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