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The other day I was looking through some copy that we were writing as a team and we used the term content creator. I highlighted that term and left a note in the document and said that sometimes I hesitate using this terminology because so many people don’t consider themselves a content creator.
I don’t want people to write themselves off before they learn that they are in fact, someone who creates content, and can find value in claiming that title and really creating a system around it.
Creating a system around content creation? That’s where Kylie and I really align. She’s back on the show to talk about the systems and strategies we use to keep creating content week after week, and ensure that content is worth all the effort we put into it.
So if you’re stuck in a content rut, here’s how to climb out and excel at the content creation game.
What We Create and Why
Looking at our content creation schedule for the Jenna Kutcher brand, especially as we move into maternity leave territory, even I’m blown away by what we churn out each week.
Every single week we released two podcast episodes — one’s an interview, one is a solo show. There are four blogs being published every single week, two that are just standalone blog posts and two as our show notes for those episodes. We also send out two emails to our full email list, two text messages to our text message subscribers, and then of course, numerous social media posts on platforms like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
This content serves our audience, warms up potential purchasers, improves our SEO so we keep popping up in search results, and makes our brand stand out as a leader in the space of social media, online marketing, and entrepreneurship.
I believe content creation is a non-negotiable for an entrepreneur, but you certainly don’t need to create all of that content to be successful… What you need is a plan that you can consistently stick to and a strategy to create content that serves and converts your audience.
The Customer Journey
Feeling like you could use a better, more strategic content plan? Time for a course correct in your content creation plan? I’ve got you. Here are four missteps I see content creators making all the time (and I made them, too!)
First, not thinking about the customer journey when you create. When you’re creating content, you want to have that customer in mind and your content should be focused on them, not pointing you as a superhero, but really focusing on them, their experience, where they’re at anticipating the questions they might have, or the search bar search engine things that they’re typing in.
You want to really focus in and hone in to create for your customer wherever they are on that path and what it looks like to kind of guide them along that journey.
Not Enough Promoting
This is actually a trap that we can fall into really easily as well because of our robust content creation schedule. The thing is, people spend 90% of their time creating and they spend about 10% of their time promoting, and we’ve tried to flip that on our head.
How do we give our content longevity? How do we promote it with different angles? How do we make sure that if somebody missed it today, they can see it tomorrow?
If your only way of sharing your content is on social media, then you’ve got to figure out ways to expand so that you’re focusing not just on the creation process, because creating is great in and of itself, but if no one sees that creation, then you kind of are missing the point. So you want to also focus on how you’re going to promote it and how you’re going to promote it over time.
Creating for a Short Shelf Life
The third thing that people get wrong is that they spend so much time creating on platforms that have really short shelf lives.
Instagram recently said you have about three to five hours to catch someone’s attention before the algorithm will choose to distribute your post or decide to shelf it. If you’re creating and your posts are living and dying within three to five hours or max 24 hours, you’re putting yourself on this hamster wheel where you have to continue creating in order to get a result.
To make that content last longer, we love Pinterest. The average Pin can drive results for 30, 60, or 90 days, whereas an Instagram post is 24 hours or less.
Not Creating with a Goal in Mind
Every single thing we create is with a purpose.
Like we have a goal in mind and one of the things that we do so well on our team, Is that we reverse engineer every single thing. So we look at the end result for this episode, a blog post, a Facebook post… What is the goal? Where do we want people to go? What is the next step that we want them to take?
We try to create these experiences for our listeners, our subscribers, our readers, our viewers so that if they are ready and willing to go on that next step with us, they know what that step is. We kind of have this saying, “no dead ends,” where we just want to continue extending invitations for people.
More from this Episode
Where should you start with your content creation strategy? What happens if you run out of ideas? (Spoiler alert: We love this HubSpot tool for idea generation!) Press play on this episode for the full conversation about content creation.
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