A couple weeks ago, a potential client hit me up asking for help with his business. He’d heard that today’s startups get content right from the beginning, sometimes even before their business model.

I practice a lot of expectation management with my content marketing clients — content marketing isn’t fast (they should give it a good 6 months to see measurable results), and it can’t do everything (i.e. it’s not a replacement for solid market research), but I make sure they know just how powerful it can be.

Content helps you connect with buyers. Content helps you feel out a market. Content helps with PR, customer education and even creating your buyer personas. Content runs entire businesses these days (think any media platform you know).

Content can do some amazing things, but sometimes I think even those of us who use content marketing forget that. It’s especially easy to do if you’re not using it yourself.

There are a lot of reasons to invest in content, but one of the most important is to learn to trust in it yourself. If you’ve got time to even write one piece a month as a part of your freelance content strategy, don’t wait. Content isn’t something you want to play catch up on.

Megan