rank highly in and go hard on those.
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• Build "backlinks." Write a diverse array of posts on your ONE keyword category and ask relevant sites to link to them. Often, their posts can be strengthened with the input of an expert, and your research and hard work can help THEM with journalistic credibility, creating a win-win. Return the favor/pay it forward by linking to other sites in your own posts. 
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• Be a guest expert. Appear as a guest expert/blogger on a bigger site and have your bio link back to your site. Pro tip: don't only link to your homepage! Send people to a relevant URL on your site or perhaps one that encourages them to sign up for your list and get your opt-in offer—"Read Erica's top 5 tips for starting a gluten-free lifestyle at www..." or "Get Lauren's free e-book with over 50 core-strengthening exercises you can do from anywhere at www..."

​MUTABLE (“The Messenger”):

If your chart has mostly MUTABLE signs, you may best connect with your audience through:

CONTENT (Blog & Newsletter):
• Multimedia! Don't restrict yourself to the written word! Multimedia posts that embed video, fun graphics and tweetables give your audience an "experience" instead of just "content."

• Energy, enthusiasm and creativity — those are your contagious secret weapons

• Follow the generosity model! You must give, give, give content that's chock full of value and delights your audience before you ask for a single cent.

• Trendspotting! You are the personal Yelp, Tripadvisor, Cliff Notes and Google Search for your audience—rolled into one shiny human. You read all the books and scout all the hotspots so they don't have to. Save them time and energy by being their "finder." Whatever the cardinal signs invent or the fixed signs research, YOU translate and make accessible to the masses.

• Think like a "fast fashion" brand when creating content. Much like Zara, H&M or even Target adapts high-end styles for the people, you take highbrow concepts and distill them ("We asked high-end designers to tell us their DIY hacks" or "Make your own organic face serum for less than $10—we got the secrets!" or "A Course In Miracles, summarized in five sentences.")

• Use social media to amplify your message. Social media is important for your content strategy because you're aiming for a wide, mass-market reach—at least with some of your offerings. Turn followers into fans and let them be your word-of-mouth marketing team by creating shareable, viral access to your content (memes and GIFs, videos, podcasts, suggested tweetables or easy sharing plugins). NOTE: It should all link people back to your site. Do NOT build your platform on a social media site because you do NOT own that—and a single, arbitrary algorithm change can cost you dearly! 

• Give freebies, discounts, amazing deals. Mutable are beloved by aspirational but budget-conscious folk who have big, creative dreams. Since your audience may be filled with artists and activists who connect to your MESSAGE, help them connect to you with lots of free offerings, and make it easy for them to convert into paying customers with payment plans or something special they can save up for.

• Be spontaneous. Don't hesitate to spontaneously do livestreams and on-the-fly posts when you're seized by the muse! Convey a sense of high energy, limitless possibilities and excitement and sweep your audience up in that.

• Sweep people up as an "idea evangelist." Content should make visitors feel like they're part of something exciting and big ("Get inspired by this 12-year-old's movement that rocked a school district" or "The incredible story of how one woman went from homeless to six-figure revenues in six months")

• Bring in diverse voices. Apply the "town hall" format to your content, gathering opinions on a hot topic by a dynamic panel of thought leaders, activists, writers, creatives or trailblazing experts in your field
• Collaborations (teaming up with diverse cohorts to reinforce your core, common message)

• Roundups rule! Collectively curated content (“Editors' roundup: The best tweets on ending gun violence” or “Steal these cheats from our favorite party planners' Pinterest boards”)

SEO FOR MUTABLE CHARTS:
• You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours! Boost your rankings by getting your blogs posted on other people's sites or appearing as a guest on each other's videos/sites.
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• Use social in your SEO strategy. Mutables can find success on social media with their quick wit and clever ideas. Posting your interesting ideas with visually dynamic images (even infographics) on Facebook and Pinterest can boost your ranking by sending lots of links to your site.
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• Encourage sharing. Those "share with a friend" or "tweet this" buttons are your BFFs.

MUTABLE EXAMPLE: MARIE FORLEO
Marie Forleo (mutable-sign Sagittarius) engages with a playful mix of handwriting and modern typography, and an upbeat message that's filled with energy. Text is short and to the point, promising a lot "get ANYTHING you want"—and offering it for free. Marie packs 11 months of the year with high-value free content on MarieTV, then has a $2,000 program once a year (also packed with value). But she invests the majority of the year generously giving away her content to build trust, affinity and credibility. Mutables are the people you'd pay money to hang out with because they are so damn inspiring and entertaining, which buoys your spirits and keeps you believing in your dreams. You want that "special gift that only they have" (Marie's tagline!)—and by serving people the correct content, they will eventually pay for it.