When it comes to creating good content for your business, there are a lot of areas you can focus on…and it can become quite overwhelming.
To get right down to it, the best content is the content that is authentic to who you or your business is AND is the easiest to stay consistent with.
Over the years, I have picked up a number of best practices from the great content creators out there (as it relates to business related content) and I would like to share them with you today.
Here are 7 reminders that I have found to be helpful when making content for my business:
Document, Don’t Create
This one is pulled from both Gary Vaynerchuk and Alex Hormozi. It can often be overwhelming to think about creating new content every day or every week. In creation mode, it can take a full time focus, or a team of people to consistently find new things to talk about and new types of content to keep people interested.
Often, a more effective way to create content is to simply document what you are already doing. This could be out on a job site, a client conversation (with permission of course), snippets from your day running the business, etc.
A spin on the idea of documentation - it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have someone follow you around with a camera 24/7. Another, and often easier, way to document is to do a look back once a week and talk about the things you did or the lessons learned and challenges you or your business had to overcome. This works well for those in a professional services business where ‘on the job’ tasks are quite boring to the outside viewer.
Forget Creating, Become a Curator
To provide value to your audience, the information you provide doesn’t always have to come from YOU!
Often times, if you (or your team) are deep into your industry and finding relevant articles, blogs, videos, etc. on the topic…share it with your audience. This provides credibility for your business and your industry and shows your audience that you are the place to go as a thought leader on your topic. Furthermore, you can even post other people’s content and provide your own perspective and spin or highlight the key points that resonated with you the most.
I love this strategy because it allows me to continue to learn and grow…AND provide value to those who follow me or my business.
How I vs. How To
This was a fun one to learn for me. The simple change from “here’s how to” or (worse yet), “here’s how you should..” to “here’s how I..” has completely changed the way I look at content.
Rather than expressing how others should do something - which tends to be met with a defensive response - focus on telling others what has worked for you or for your business. When we take a moment to share our experiences and what works well for us, we are often met with a much better response. The audience is less defensive because we are not imposing our beliefs on them, rather inviting them to experience what we have and allow them to make their own decision.
Remind More Than Teach
This is another one I learned from Alex Hormozi. People often need to be reminded more than they need to be taught something new.
Especially in the crazy world of online content, the reality is that most people simply will not see all of your content. So…if you told your audience about one topic last week (or last month), tell them again this week - most of the audience probably didn’t see the post from last week.
More often than not, we tend to get tired of hearing our same message over and over again before our audience does. For them, it is one message that they saw amongst a thousand. Consistently reminding them is one of the best ways to reinforce the message we would like to get across.
Puddles and Ponds
This one is simple, yet powerful. When first starting out, it tends to be best to focus on a the small pool you currently swim in rather than the wide ocean that is the entire world.
In other words, create content for those in your community and in your niche. Get really good, then expand out. When starting with a focus on a broad audience, it can be easy to get drowned out.
Repurpose Content
This one ties into a few of the items above…and ties back to my post last week. And it is worth repeating…
Repurpose your content. Rather than spending time focused on the new content that you need to create, grab a few high performing posts from 3, 6, 9, or 12 months ago…and repost them.
Look for some of your best performing content from the past and transform it into another medium. For example, if there is a IG Reel that did well 6 months ago, transcribe it and create a written post, then expand on it with new thoughts and perspectives and create a blog post.
Repurposing content is the number one factor that has helped me with the next (and last) reminder for today…
Volume and Consistency
I have found that most businesses severely underestimate the amount of volume required to post on social media today. There are some that I have spoken with that believe once a week is plenty…yet the audience doesn’t grow and lead flow hasn’t increased.
For others I have encountered, they go really hard for a few weeks (posting daily), then drop off and don’t post for a while.
Both volume and consistency matter - remember the “remind more than teach” section above? With the amount of content most individuals consume on a daily basis, if your business is posting only once a week, the likelihood the content is seen (and then fully consumed) is quite low. Not everyone will see every post that you put out there - so the more valuable pieces we can produce, the better.
This is where repurposing content can come in handy…especially if you don’t yet have a big media team that can do the work for you.
The goal here is to find a frequency and cadence that you can stick to. While volume does matter - consistency matters more.
When it comes to producing content, find what works best for you and your business. These are just a few reminders that I have learned along the way that have helped me remain consistent and fresh in what I choose to produce.
I would love to see some of the content YOU are producing today (all forms) - DM me on Instagram at tannerobrien001 or send me an email at admin@actioncoachcentraltx.com with some of your favorite content. Ill even do my best to drop a comment and share.
See you next week!