The 3 Stages of Content Creation

All right, this is one of the most important teachings that I've given to my clients, to my students. It's called the three stages of content creation. So this is for any of you who want to get your message out there by writing or by making videos or by recording podcasts, maybe writing books, maybe creating online courses. So the three stages came about because I was noticing a common mistake that a lot of you are making, who are wanting to create content, who want to write or make videos, etc. And the mistake is that you get so excited about some idea. All of us have had that experience where we had a peak experience, you know, mountaintop type of experience, transformational, life changing type experience, or sometimes it's just an idea came to you and like, oh, that's such a cool insight that I look forward to sharing with other people. So you've got this great idea or this passion, and then you work so hard at, you know, writing a book or creating a course, or you just spend a long time on writing an article or making a really great video and whatever it is, you spend all that time and energy and sometimes money creating. You put it out there and what usually happens, Silence. You don't usually get the kind of response that you expected, Right. Have you had this experience? I would love to know. I certainly have had this experience many times I have thought, wow, this is such a brilliant concept. This is such an amazing idea. It changed my life or whatever, and I share it and then my audience doesn't get it. There's far less engagement in that video or on that writing than I expected. So the reason we have that experience is because we are human beings and we can't read the minds of our audience. Now maybe some of you can, but I certainly can't read your mind. What happens though, is I can get to know you over time and get a sense of what will really help you or what will really inspire you. But it takes time to get there. It doesn't usually happen because you had a brilliant idea, one day you share it and instantly your audience loves it too. Now, that could happen too. If that's happened to you, where you share some brilliant thing and your audience loves it, you're very lucky. It doesn't happen often. So we are often stuck inside our own head thinking about some great idea. We share it and then the audience, we kind of miss the audience, you know, goes over their head. So what is the solution to this very common human bias of being inside our own head and having disappointing experiences, of sharing things and not having people get it. What's the solution? So this is how I came up with this idea of the three stages of content creation. So stage one is what I call casual content. So this is where I encourage you in stage one to create as much as you can, to create and share as often as you can on social media or wherever you share your content. Stage one means that some idea that is coming out of your mind and your heart is touching your audience for the first time. It's actually not about how hard or long you worked on an idea. You could work on an idea for five years or for five minutes, but the first time it touches the audience, it's still considered stage one because we don't yet have any responses from our audience. So that's what I mean by stage one. It's the first time an idea touches the world. Okay? An idea from your head, from your heart doesn't mean that it's the most unique idea in the history of mankind. Other people could have said the idea, but it's the first time you are saying the idea, whether it's in a written form or a video or a podcast or a book or a course. The first time the idea touches your audience is stage one content by definition. So what does that mean? That means that it's a better thing to spend less time and effort on stage one content, meaning you should always test ideas first as quickly as you can with the audience to see if it resonates with them before you take it to stage two. So let's complete stage one. It is casual. I hope you make it casual because I hope you don't spend too much energy and effort creating it because you want to test it with the audience as soon as possible. So try to just don't spend too much hard work on this. Just, just put it out there as quick as you can. Let it be casual. Try to be prolific with it. So you can have many experiences of testing things and be exploratory. Let yourself explore what the idea is, what the experience you had was. Okay, stage one, casual, prolific, exploratory. And then what is stage two? Stage two is to improve on what the audience has been responding to. Well, okay, so stage two is when you look at the stage one pieces you've done and ask yourself which one of those stage one pieces of content got the best response from the audience. The ones that got the best response. You then take it into stage two. Stage two is to improve on what's liked. That's stage two. So you take something that the audience has responded well to. And then you edit it, you improve upon it. Maybe you make the examples more clear, or you add another example, or you take away some part of stage one, the Stage one piece that wasn't, as you know, it could have been improved. So you edit that piece that already respond the audience responded well to, and then you redistribute it. You make it be seen by even more people. So at Stage two, you may decide to use some paid advertising dollars on a social media platform to get that piece of content to even more people, because you know that it already has resonated with your audience, and it's probably going to resonate with even more people. Now, for example, this, what you're watching here is a Stage two piece. I'm improving on what has been liked before. And you know what's going to be even bigger improvement? To show you, my cat here on my left is my cat, and you can look at her the whole time. It's much more interesting to look at than me. Right? So cat videos. All right, so stage two is to improve on what's liked, taking what's working from Stage one and make it even better and distributing it even farther. What is Stage three, then? Stage three is called Integrate and Productize. What do I mean? You then take what you created in Stage two, and then you organize the Stage two content into various themes, and then you productize a particular theme. What I mean by this is if you have written some articles in Stage two, they were. They worked well in Stage one. You've edited made it even better in Stage two. Now you organize those articles into various themes. And if a particular theme would do well as a book, you think, okay, this is. This could work as a book. Even if it's random inspirational essays on a topic, it can work. Okay, you put it into a book as a result, because you know that those ideas. I've already worked with an audience. People already get it. And so when you put it into a book, people will read the book and go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Or if you've made videos, you could take the Stage 2 videos and organize it into an online course. You may want to add a few more things to fill in the gap, whether it's a book or a course. But stage three is about integrating things from Stage two and making it into a product. And that is exactly what I have been doing for years now. I've been doing a lot of Stage one pieces and then taking some of those things, putting the Stage two and Then taking some of those things and then writing books. I have four self published books now which are a bunch of stage two pieces of content and I have now counting 15 courses that I've recorded on my own which are a bunch of stage two pieces of content as well. So those are the three stages of content creation. I hope that you will. You may need to watch this video again or read the article that's associated with this video to really grock this idea of okay, am I taking things too quickly into stage two before I've tested enough with stage one? Does that make sense? A lot of people don't even know that stage one and stage two exist, so that's why they work so hard on writing a book or creating a course and then having it fall flat. And I just, it pains me whenever I see that. So that's why I urge you to do the three stages of content. And I am, you know, your. I am a guinea pig. I'm a model. I've been doing this now for years and it works really, really well. In fact, like I said, this very video that you're watching came out of a stage one piece of content from 2017. I just shared some quick ideas when I was on a dog walk and the audience really liked it. So I ended up writing a more detailed article about it. That was my stage two article and then finally I took that and put it into stage three. It was a chapter in my book on authentic content marketing. And so now I'm rerecording the video. This is really a further improved Stage two video because this is not a product but this is a free video and hopefully this will make sense now to a lot of you. And I have now practiced, essentially having done this idea several times over the years now it's become much more refined and my cat agrees with that. So with that I want to thank you so much for watching this. My name is George Kao, Authentic Business Coach. I love talking about how to build a business and build a true audience with your authenticity, with being real with your audience and finding your authentic and best voice to express in building your business. So if you enjoyed this, I think you'll like my other videos. And thank you again for watching. I look forward to your comments and your questions below. Take care.