How To Become A Content Machine For 2021 🤖

All right. So today I want to talk about how you can become a content machine in 2021. So look, there are a lot of people out there that put out newsletters such as companies like The Hustle and companies like Morning Brew. And these are both 8-figure newsletters that do very well. They have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of readers. And so a lot of their writers are putting out daily newsletters. Another example would be Axios and they do really well. And I subscribe to a lot of these newsletters and I learned a lot. Now, if a lot of people are talking about the leverage you can get from content, so the building a media company, whether you want to talk about a one-man media company, which we've talked about on this channel, looking at channels such as MrBeast where he's got over 50 million subscribers, we know that it's important to build an audience because then you can serve your audience, right? I would prefer building an audience first over building a business because the audience actually sets you apart and then you have a loyal community that's following you. And so, You know, one of the key things I do in the morning in terms of becoming a content machine is I will wake up in the morning and there are a couple of things that I will read. I used to waste time for the first 30 to 45 minutes. I would just kind of, you know, scroll. But now I have a lot more purpose. Now, I'll read newsletters such as Morning Brew. I'll read newsletters such as Axios. I'll get a sense of what's happening in the venture capital, private equity world. I'll get a sense of what's going on in just kind of the general business world. I'll also read Wall Street Journal. Yeah. They have a good newsletter. I'll read The Economist Espresso, which I pay $5 a month for. And then Wall Street Journal is like, I think, $39 a month now. And there's a whole host of other things that I'll read. And then I also have an app called Feedly, and there's a couple of RSS feeders that I'm subscribed to that will give me a sense of what's going on in kind of my world, which is might be marketing or business. And what I'll do is also look at Twitter too, because my Twitter feed is highly curated and I like to follow people that have a point of view and people that might— obviously the people you follow, the information you consume is gonna change your worldview. So I like to follow people that will challenge my worldview or just give me different perspectives. So I'll look for some stuff there as well. I think using Google Trends is also a very smart option, looking at what's trending and then kind of attacking topics from there. You can also use sites like Mashable or Huffington Post to see what's trending there. I would also use— set up some Google Alerts as well for keywords that maybe there's some certain websites you're following or certain keywords that you want to follow. So, for example, a keyword might be— maybe you have— maybe your website's about climate change, so maybe you follow that keyword and you see what's coming, and so you can attack it quickly and you can approach things from a newsjacking perspective where you can ride the wave as a topic is trending up. You can come in and ride the wave. And I'll give you an example of that. So on my YouTube channel, when I interviewed George Gammon, his name is exploding right now in the world of macroeconomics and investing because people want to understand what the heck is going on. He does a great job of explaining things. And you know, I basically, I just said the title of the interview was How to Prepare for What's Coming Next with George Gammon. And then that video now has— and by the way, we livestreamed it. It wasn't— I didn't have any expectations from it, but it quickly shot up to about I think it's at 45,000-50,000 views. And bear in mind, my YouTube channel typically right now, if I'm lucky, a video might get 5,000 to 10,000 views. But a video that's doing really well, you know, it's 55,000 plus, right? So, that's an example of kind of riding on a trend. That's not exactly newsjacking. And I highly recommend that you Google what newsjacking actually means. And then the other thing I do too in terms of, you know, when I'm scrolling through topics in the morning is I'll have a Google Sheets that I'll open up on my— there's a document that I'll open up on my phone. And with that document, I will basically come up with 5 to 10 ideas. And usually I'll pick 1 to 2 per day, right? So I'm doing this every single day. And, you know, sometimes my team will jump on it, but if it's newsjacking, I'll actually edit it myself using a software like Descript. And Descript is really good for audio editing, video editing. It'll take out a lot of the filler words and It's just really helpful, makes things a lot easier. And what else do I read? So, I read Nuzzle. Nuzzle is basically just taking my— taking top articles that my followers, that who I'm following on Twitter, what they're actually sharing. So, if 10 people that I'm following are sharing something, it's probably pretty important to take a look at. And the other thing I'll say is I will batch out my days, right? Because obviously I have important meetings around different companies. And maybe there are other things that are involved such as, let's say, I'm going through a book launch right now as well. So there's just a lot that's going on during the week. So Thursdays are typically the day that I dedicate towards content, right? So for the Marketing School Podcast, Leveling Up interviews, and for the videos I'm doing right now, I try to do them either over the weekend or I try to do, you know, crank out a couple per day, right? If we're trying to newsjack stuff and then we'll throw it up on YouTube. But the key thing is, If you want to become a content machine, you got to be out there consuming stuff or you got to be amazing at coming up with ideas, right? So, you probably have to block out time. For me, because my goal is to learn and also to educate, I'm better off consuming content and figuring out, okay, what's my angle on it? How do I come up with a good headline? And then how do I attack it, right? Now, if you're someone like a MrBeast where you're going for sheer shock value and you're going for how— what's the most amount of views I can get, we're talking 8, 10, 25 million views per video. You gotta go for something big like giving away $1 million or giving away a Lamborghini, right? That stuff's gonna do well and a lot of people are gonna know who you are. So, that's what I would say. And then in terms of being a content machine, you know, thinking about, hey, how can I become consistent? So, not only can I have a point of view, but how can I stay consistent and not lose hope over time? Because usually content is anywhere from a 12 to 24 month journey. And I'll say that looking at the YouTube channel, it takes a long time. Blog takes a long time. Blog probably took 4 or 5 years for us. YouTube to reach 53,000 or so, probably about, from about 2,000, took about 3 years or so. My podcasts, to get to, let's just say, 1.6 million downloads a month, I had to go through my first podcast to get to this level. So, let's just call it maybe 7 years to get there. And for the first 2 years of leveling up, I was suffering, right? So, you gotta— Yeah. Be ready. If you want to be a content machine, you got to be ready to take the pain and understand that you're trying to play the long game because most people just don't have the patience to wait. So hopefully this helps. Let me know in the comments what you think are some good ways to become a content machine for 2021. And don't forget to go to levelingup.com, learn more about the book, and we'll catch you later. Bye.