Sunny Lenarduzzi: I've always been a really creative person.
Ever since I was a kid, I was always acting and dancing and thinking, or trying to think,
and drawing.
And everywhere I turn on a daily basis, I'm inspired to be creative by people and places
and things.
But, the biggest challenge that I face in growing my business is that I have less and
less time to actually be creative and create content which does make me the happiest.
And I know that I'm not alone in that.
But that really is the golden question, isn't it?
How do you manage a business, manage to have a life, and not have to be attached to your
phone or your camera all the time, but still do the thing that you love most in your business?
Which is being creative and creating really good content.
I'm going to show you a few tricks of the trade.
So, these are my four content creation hacks.
Hack #1 is what I like to call "content mapping."
So, this is going to help you with the rest of these hacks, because immediately, as you're
watching this, you're going to come up with a bunch of different ideas.
All with one keyword in mind.
So, what I mean by this is, basically what you want to do is go to Google, and type in
any keyword that's related to what you do, and your niche, and what your audience would
be interested in.
So, for example, I'm an entrepreneur.
Let's say I want to talk about mindset.
I'm going to type in "mindset habits."
Immediately, all of these pop up and these are all potential topics for content that
I can create content around.
But, more importantly, this tool right here, which is called "keywordseverywhere," it's
a free Chrome extension, brings up a ton of relevant and related keywords that you can
create all different kinds of content on.
Whether it's YouTube videos, or doing an Instagram post, or tweeting about these.
And it shows you the search volume.
So, you can do a video on how to have a happy mindset, fixed versus growth mindset, winning
mindset.
All of these different titles work for different kinds of content.
Plus, if you look at the topics that come up in Google, it shows you all of these different
places around the web that you can use as examples of content that you know is proven
to be highly engaged, highly searched, and getting solid traction.
So, you can use that as an example of what you want to create your content around.
So, you take it one step further.
Click on one of the articles, go to the very bottom, and you can go to their social channels
and see what other kind of content they're sharing that's getting super-high engagement.
And that will help you create your own spin on it, or even take these articles and create
your own pieces of content around them.
Hack Numero Dos is outsourcing, which I know feels far-fetched when you're first starting
your business, because why should you have to pay anybody to help you with your content,
especially when you're not making a ton of revenue?
But here's the thing.
The more content you make, the more your brand builds, the more awareness you have, the more
authority you have.
So, it is really important.
Plus, I know you're also busy building your actual business on your own.
So, when I was first getting started, I actually started outsourcing little things here and
there in content creation, just to take some of it off my plate so I could focus on building
the business.
So, little things like, I would go to fiverr.com, a great resource for outsourcing, and get
my thumbnails made.
I also used fiverr.com in the beginning to have my videos edited.
Another great resource is upwork.com, where you can hire any kind of freelancer to help
you in the content creation process.
And then another really quick little Ninja tip, is a resource called, "Help a Reporter
Out."
It's haro.com, and basically what you can do is go on there, and if you're writing a
long-form post, or you're guest-posting on a big publication, or a guest blog spot, you
can actually go there and name the title of what your post is going to be on as a job
posting, and have people contribute aspects of that article.
So basically, other people are writing the article for you, you give them attribution
and you can link back to their social handles or their website, and the article gets written
without you having to do all of the legwork.
So, it speeds up the process and makes it a lot faster, more effective, and even builds
more authority with more people in that article.
And then the other piece of this is that when I first started on YouTube and started creating
video content, I did it all myself.
I edited, I shot, I did it all on my own.
But I am the first to admit, none of that is really my genius, though.
I got by for as long as I needed to, and it's absolutely okay and perfectly fine to do that,
because it's more important what you say versus the production value on YouTube.
But, as I grew and as I had less and less time to actually create the content, it was
important that I had help and had someone who was a genius at that piece of filming
and editing.
Which is where [Jer Bear 00:04:52] comes in.
Right?
So, I now have [Jer 00:04:58], who does all of my editing and shooting, and takes care
of making the videos look golden.
And as the business grows, and as you're creating even more content, it is really important
to have help on that front.
But when you're first starting out, those three resources are a great place to go.
So Fiverr, Upwork, and Haro.
Hack #3 is batching.
I cannot talk about this enough.
I know I mentioned this before, but I'm going to go into detail of how exactly I batch my
content for all of the platforms that I use.
So for Instagram, I write a lot of my captions in one fell swoop ahead of time.
So, I'll do it on, usually, a Friday morning for the entire next week.
And then if something happens to come up that I want to post out on, post a [inaudible 00:05:39]
on the go, which does happen, I at least have back-up content that puts me way ahead of
schedule, keeps me consistent.
So, I write them in the notes on my phone, or I put them into a sauna, which is a project
management tool that we use in the business.
The other thing I do is, for Twitter, I will actually gather quotes from across the web,
or I'll hide them in my notes on my phone, or store them in the notes on my phone, and
I'll use those and I'll schedule them using something like Hootsuite for months and months
and months to come.
We also schedule a lot of our YouTube videos for the next six months on Twitter, so that
we always keep active.
And then I can also just talk to people one-to-one, and have that be my on-the-go content on that
platform.
But at least I have a base of scheduled content that's batched way ahead of time.
The other thing is photo shoots.
So, I do not have photos taken of me on a daily basis, by any means.
We do pretty much one photo shoot a quarter, and that gives us enough content to go on
for at least a few months for all our platforms, all of our branding, as well as our Instagram
account.
And finally, video content.
I certainly do not do the one video a week thing, and have to shoot on a weekly basis,
because that takes a lot of time.
And I don't get into that creative flow, really.
And I want to make sure that I'm doing all my videos at once so I stay in that flow,
I stay super-creative, and it's easy and efficient for me to get them all done.
And then they get sent off, and Jer Bear takes them to get edited and polished and published
for all of you to see.
So, we usually spend a whole day, or at least a couple of hours, shooting a ton of video
content at once for YouTube.
And then it's all set to go.
So, that's how I batch.
And it's way more efficient, plus it keeps you in your zone of creative genius.
If you're doing something creative all day, as opposed to trying to do something creative
once a week or trying to fit it in when you can, which you just won't fit it in with everything
else going on.
And that's when you start to lack consistency.
So, that's the secret of batching.
The fourth hack is repurposing.
Now this is a life saver, and will make your life so much easier.
And all that you've got to do is base it off of engagement.
So, say you post something on Instagram and you get a ton of engagement on it, and the
caption just really captivates people.
You can then take that and turn that into video content on Facebook, or even a livestream.
So, that's one way of repurposing.
Another, and one of my favorites, is that I am not the most skilled writer.
I don't really like having to sit down and write long-form content.
It's way easier for me to speak what I'm thinking, and then have someone else transcribe it and
just format it into a long-form piece of written content.
So, a great resource for that is rev.com, which I also use to transcribe all of my YouTube
videos.
They turn it around, they say in 24 hours, it's usually within an hour.
So, you have this whole long-form piece of content that you didn't have to write yourself.
It's just the thoughts that came out of your head.
So, that's a great way to repurpose content.
Another way to do it is if you do a livestream and you have a couple of points that really
hit home with people, and you get a ton of engagement.
Turn that livestream into a written piece of content, which you then can take micro-content
from, and create memes, you can create tweets out of it, you can create Instagram captions
out of it.
So, one piece of content can be repurposed a whole bunch of different ways.
Plus, I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but I've noticed lately that a lot of the
big influencers on Instagram are taking their most popular captions and just using different
photos, but repurposing the caption once or twice a week.
And that same caption continues to hit new audiences and continues to drive a ton of
engagement.
So, again, a great way to repurpose on Instagram.
Now, you also can take a video like this.
And what we do is, we take this video and we turn it into Instagram stories, and we
also turn it into Instagram posts.
So we're taking this long-form video and turning it into micro-content for Instagram, stories
as well as Instagram posts in the feed.
So, those are my four content creation hacks, so you can actually build a business and create
content and also have a life.
Which is really, really, really important.
So, if you like them, let me know on the "Like" below.
Plus, don't forget about the #Bossclub, which we have started here on YouTube and on my
Instagram account.
So, if you comment with a thoughtful comment in the first 24 hours of me publishing a video,
you could get a shout-out, which is going to happen right now, actually.
So, author Britney Wang is the first person we're giving a shout-out to, is part of #Bossclub.
And she said, "Thanks for the tips, Sunny.
You're set is gorgeous, and I'm an [author-tuber 00:10:16]."
Which I really like.
It means an author and a YouTuber combined.
First time I've heard that.
"So, I definitely want books, notebooks, writing items in my set, a cozy atmosphere with my
brand colors, teal, light pink, and yellow, and the symbols that signify my love for productivity,
purpose, and positivity.
[inaudible 00:10:33].
Thanks again.
#Bossclub."
So make sure you that you leave a thoughtful comment below.
Use that #Bossclub, and you could get a shout-out, or you could win some BYO boss swag as well,
or a shout-out in my Instagram stories, too.
So, a good way to bring the whole community together of bosses.
Again, if you enjoyed this, and if you want to share your content creation hacks, let
me know in the comments section below.
As you can see, I actually do read the comments, so I would love to hear from you and we can
all help each other out with making content creation more fun, more creative, and more
efficient.
Because that's what we all need as entrepreneurs.
So, leave a comment below.
"Like" the video.
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that you will be able to be your own boss, build your own life, and I'll see you in the
next episode.