Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down a content strategy for 2024: test short-form posts on X and LinkedIn to find what works, then repurpose winners into long-form articles, videos, and podcasts. They explain how organic reach builds an algorithm 'warm-up' effect and why writing is faster to produce than video.
Neil and I are actually more native writers than we are video creators. We've been pretty good at writing in the past. It's just we've gotten lazy with it.
If you continually post crap content, which Eric and I are both guilty of, then when you post good stuff, your users aren't engaging because they're used to seeing crap.
All right, so we're going to talk about why we're going 10x harder on written content now. So Neil, you want to share your story?
Sure. So if you look at Eric and I, what we're doing on Twitter, we're going much harder on written content. We're posting more frequently. We're not using EAs or ChatGPT. Him and I are actually creating a lot of our own content, technically all of our own content, and posting it on places like Twitter. The reason we're doing this is it's easier to create written content. You know, I don't know how long it takes you, Eric, but typically if I want to put out a tweet, it takes me no more than 5 minutes. Right? Like to think it through, gather data, etc. I do have a team, so some of that helps cut down on some of the time, and the team may feed me some stats. And I know you have one too. But when you look at places like Twitter, you can crank out written content multiple times a day, and you can quickly see what's getting traction and what's not. What Eric and I are then doing is then taking that written content, the ones that are doing extremely well. And then creating video content. And the reason we're creating written content first is it's easier. Creating video content, you may think it's easier because you just take out your phone and record, but you got to edit it. You got to make sure, you know, the punchiness is there, the tonality is there, the emotions are there. It requires a little bit more work, actually quite a bit more work. Even setting up lighting. I don't know about you, but when we set up lighting to record, Sometimes it takes the guys 15 to 20 minutes to set up lighting and there's typically 2 or 3 people that are helping set up the lighting. So what we tend to do is focus on written content, figure out what's working. And when we say written content, we're talking about small condensed written content, maybe 200 words max. You then take that, whatever's hot or on fire, in other words, performs better than your average post on let's say Twitter. You then take that and you can extend and create a blog post from it. You can then take the hot ones and then create video content from it, shorts and long format. Now you have content for YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, the list goes on and on. But that's a playbook we're running and it seems to be working exceptionally well. And on certain social networks like LinkedIn, what we'll do is we'll take the written content that's hot on Twitter, create a video from it, upload the video with the written content on places like LinkedIn that like both and then post it and see how it performs.
Yeah. So the other reason why we're going harder on X and LinkedIn right now is because there's good organic reach on both. And also most people don't know this, but Neil and I are actually more native writers than we are video creators, for example, and more podcasters. That's how we actually cut our teeth in the beginning. And I will say that wherever there's good organic reach, it makes sense for us to attack it. We just weren't attacking it with full intentionality, I believe, in the last couple of years. Now, even we're just getting started again. I look at Neil's posts, I look at my posts, it's like, okay, like, sure, you know, before Neil, maybe most of his posts would get 5,000 views or so, which is decent, right? Now, they're getting anywhere from 10,000, 15,000, 20,000+ views and it's just getting started. Once he— I think we have this theory that there's like a, you know, the algorithm needs to start to trust you again, right? Once it starts to trust you again, it'll start to give you more reach. just like it does with the same thing with YouTube, right? So that's another big reason why we're putting more effort into it. And then to Neil's point too, so we talked to our mutual friend, Alex Hormozi. That's where he gets, he just will spit out his stream of consciousness and then whatever tends to work, he'll then make into a longer form piece. And then maybe he'll chop it up for Shorts or maybe he'll even create a native version for LinkedIn as well. And that's how you can approach omnichannel from a more intentional standpoint. But you also have to reconsider what you're really strong at. For us, we've been pretty good at writing in the past. It's just we've gotten lazy with it. Yeah.
And we also believe, like what Eric said, to double down on it, it's like the Google Sandbox, right? People used to talk about that years and years ago. Sometimes you got to do quite a bit of work and it just pays off, maybe not a month or 2 down the road, but 3, 4, 5, 6 months. And that's what we believe with a lot of these algorithms. And we've seen it. They're all very similar in which if you continually post crap content, which Eric and I are both guilty of, right? Just posting links and being lazy about it. Then when you post good stuff, your users aren't engaging because they're used to seeing crap. So it takes time to warm them up, get them to engage again. And once you get more love from your users, then you'll start, you know, seeing the network effect of your content really spreading.
It's also important. The other thing we'll call out here is that In general, if we're talking about like a pound for pound basis, there are a lot of smart people hanging out on X. Now, probably the smartest, you have billionaires tweeting, right? You have these hedge fund people tweeting, right? And you have entrepreneurs tweeting and it's kind of, you have the best of the best. And at least that's from my perspective. And LinkedIn, you have a very B2B environment as well. So as long as there's good organic reach and it's reaching the right people, Yeah. It makes sense for us to spend time on these platforms. Again, we just haven't been as intentional as we would've liked to be.
Yep. So go out there and we recommend that you highly do this for 2024. Spend way more time on written-based content and short-form written content because it'll tell you what's gaining traction and then what you should turn into long-form content as well as short-form and long-form videos as well, or even potentially podcast episodes.
Alright, that's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and we will see you tomorrow.
Bye.
