Welcome to episode 323 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Welcome, welcome, to another episode. This week we’re going to talk content marketing, and really I want to talk about three things you must know when it comes to your content marketing, because there’s a lot of information out there about how you have to do X, Y, Z. If you don’t do A, B, C, you’re going to fail terribly. I want to do a little reality check with what is actually necessary for your content marketing. We’re going to break down the three things I want you to know when it comes to content marketing. Again, we’re going to keep this short and sweet, because I want you to take action on this stuff.
What I want you to do is I want you to do me a solid, I want you to listen to this episode, and then I want you to come over to Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris, and let’s hang out. Hit the post about this episode, and let me know your thoughts. How will you deal with this and if there are any truths I missed, and your favorite way to market with content. Yeah? Let’s do that. Head over to the Facebook page, again, The Stacey Harris over on Facebook. I can’t wait to hear from you and hear about the action you take on this episode. With all of that said are you ready to jump in? I’m going to imagine that you just said yes, let’s go.
Number one, there is no one way to do this.
I podcast, I podcast because I like to podcast, I enjoy recording these shows, I enjoy editing these shows, I enjoy communicating in this way. I hope you enjoy consuming content in this way, because you’re listening right now. If you don’t enjoy it, you should stop listening, that’s just basic information there. There’s no right way to create content for you, you may be golden with video, you be an exceptional write, and rocking out blog posts is the way to go for you. There is no one way to do it. Yes, you have to look at who your ideal clients are, and how they like to consume content. You happen to be one of my ideal clients because you like to consume content this way. That works out for me.
Maybe your audience is all about reading, they want to be able to read. I’ll be honest, that’s one of the reason we added show notes with a direct transcript for these podcasts, is because I had so many people who were like, “I love your content, but I just … I prefer to read. You’re the only podcast that I can listen to, but I prefer to read it.” Now we have transcripts for you guys. I think Denise Duffield-Thomas does the best job of showing you there’s no one way. She actually produces content every week in three different ways. It’s just one piece of content. She’s got a video, and that transcript full from the video is the blog post with a video embedded, and you can also get it in audio form as a podcast, so you can take it with you if you want.
Again, she’s not creating three different kinds of content, she’s taking one piece of content and repurposing it into three things, so that she can get to everybody the way they want to consume content. Again, there’s not just one way. Do what works for you. Initially, you don’t have to repurpose it into all of the things, you can start one place.
Number two, is it’s not forever.
If right now you really enjoy writing blog posts, great. If in six months you decide to launch a podcast, fantastic. If in five years you decide you want to do something like Denise does where you have a video that gets repurposed into written content and audio content, fantastic. You’re not stuck with this forever.
Right now I am toying with the idea of making some changes for this show next year. This show doesn’t look like it did from the store. Now, this show is not going away, but I might make some changes to the format. I might change the frequency, or the days they go live, those are things we have changed over the course of the last three years we’ve been doing this show. I change the days that the episodes go live, for a while it was Tuesday and Thursday, and then it went back to Tuesday and Friday, I think we started with Tuesday and Friday as well. We’ve always done two episodes a week, but that might change. I might do more, I might do less, you never know. We use to have guests every other episode and now we don’t. It’s not forever. You’re not stuck with it. You can make changes.
Don’t let a fear that you’re going to choose the wrong prevent you from choosing anything. Fearing the wrong choice is way, way, worse than just making the wrong choice. In reality you may very well choose the right choice, and even if you choose something that you don’t love, or you choose something that you need shift a little, at least you have that information, and that experience, to learn from, and to build on. Pay attention to that. Again, as much as there’s not one right way, there’s also not a wrong way. As long as you’re taking action, or moving forward, you’re providing value for your audience. Those are the boxes you want to check. That’s the important stuff to think about, not necessarily this, “Oh well I didn’t do that. So and so said I have to. Oh now I’ve started doing this so I have to do it forever.” No, that’s the last thing I want you to worry about. I want you to worry about getting value out there. Find the way and start doing it, okay?
Number three, and again we’re wrapping this up short and sweet style today, reuse, repurpose, recycle.
I go back to Denise because she’s a fantastic example. She creates one piece of content. She records video. From there, that is converted into a blog post by doing a transcript, and a podcast, because the audio is ripped out. She doesn’t have to create three different pieces of content. I do something very similar, however I only create two pieces of content. We have the podcast and the transcript because the blog post, but here’s the way that I converted it even further, and I don’t know if Denise does this, she might, I then take these transcripts that are actually on the show notes page. This is what’s going to be guest posts for … Right now I’m looking at Q1, so I’m actually having these transcripts that I’m doing right now formatted into posts so they can go up on Linked In, so they can go on Huff Post, so they can go on YFS Magazine, so they can go on Social Media Today, so they can go in all of these different places when I want to reach those audiences, and drive traffic back to my site.
I’m still using this in different ways. Another really great example of this is my friend, Brandy Lawson, and she actually started her’s with Facebook Live. She would do a Facebook Live, and then that would get converted into a blog post for her website. Now she could even just embed that Facebook Live, or even better, she could upload to YouTube, and then embed the YouTube video. Then she could rip the audio and make it a podcast as well. Now she didn’t do that, but you can see how creating a piece of live content that feeds your social media channel can then turn into YouTube content, website content, and again, you can take that transcript and turn it into guest post content as well. Really, really, find every last ounce that you can get of this content. That’s going to be the key to content marketing that I think the most people are missing.
I think we talk a lot about being in creation mode. We talk a lot about having to create something else, having to feed the content machine, having to think of something new, or brainstorm new ideas, or get out there in a new way, but sometimes we don’t talk about really sucking every last bit of value out of content. I’ve talked about it a lot over the last couple of months just because it’s been really top of mind. I think nearing this end of the year where we’re all kind of thinking, “What do I need to do to make sure that I am making the most of my time, and getting everything I need to get out value wise to feed my business,” and et cetera, et cetera. Now is a really good time to take stock of what you already have and find ways to do more with it. Like I said, one of my things on my to do list this week is to go through and start prioritizing what old episodes of this show are going to get transcripts, because I want to make sure that those episodes get repurposed too. Again, that can be turned into guest post content, that could be turned into Linked In Publisher content, and it can all feed back to driving traffic to my content, which of course drives traffic to the ways you can pay me. That’s really the sweet spot, right?
All right so that’s what I’ve got for you today. Again to recap, number one, there’s no one way, there’s no one right way. Number two, it’s not forever. You can make changes. It can evolve, that’s totally okay. Number three, reuse, repurpose, recycle. Literally if you only get one thing out of this really quick episode, reuse, repurpose, recycle. All right? All right.
If you want to find even more ways to drive content to your website, or traffic to your website, excuse me, if you want to find out even more great blogging tips, podcasting tips, video tips, et cetera, join us Backstage. That’s the place to be. Really, that’s our bread and butter there, is we’re talking about doing this stuff your way. We’re talking about doing this stuff the way that works for your schedule, for your life, for your business, we’re not talking about adding 600 more things to your to do list, all right? Come join us backstage. Connect with me, connect with our other kickass members.
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