Lesson Info
2. Why You Need to be a Content Creator
Lessons
Class Introduction
06:31 2Why You Need to be a Content Creator
08:50 3Discover What Content Your Audience Craves
05:30 4Uncovering Your Voice
09:42 5How to Never Run Out of Content Ideas
21:07 6Using Screenwriting Techniques to Create Content
09:38 7Create a Thriving Content-Creation Process
05:53 8How to Write Sizzling Headlines
05:21Lesson Info
Why You Need to be a Content Creator
So let's talk a little bit about why you need to be a content creator. Today we're all content creators. We have to be. That's our world. But it builds trust with prospective clients, right? So this is a great way, when someone comes into your world, they come on your website, they meet you on social media, they meet you here, wherever, right? And then what are they going to do? They're going to start checking you out online. They're going to start Googling you. They're going to look you up on Instagram or Facebook or wherever, it's just the way our world is. We all stalk each other online. So if you have really awesome content there, and it doesn't have to be a ton of content by the way. You don't have to have archives of years and years of thousands and thousands of pieces of content. In fact, no one's going to read back that far anyway, which is why repurposing is really important. But it helps to build trust. You can build relationships through your content. We'll talk about that t...
oday. But it's a great way to do that so that once they are ready to buy, they're completely comfy and they know that you are the one they want to work with. So it's a great way to do that without having to be like always pushing a sale on somebody. Yeah, that's not fun. All right. And it attracts quality clients to your business. So the great thing about content is that you can write it in a way that's really just directed to the audience you want to reach. You don't have to reach everybody. Nobody wants to reach everybody, right? You want to reach the people you want to work with, so you talk to them. And I hear a lot from people, they're like, "I want to say this, or I want to write this, "but I feel like I'm going to turn this person off "or somebody's going to be pissed at me "because I said that." And my question back to them is always, "Well, do you care if that person's pissed at you? "Like, do you want to work a pissy person?" And usually their answer's like, "Not really." So that's the answer, right? No, you want the pissy person to go away. Bye, I don't want you in my business. You want to work with people who aren't going to be offended by like a story you've experienced or a life event that you've experienced or something you enjoy, right? You don't want them to be offended by that. That's not going to be a fun client to have. And then also it nurtures your audience into buying from you. So again, like I mentioned earlier, content really is just a relationship-builder. It's a way for them to get to know you when they're not seeing you in person. We're all online these days. I think most of us use online means to run our business. Even if you have a physical brick and mortar business, you're usually finding people online. So this is a great way to nurture that audience and get them excited to want to come into your world and learn more about your offers. And then also it's an opportunity to connect deeper, like I said, especially with a virtual audience. Gosh, it's like everything happens online these days, and it's stripped so much of the intimacy out of our businesses, right? We used to all just be like face-to-face and coffee dates, and it was great, and you'd connect, and now there's really not that opportunity and a lot of us have global audiences, we're reaching people all over the world, and so how do you have that same effect, right? How can you show up and be like, "We're sitting for coffee, but we're really not." You still have to have that feeling in your business, and content is a really cool way that you can do that. You can really foster that intimacy. All right. Let's go through a couple of content commandments. These are my commandments. Don't be the grammar police. So I'm not saying that you want to spell like a whole bunch of stuff wrong and make a big hot mess. And if you're a professional writer, within reason, you probably need to do some editing, right? Although I will say even Oscar-winning screenplays have grammatical edits in them, so it happens. But what I mean by this is just, don't get so consumed by making everything so perfect grammatically that you're not sending out content. I've seen this take clients down, because they're like, "I'm a terrible writer." Look, at the end of the day, we break a lot of grammar rules in content, because we really want it to be conversational. So sometimes we don't write things the way a professional editor would want us to write them, and that's okay. As long as the essence is still there, and people are going to know if you're putting a hyphen somewhere it wouldn't grammatically belong, but it's there just to show this visual break or cue for the next, like, fine. It's fine. If you have a reason that you put it there, fine. You can always use online services, like Grammarly will do a quick check for you, and make sure you're doing a scan on your own as a final polish, but at the end of the day, don't get so stressed out about grammar. If you really do have a huge problem with spelling and grammar, like to where you feel like it's so far gone, then you can hire an editor for fairly cheap, just someone to look over your content for you. You can usually find those folks online. Doesn't have to be a book editor or something like that, unless of course you're writing a book. Then I would recommend getting a book editor. You can use lingo, catchphrases and slang. I'm allowing you to use those things. I see that so much, especially as a professional writer. Like, there's all these weird articles, and they're like, "Don't use tropes, "don't do this," and I'm like, "Dude, some of things are built on tropes." I would not be making a good living writing for Lifetime if I didn't believe in tropes. It's a structure, it's a formula. We have to do it. The audience wants it. Scandal, right, if anybody watches a Shonda show, they use tons of tropes, right? That's one of the most successful shows on TV, her whole brand is. So when you look at this, it's like you can use lingo, catchphrases, slang, things like that, even if you read something that's like, "Never use a catchphrase, never use this, that's corny." No. If it's something that you use in real life. Like if you were having coffee with me, or whoever, a friend, a family member, a colleague, and words come out and this is just something in your vocabulary, then use it in your copy. Don't worry if somebody's like, "That's a weird lingo." "Fine, bye." Okay. Don't get caught up in the length of your content. So big question I get all the time, "How long should my content be?" Constantly, constantly. Look, at the end of the day, if your story sucks, if your content sucks, it can be one sentence, everyone's checked out. If it's good, it can be a whole journey, a novel, and people are going to stick with it til the end. So the length really doesn't matter as much as every statistic will tell you that it does. And also realize that the statistics you're seeing out there around content are usually speaking to global brands and not to us as small business owners. So those stats and those bigger numbers are really for like the Pepsis of the world, right? The bigger global brands, but they're operating on a totally different plane than we are as small business owners. They are looking at, they have not just one ideal client, they probably have 50 of them, right? And they're looking to reach all of them, and they have really complex, huge marketing teams plus external agencies that are managing all of this. We're small businesses. Those statistics don't apply to us. We have to create that intimate having coffee connection. That's what we need to do. So don't worry about all those stats you see out there about weird lengths and this and that, and like tricks that you do in your content. Just write good content. That's really like, just feel relieved that that's all you have to do. You don't have to worry about all of the rest of that. And I will say, don't worry about SEO during initial creation, because sensational content does not stem from statistics. Now, I'm not saying that don't do SEO ever in your business, right? I'm also not an SEO expert or even like an SEO beginner myself, so I can't answer questions for you about SEO. But I will say I get that question a lot, and if you are doing an SEO strategy for your business, fine. Don't bring it in in the beginning part of creating your content. Create your content first, and then you can weave in whatever you need to weave in for SEO, because you don't want to sacrifice your content and the storytelling in your content for just buzzy SEO keywords, right? At the end of the day, you need to attract the right clients. You're not just looking to come up really high in Google so that everybody in the world is coming to you. That's not what we want. Not as small business owners. No, that's not how we operate. You want to attract the right clients. So what I'm saying is I'm not telling you to throw out your SEO strategy, I'm saying that I can't answer questions about that for you, and I'm also saying that don't sacrifice the quality of your content for SEO. So use this class first. Do your content, and then work on your SEO from there.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Lauren Dusing
I'm only on Lesson 7, but I just felt the need to stop and write a review, even though I haven't finished the entire class yet. This class has sooooo much great content. I completely agree with the woman in the live audience that said she was having so many "light bulb" & "a-ha" moments during the class. I've always wanted to create a months worth of content for social media so that my posts had meaning and I didn't have to stress last minute about having to find something to post about, but when I would start to brainstorm ideas etc. I just wasn't excited about what I would come up with and it felt like such a struggle, I would eventually have to stop because my ideas were minimal and the process was so unenjoyable, like painful haha. But after 7 lessons in this course I feel so excited about generating content and my mind is filled with so many ideas already. I actually feel like creating a months worth of content ideas is not only totally doable, but could actually be enjoyable and by using what i've learned in this class, I feel like the content I create will actually be effective and I'll be proud and excited to post it. This course is totally worth it, hands down. buy it!
Chris Louis
Extremely helpful and practical tips on how to get the ball rolling on creating meaningful content! Highly recommend this easy and user friendly class
Shannon Flaherty
I thought this class was great. It inspired a lot of ideas and I came away with a lot of insights. Well done!