Hey, hey, welcome back to the Freelance Friday Podcast. Today
I want to talk to you about how to build a content strategy for
any brand, whether you're looking to build up your own personal or
freelance brand or you're consulting with a client who needs some help.
Here is my formula.
The first thing that you'll want to think about is content pillars.
So to put it as simply as I know how a content pillar is basically just
like a category or a bucket of content that, um, supports your overall brand
and your overall message and strategy, I recommend having no more than two
to three key content pillars or.
Themes.
Otherwise you kind of start to confuse people.
I've recommended the book, building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller, many
times that he says in that book, this quote that I just love, he
says, when you confuse, you lose.
And I am always reminding myself of that.
When I am writing a landing page or siting on content pillars for my brand
or somebody else's brand, you really want to make it straightforward and obvious.
What you do, and you know what you are the sort of expert or what you want to
be known for thing of content pillars.
Like, you know, if I say your name or your business name, what
words do you want to follow that?
What do you want me to associate with your brand?
For me, that might be social media marketing.
That might be content creation that might be freelancing, right?
Those are kind of my key areas of focus.
And truthfully, it should probably be niched in even further than that.
Definitely a multi-passionate person.
So I like to talk about a lot of different things, but yeah, keeping it to two to
three is going to make sure that your audience knows what you're talking about.
And my, my big tip on this too, is to make sure that you can tie your pillars back to
actual services or offers that you have, you don't want to waste your time, you
know, talking about, I don't know, like.
Make SEO a huge part of my brand because I do think SEO is important,
but I don't have an SEO course.
I definitely don't do SEO as a service.
And, um, that's not something that I personally can make money from.
So while I might throw in an SEO video here or there, if I feel like it's
really going to benefit you, or I might bring in an expert, you know, interview
an expert for the podcast who does know SEO, it's not going to be the
overwhelming majority of my brand because I, I can't make money from it because.
You know, if you're monetizing your ads and things like that, but now
we're getting in the weeds with it.
Once you decide on what your overall themes or content pillars are going to
be, of course, you're going to want to decide on individual topic ideas, but
before you can do that, you need to decide where are you going to be putting this
content by way of distribution checks?
So if I have my way, if I had made choice, I would say that you should focus
on one long form content distribution channel, meaning a YouTube or a blog.
There may be other ones, but those are the key ones that I
think people usually focus on.
And then, you know, a couple, at least one though.
Short form content distribution channel, meaning a Tik TOK and Instagram,
a Facebook, a Twitter, no focusing on your long form content piece.
First is going to make things so much easier for you.
And I know that a lot of you are so tired of me saying this,
but it really is true at least.
Definitely been how I have found success is focusing on that bigger, long form,
more well thought out, more detailed and carefully planned content piece that
really drives the rest of my strategy.
I can easily cut up these YouTube videos and podcasts into Instagram reels and
tech talks and Instagram posts and tweets and blog posts and all that stuff.
By starting with that big long form piece.
First, the long form content is also going to help drive SEO strategy.
You know, if I.
Do SEO research for my YouTube videos, then I kind of already know
that those topics are optimized for other platforms somewhat.
Now of course, I have to do platform specific hashtag research
and things like that as well.
But I know that I have a pretty good grip, at least with Google,
considering YouTube is owned by Google.
As far as coming up with my YouTube content ideas.
I like to use websites like answer the public is an interesting.
Start with, you know, if one of my pillars is social media marketing, I
can pop that into answer the public and then look at some of the topics that are
suggested that people are searching for.
And then you can sort of, you know, take your pick and say, are any of
these relevant, or can I put my unique, interesting spin on any of those things?
It also use a tool for YouTube called too buddy.
I'll leave a link in the show notes, and I really make sure that I can optimize that.
Let's just say, answer the public gives me social media marketing for.
Something like that.
I'm going to then put that into YouTube and to buddy, and really wordsmith
that to come up with the most SEO optimized title specifically for YouTube.
Now, I also like to get content ideas just from like being a person on the internet.
I'm always lurking on sites like Cora and Reddit and Twitter, of course.
And just seeing what kind of the discourse is, if I'm noticing that, you know,
what social media management portfolio.
People are really talking about this on Twitter this week.
Maybe I need to post this week's podcast about social media management portfolios
to kind of hop in on this trend while it's still sort of being discussed.
So that's sort of how I break up the topics based on the content pillars.
And then I break those up even further into those short form distribution
channels by using a tool called descript.
I just like easily cut up my different long form content.
Sometimes I record original things too, of course, but starting with
that base of the long form content is really what works best for me.
And by the way, I am working on finalizing details.
I know I told you, I think in the last podcast that I'm working on a video
sort of challenge, accountability group, Spring summer and finalizing
the details for it right now.
So if you are thinking that YouTube might be your long form distribution channel, if
you want to pop your email into the link in the show notes and description box,
this is not making you pay for anything.
It's just a hand raiser.
If you think you might be interested, I'll be sure to let you know before
everyone else, when doors are open.
I think it's going to be really fun to get us encouraged to actually
do the thing, because I know that that's the hardest part is.
You know, starting I've been there.
Believe me, last thing, real quick and distribution channels.
If you're wondering, where do I go?
There are so many of them out there.
I hear you.
I struggle with this sometimes as well, but this really comes down to
knowing your audience, who are you trying to talk to and what are you
trying to get them to do as well?
That's also important.
You know, most people are using social media to hopefully help them generate
leads, which will lead to sales.
Um, but maybe you have a different idea.
Maybe it's customer service, in which case I'm going to tell you.
Focused on Twitter or Facebook.
Those are good places to have dialogue with customers, things like that.
But overall, you're going to want to make sure you know who your customer is.
If you're going to tell me that you are focusing on a very young gen Z
audience, then of course, I'm probably going to tell you, you need to be on
Tik TOK, but if you're focusing on like, you know, I don't know moms in there.
Thirties and forties, Facebook, particularly Facebook groups might
still be a very valuable place for you to be if you're focusing on the
younger millennials who are a little bit trendy and into fashion and
style and things like that, Instagram is probably where you want to be.
So look up these different platform, demographics, learn what the.
Key audiences on each of these different platforms, you can just
Google, I'll try to find some links and put them in the show notes for
you as well that I like to reference, but you know, have an understanding
of what each platform is for LinkedIn.
Of course, if you're trying to reach professionals and you're doing B2B
content, LinkedIn is the obvious choice, but you might also want to be on Twitter.
So, um, research the platforms and that's going to help you determine which of these
shorter form and long form distribution channels you should be focusing on.
Now, one of the Hills that I have been kind of dying on lately, I don't know
if you can continuously die on a hill, but if you can, one of the Hills that I
have been dying on lately is, you know, really getting people to understand
the difference between strategy and tactics strategy is what we just kind
of talked about, you know, knowing your audience, researching to determine
which platforms you should be on.
Do we.
Content research, developing your messaging and your
pillars, that strategic work.
Now, when we get down to this part of the day-to-day or the week to
week content, calendar, building and deciding, are we going to post a reel
today, or are we going to post a Tik TOK or are we going to post a story today
or are we going to post a carousel?
Those are tactics.
Those are things that change a little bit.
Frequently.
And that may be impacted by a number of things like the algorithm,
you know, like new features being rolled out like trends, right?
So that is going to be the stuff that's going to be a little bit more flexible.
And you're kind of going to need to go week by week, day by day, month by
month, et cetera, versus this is our strategy for the year or for the quarter.
So the last piece is that you're going to need to decide on those tactics.
You're going to build out the content calendar.
You're going to take a look at what's trending.
You're going to decide what you have the resources and the bandwidth to do.
Some of your clients, may it love to be on video and they just want
to record tech talks all day long.
In which case I'm kind of jealous of you because those are rare unicorns.
Others are not going to be into that and you need to get creative and you
need to maybe work with the designer to create some carousels or some
static posts and things like that.
So, Content formats are really going to focus on and start
communicating your message that way.
And going back to content pillars really quick, why they're so important
and so helpful to have is when I'm building up my content calendar,
whether it is digital or whether it's on paper, I'm just writing a list.
Whatever I like to use.
Highlights using a particular color or use an emoji or whatever,
to identify each of the pillars.
And that way it can see, okay, we've got a good mix going here of our
one or two or three pillars, and it's not like all focused on one.
And then I'm like throwing in, you know, video or whatever at the very end.
And it's coming out of left field.
So people do really start to align you with the.
Key things that you do want to be known for.
I am going to try to not make today's question of the day into a long rant,
but I'm warning you and it might happen.
The question is, is real, is the only way to grow.
And if someone is not comfortable with the reels, then what should the next step be?
So again, reels are really a tactic.
They are a feature, uh, they're not like the whole strategy.
So do keep that in mind and my answer to.
Is no, I don't think that you do need to create reels to grow on Instagram.
For those who don't know, reels are very similar to a tick talk.
There are a short form, vertical video content type.
And no, I don't think that you have to be posting reels
every day to grow on Instagram.
I personally don't post reels very often at all.
I pretty much have my same content strategy on Instagram from like 2020 now.
Is growth as fast as it was in 2020.
I don't think so.
I think it's slowed a little bit because the algorithm is favoring reels and just
a lot of other reasons I usage maybe down, I don't know, there's a lot of, a
lot of things that may be going on, but I still am growing and I still am getting
what I personally need out of Instagram.
That's why it's also so important to know your goals.
Because one of my goals, one of my big goals for Instagram is to
have a, you know, a communication.
Hub between myself and my audience.
So I get tagged in things I'm able to respond.
I'm able to respond to direct messages and practically send direct messages
so that like, it's really serving me whether I create reels or not.
Now I do create them every once in a while.
They're largely repurposed from TechTalk and Tech-Talk is largely repurposed or,
you know, Fired by what I post on YouTube.
So you see how it kind of all works together.
I'm I don't remember the last time I created an original Instagram real,
to be honest with you now, of course, that is just, you know, one story and
I have no doubt that a lot of people are absolutely crushing it by using
reels, but you also don't want to force something if you absolutely hate it,
or you don't have the bandwidth for it, or your audience is not liking it, you
know, everything really is so subjective.
It's hard to give a blanket strategy.
For everybody that just doesn't exist.
If it was that easy to do it, there would be no need for social media
managers or no need for strategist or, you know, a YouTube channel like mine.
Right.
Because it would just be plug and play copy and paste,
but that's not how it works.
So test things, figure out if they do work for you.
If, uh, like this person asked, what should I do?
My client is not comfortable with reels.
Well, the first thing I'm going to encourage you to do is still test them.
If you can.
I actually created a video.
I'll link it in the show notes about how to create reels without using your face.
So maybe you can try something like that.
Try some screen shares or.
Test out some, you know, stock videos and quotes and things like
that to see if they do work, you know, I think it's worth testing.
And then another thing that you can do is repurpose.
So if they are on video anywhere else, or even just on audio,
cause you can get creative by using images and things like that.
Using a tool like descript repurpose, you know, just take clips of
that content and use it on reels.
This is something that I'm doing with tech talk.
And then in turn with the reels is like, no, I don't.
The best strategy to make me go viral is just like taking clips on my
podcast, but it is content I'm creating and we really need to maximize it.
So at the very least, I'm going to repurpose some of this hard
work that I'm putting into this channel onto those other channels.
So I at least have a presence.
So if somebody does search for me on Tik TOK, they can find
me, they can see that I'm there.
Um, and they can get to some of my other content from there at the very least.
So what I'm going to say.
Just to reiterate and clarify that I would start testing.
If you can do some faceless reels, do whatever you can to at least test it
and then repurpose test them, measure them, like actually write down numbers.
This is important to the scientific process, right?
It's to actually be able to analyze your data and see what does perform.
If you see that the reels are just off the charts, you're just going
to need to have a tough conversation with your client and let them know
that these reels are performing better than anything else we're doing.
So you might have to suck it up and get on camera, or maybe we hire
somebody to be on camera or maybe it's you, you want to come up with a plan
that's the long and the short of it.
All right.
Let me know in the comments, I would really love to know which distribution
channels you are focusing on right now.
Well, for long form and for short form, if you're.
Participating in any type of long form content yet, let me know.
What's holding you back.
Uh, no judgment at all.
And if you think YouTube might be one that you are looking to either
grow or start to be sure to put your email into that handraiser list, uh,
leave it in the show notes for you.
It doesn't obligate you to purchase anything.
I just want to let you all know before anyone else, when the doors
are open for my accountability group, which I'm really excited.
So, thanks so much for tuning in and spending time with me today.
I appreciate it as always.
And I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.
I'll see you in the next one.
Bye