Content marketing is a fundamental part of online business growth. If you are marketing your business through content creation, that's great - but how well are you doing it? Is there room for improvement?
Today’s podcast is about creating content, the hows, the whys, the whens and the wheres. Rachel Browne of The Art Of Digital Content joins me to talk to us about how to start creating stand out content that will get you the views and engagement you are looking for.
Just go for it
The first hurdle for most business owners is where to start creating content. I get it. Many business owners don't feel comfortable creating anything and it can bring up a lot of internal feelings. You’ve never been a fan of being on video or written a blog and you have no idea where to start. The first step towards getting over that hump is having the mindset to carry through it and not talk yourself out of it. Stop saying things like, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not a writer,” or “I’m not a graphic designer” and just give it a try.
Don’t get me wrong, this is very hard, but don’t beat yourself up about not being able to just wake up one day and be able to create amazing content that does everything that you want it to do. It’s a journey. Rachel treats this as an artistic process, hence the name - The Art Of Digital Content. It is important to cut yourself some slack.
You start doing a thing because you are good at the thing but then you never learn how to run a business and you get frustrated and never feel caught up because you don’t know how to do the other pieces and that’s normal. The struggle is real. That’s why talking to people like myself and Rachel gives you the tools that you need so that it doesn’t have to feel quite so hard. Have a community of your peers that are doing the same things but are three steps ahead of you. Pay attention and learn. T
Are you thinking your content can look a bit better and sound more professional?
Rachel has a fantastic approach to this. Skills and knowledge which is broken down into three different things: voice, value, visuals.
Voice is about what you have to say that's different, or what your brand has to say that's different. How are you expressing those things that are different? It takes a while and it’s an experimental process to figure out what you have to say that's unique based on your experience and what your brand values are.
Value is every time you produce an awesome piece of content you have to make sure that it's delivering high value. How are you packing this piece of content with stuff that is going to be mind-blowing for your audience? It’s up to you to do the research and figure out what that thing is for your audience.
Visuals are the difference between using a good camera/mics, etc. And using your phone or poor quality equipment. Basically producing things that are high quality and make for a great experience for the audience is ideal.
Those are the three framework pieces that Rachel uses to determine whether content is working or not. This is a process, it is never going to be perfect. Don’t get stuck in the idea of becoming perfect. But instead, use these as guidelines to work from.
Design with intent
Keep in mind that you can’t create one piece of content and blast it across all your platforms either. Design each piece intentionally and think about what it should be for that platform. For example, doing a Facebook Live for 30 minutes is a great way to engage with your audience and the more Lives you do the more traffic and eyes on your content. Now if you took that same Live video and uploaded it to your Youtube channel it wouldn’t do as well, there wouldn’t be as much engagement because no one goes to Youtube to watch a 30-minute unedited video with no cuts, no text overlay, no visuals, that only works on Facebook Live. The formulas are just different and it’s important to acknowledge that and adjust your content to reflect each platform.
Another good example of that is blogs. A good quality blog is going to be super well researched and goes into a lot of depth with a writing style that's interesting to read. If you write like an encyclopedia no one is going to read it. Who wants to read an encyclopedia?
Your content communicates with the algorithm of each platform. For example, right now, the algorithm on Facebook is optimizing for meaningful conversations. You can kind of make guesses on which direction each platform is going but it’s tough to keep up. We don’t want to overwhelm you with that stuff because producing consistent content is the first thing that matters. Don’t even worry just yet about producing insanely good stuff, just get in a consistent rhythm.
Consistency is key
According to Rachel, being consistent doesn’t mean posting every Thursday at 10 am, it’s about building relationships with people online, and that requires some level of systematic touchpoints that they can come to get to know you, depend on you and rely on you for certain things. This is a long process. Start with one blog post, one podcast, one video a month to get started. Anything more than that and things get overwhelming. Get used to it and grow from there.
Final thoughts
Set a consistent rhythm and follow it for a minimum of 6 to 8 months. Once you’re in that rhythm it’s easy to make small pivots in different ways to upgrade your content. Depending on what you are producing, like a blog, for example, there are many ways to leverage that on social media or as a script but find your preferred method of communication and do that every month.
Don’t be afraid to get good at doing one thing…take a writing class to build your writing skills, take a video editing course and build up your skill sets. The important thing to remember is that if you don’t love it you won’t do it. So, find the thing you are passionate about and love doing and do more of that type of content, get consistent with it and then branch out from there.
It will be a while before you get any return on this, remember, it’s a slow game. You can’t wake up every morning, spend an hour on what to post, post it and then get frustrated when you don’t get leads right away. It is a tool to set you up for future success.
If you want to learn more about Rachel and how she can help you create content that gets the views, engagement and amplification you want, download her exclusive content checklist: https://www.theartofdigitalcontent.com/contentchecklist.
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Podcast editing by Eric Wellman