ep 448: Creating Intentional Content in Your Marketing
I’ve observed many business owners struggle when it comes to creating intentional content.
– and here’s the deal –
Creating connection through content needs to be at the top of your priority list. Why?
Because content creates attention on your brand and attention is the currency of today.
Everyone, every business, everything is fighting for your ideal customer’s attention.
This is a place where you have no choice but to show up and show up WELL.
Now listen. No one is saying you have dance, or be silly, or do things that aren’t in alignment with your audience, but you DO have to:
- show up consistently
- provide value
- intentionally connect with your audience
If you have difficulty with content creation, or have lost track of why you are even creating content, tune in. This one’s for you.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
Content creates attention on your brand. And so most people, most businesses, whether you’re the face of the brand or you’re doing this for your brand itself, you have to create content because content in attention, the currency of today.
You are listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 448.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having a great week. Thank you everybody so much for all of the messages. Last week after I did my episode on Thursday, I loved hearing all of your guys’ takeaways and how much you liked hearing this transformation from me, especially those of you guys who have been following me for a while and kind of seeing that shift. So thank you for that. And we’re back to some regularly tuned marketing strategy episodes. So I wanna talk today, I was inspired by this actually because sometimes when I go to events or I listen to other people talk, they’ll say something that they’re not even like teaching, but it gives me a thought and an idea, and then I’m able to turn that into content. And this is something that came up because I was watching just questions that were coming in and people kind of like trying to answer this for themselves or trying to brainstorm this around the content that they create for their business.
And it came from a conversation and so it wasn’t necessarily taught, but it’s something that I, a, a process that I follow and it’s something that I’ve also gotten more intentional with in the last like three to six months. And so I thought you guys would get some value out of this. So what we’re gonna dive in today and what we’re gonna talk about is being really intentional with the content that you create. So whether that’s if you have a podcast, if you have a YouTube channel, and also just social media posts. And before I dive into the details of that, I think one of the most important things to note around marketing today is that content creates attention on your brand. And so most people, most businesses, whether you’re the face of the brand or you’re doing this for your brand itself, you have to create content because content and attention is the currency of today.
Getting people to pay attention to you in a world where their attention is limited, there’s a lot of other businesses and other things fighting for their attention. And you know, the direction that social media has gone with TikTok, with YouTube, with Instagram, all of these major platforms, they’ve gone the direction of trying to make it so that creators and people who can create really good content do really well. And so then as a business, you have to step into that role while also running an entire business and you know, being a CEO and making all these decisions and then also show up as a creator in a lot of cases. And that doesn’t mean that you have to dance or you have to do silly things that you don’t actually wanna do or that aren’t in alignment with you at all. It does not mean that, but it does mean you have to somehow show up regularly, provide value, and connect with your audience.
And if you look at any business, any entrepreneur right now who is doing well, specifically online, but you know, honestly, businesses offline need to start doing this because everybody’s on social media. Everybody is consuming with their phones one way or another. And so people who are doing this really well, when you look at them, you’ll see that they are doing this, they are creating content. Well, if I look at any successful entrepreneur, especially in my space that I look up to or I see their business as even more successful than mine, when you look at what they’re doing on a weekly basis, creating content is at the top of their priority list and creating really valuable content. And so I think that it’s important to remember that that’s our job as creators and as, especially if you’re the face of your brand. And I think some people try to delegate this out too much when for a long time, like the ideas and the vision and the connection to it and the connection to your audience, it needs to be one of your top priorities.
Like one of the biggest needle movers that you can work on is this, is creating this content in this connection to your audience so that you have their attention so that you can build that trust so that you can take them through their, through your customer journey and hopefully sell some of them. And so for me, like when I look at my time, one of the most valued uses of my time is creating content, whether that’s my podcast, whether that’s recording videos, or whether it’s making a webinar presentation, that’s also content because nobody else can do that for me. Nobody can be me in the way that I am and connect with my audience and the problems and the frustrations and the dreams and create solutions and tips and different things through content. So anyways, now what I wanna dive into is talking about this thing that I observed and I observe frequently with entrepreneurs is they lose track of why they’re creating the content.
And yes, there is a piece of this that is important in the sense of frequency. Like there’s definitely a volume game, especially on Instagram, really all the channels because you’re rewarded for posting more because they want, the actual platform wants constant, fresh, new things. So pretty much on every channel that you can create content with, you’re rewarded if you have a high frequency of that content, obviously that has to be balanced with quality because if it’s really crappy, you’re not not gonna get a lot of engagement with it. But I think that because it becomes so overwhelming for a lot of people when they go to create content, they forget why they’re doing it. And sometimes I watch entrepreneurs and I’ve actually been guilty of this too, and I’ll share how I watch them create content just to do it. And it’s like it’s things they enjoy talking about and they’re quote good at, but maybe not experts, but it’s not in direct alignment with the problem they solve as their business.
So for example, I can talk obviously about marketing, about funnels, about customer journey, about content, about overall marketing, Facebook ads, paid ads strategy all day long, right? And that is in direct alignment with what my business does with the problem that my business solves. I could also talk about health and wellness, I could also talk about leadership and growing a team. I could also talk about personal development and things that I’m doing or changing or growing. I love all that stuff and I’m good at those things. That’s number one, a passion of mine. Number two, something I can connect with people from being a mom would be another thing, balancing motherhood and having kids. Those are all things that I could talk about and I could talk about them well and people would probably enjoy the content. And the thing is though, I don’t solve any problems around that.
I’m not here to tell you your workout program to go do. I’m not here to tell you how to be a mom and a business owner and I’m not here to tell you how to grow your team. Like that’s not what my current company does. Now, that’s okay in very small doses for the goal to be connecting with your audience. Like you guys will see me do this on my podcast. I did it last week. My content on Thursday was not about selling something to you, obviously it was not about even talking about something that I’m an expert in. It was sharing something vulnerably, it was creating an opportunity for connection. And that’s absolutely fine to do in really small doses. But if all of a sudden 80% of my podcast episodes and 80% of my social media became talking about all those things I listed motherhood, health, fitness, personal development, leadership, it would be really confusing in the way that I’m building trust to turn my audience into potential buyers, right?
And so it’s okay in very small doses, but what I see people do, and I’ve been guilty of this too, is they have this thing that’s like a side hobby or it’s an interest of theirs that they love. And as soon as they start to get a platform where they have people paying attention to what they’re saying, they start cre like sitting down. And my guess is going, okay, I have to record, you know, 10 podcasts this month, what should I do? And then like the first things that come to them is what they start to create content around. And maybe half of those are not directly related to what they actually do as a business. And so here’s the process that I follow and I’ve really honed in on the last three to six months. And we’ve done this a lot more on my social media because also with my social media, it’s, you can repurpose the podcast all day long.
And then it’s also my personal brand. So there is stuff about my kids, there is stuff about me, there are leadership posts, but I wanted to get really intentional with the specific content we were creating. So what we did was we made three pillars. And so I have a pillar on strategy, marketing, strategy messaging, marketing, messaging, copy, connecting with your ideal customer, and then paid ads. Those are my three pillars. And those connect all together, they all connect together to achieving a successful marketing strategy. And that’s the problem that I solve for our clients and our customers, right? Is creating a successful creating and kind of executing a successful marketing strategy. And so we, I, I took a little while to create these pillars, but I really reflected on what are the three main things that I generally talk about when it comes to marketing and that all again go together to achieve a big goal.
And so these three pillars now when I sit down like a month ago, two months ago, I sat down and I planned out like 50 micro content videos and I only planned videos that were in those three pillars, which means I actually eliminated anything I wanted to talk about on leadership, anything on health morning routine, all those things like yes, they’re great and yes, I could talk about them and yes, it would probably create a connection with people but not in not achieving the outcome I wanna achieve in the sense of they see me as that expert in this space. So sometimes with this content creation, it means you’re actually gonna have to cut things out that you wanna talk about and you enjoy talking about. And what I witness sometimes is entrepreneurs get really distracted with their content and all of a sudden there’s somebody whose expertise is marketing, let’s just say, and they’re spending 80% of their time talking about being a mom and giving tips on being a mom.
And that’s fine. Like I’ve actually seen some people do that and then pivot their business and they had a baby and that becomes their passion and that’s what they start selling. There’s nothing wrong with doing these things, but if you’re not intentionally doing it, it’s maybe time for a double check. So I created those three pillars and what that also does is help me, it helps me when I have to create content, it keeps me really directed and really intentional. And so probably 90% of my content from the podcast to social media, to our emails to things we put out falls within these three pillars. And you might start to notice it now that I shared these with you. And then I do leave room for like five to 10%. That can be whatever I want. And part of the reason that I can do that is I’ve already built a good size audience and a platform.
And so I have the flexibility to do that. And it’s really a, it’s really not when I do that, the purpose of it is not for me to go find new people and connect with new people. It’s actually to just nurture and connect with my existing audience. Like last week when I recorded that podcast, it was not about marketing, it was not directly related to what I sell. But for those of you guys who have followed me for a long time and you’re connected to me and you’ve listened to my podcast and you’ve consumed my content, it was a really o great opportunity for you to connect with me as a person and to build that relationship. And so that’s okay, but I can’t do that majority of the time because then I’m not providing value in the reason why people consume my content, which is related to marketing.
So having these three pillars and then I give myself a little bit of flexibility. Like sometimes I get an inspiration to go write a post about whatever and I just do it and like I, I love writing and, but it has to just come to me. It’s not something that I have to do every week or, you know, when I feel like recording a podcast like that, it’s because I’m struck with that inspiration when I’m creating my intentional content. And when I batch recording, it stays within these three pillars. And so what that also does, so if you were to brainstorm and say, what are my three pillars? You’d probably come up with them and then challenge yourself to keep the majority like 90% of your content within those three pillars. And those three pillars should all achieve the goal of building trust and connecting with your audience or finding new people and your audience that now directly trust you and, and go to you for advice as it relates to what you sell.
And so getting clear on that main mission and that main goal that you are aiming to accomplish with your business should drive these pillars. And then what this does is it allows you to go deeper and more specific. So I’ve found with content that staying within the three pillars, but then being able to give strategic tactics or specific actions somebody can do, especially in my social media videos, that it does really well. People save it, people really like they want that. And I, and I wouldn’t be able to go specific if I was staying really broad and I was trying to cover a really wide variety of things. But for example, when I recorded last time, batch recorded social media videos, I was able to give specific tactics like what to use for the thank you page in your funnel or different audience for pay ads or you know, look alike audiences.
And I was just able to get specific, which really does build trust cuz I want people to go, oh, like Emily and Hersh marketing, I’m gonna follow them for my marketing advice, for my Facebook and advice and for my messaging advice and for ultimately creating a successful marketing strategy. So having the three pillars allows you to go deeper and more specific while not overwhelming. Like that doesn’t mean create overwhelming content. It means like really specific and, and if you go find people that you follow, you’re gonna notice that they do this. Like if you find creators that you feel like are doing a really good job with their content, they’re following this, whether they’ve defined it this way or not, like they are doing this and that’s what’s creating that success for them. So then the final thing I’ll note on content and my advice around this is I love to put a very small percentage of ad spend behind content because the goal is to get more people to see it.
And so way too often do I see people like to work so hard on creating so much content and it only lives for like a week and then they have to go create more. And so I do this with pretty much all of our clients where we put maybe the lowest is like a hundred dollars a month, but it’s usually like 5% of their ad budget. And we actually spend a little bit of ad spent to get more people to see their content, whether that’s a podcast episode, a social media post, a video, it’s something specific that’s gonna attract more audience track to new audience that we can send to various places we can send to their webinar funnel, their product, their whatever. This is custom for every client that comes in and works with us. But it is really great when you, the content you already put the time and effort into creating now lasts a lot longer when you pair a small percentage of ad spend with it.
And so that’s the other thing I see people do with content is they create so much and then it really doesn’t get seen enough and it doesn’t do very much. And you know, I, I haven’t done this very much, but I have a friend who teaches social media and she’s a big expert there and she’s like, Oh yeah, like we go back six to 12 months and we just repost the same exact posts that we did before. And I’m like, I should do that. I really think that’s a great strategy because one, nobody’s gonna remember what you posted. And then two, you have new people who I’ve never seen that and you worked really hard to create this top piece of content that yeah, you can post it again. And I think a lot of times when we create content too, we feel like if we say things one time, we can’t ever say it again.
And the reality is like nobody remembers our stuff like we do of course, because you’re the one who spoke it, who planned it, who recorded it, who made the video, who wrote the post. But your audience, I mean, do you guys remember what I did on my podcast last month? No. But if I was to go repeat something, I’d be like, Oh, I just said this. And you guys would be like, Oh my god, this is so amazing, Thank you for this. So I do go back and repackage a lot of my content because there’s also core things that are always gonna be relevant and are always good reminders and repetition is also a form of learning and teaching and putting it in different wrapping paper cuz you never know when it’s gonna click for somebody cuz they have to be willing to hear it, ready to hear it in a place that it makes sense to them them.
And that really changes a lot. It’s like how when you read a book and then you reread that book, let’s say like three months later, you remember some parts of it, yes, the ones that stuck with you, but then you pick up new stuff. This is like when I watch the office episode, there’s like a new thing every time and I’ve literally seen those episodes like five times. So anyways, also make sure that you go back and you look at what worked really well, what connected really well with your audience, what was your top content? And you could either repackage the way you said it and shift it a little bit, which is what I do with my podcast. Or as my friend teaches, you can just take a post and, and I would go back like six to 12 months, not like last month, but just repost it the same one. As long as it falls within your pillars, as long as it’s still in alignment with where you’re going with your business and what you’re trying to teach, it will be fine and it’ll save you that time. So, all right everybody, thank you so much for listening today and I will talk to you on Thursday.
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