A short instructional video by George Kao describing a three-stage approach to creating content: Stage 1 — casual, low-effort free content used to test ideas and reduce expectation; Stage 2 — repurpose and polish content that shows above-average response and reshare it for more feedback; Stage 3 — invest further to create polished, paid products (books, courses) only after earlier-stage validation. Emphasizes frequent testing, resisting perfectionism, and using social media for Stage 1 trials.
Chapters
In this video, I'm going to talk about three stages of content. So the first stage is when you make something for free, like you upload a video to YouTube or Facebook, or when you write an article, a blog post for your website, or if you just engage on social media, write something on social media, post some photos. The first stage I recommend, make it as casual and as effortless for you as possible. That way you don't have any expectations of how that piece of content should perform, how many likes you should get, how many shares, how many comments. Because the more effort you put into something, the more expectation you have for how successful that thing should be. I see a lot of I've coached hundreds of clients over the years, counsel thousands more audience members, and one of the common problems I see is that people have this inspirational idea. They have some kind of peak experience, maybe they've studied some topic for a long time and they think, oh, just because I love it, that must mean everybody else is going to find this amazing too. So they spend all this effort into either writing an epic blog post or even they spend years writing a book. And then all this effort, they publish it. And then crickets. Very little response from the world because they haven't tested their idea yet. So really, stage one is casual testing of content, okay? Just to see if the overall idea has legs. Whether are you just in your own head and it's meaningful to you because of all of the context of your own life experience, or is it actually meaningful to other people too? Like, have you communicated in a way that makes sense and resonates with a lot of other people? So that's stage one is casual free content. Okay? Stage two is if the content from stage one you've noticed does have above average response from your audience or from other audiences that you've shared it with. If it has an above average response, then stage two is to repurpose that content with more thoughtfulness and then reshare it. So maybe you wrote a very casual and simple blog post or social media update and people really loved it. Then stage two is to go back to that piece and edit it with more thoughtfulness. Maybe even get the feedback of just a few close friends or colleagues about it and just make it even better. So if it's a video, like I'm doing these casual dog walk my dog buddies running around here dog walk videos, I'm just sharing some things. Not a big deal if nobody likes it or shares it. No, not a big deal. I'm just walking my dog anyway. And decided to take out my phone and say something that I'd just been thinking a little bit about. Now, if it's a video, then the second stage would be to rerecord the video with more thoughtfulness, with a clear outline, your mind maybe having certain transitions you have in mind for how you want to transition the ideas, and then resharing it. Now, the second time you do it with more effort should do even better than the first time because the first time was very casual, it's unedited. But the second time you've put some more thoughtfulness into editing it and it should do better, it's more well polished. Okay? Now if the second time does well, then the third stage you may want to take is then to put even more thoughtfulness and effort into making that piece even better and turning into a paid thing, whether that's a book you sell or whether that's a video series or an online course, etc. What I just see so many people do mistakenly is they just think that the first idea they have, or some idea they have the first stage, they go right to the third stage. Instead of testing the ideas first and then repurposing and testing it one more time, they go say, I've put all this effort, months of effort into creating this online course, now I'm going to sell it. And then it doesn't do well. Well, have you tested the ideas at least in stage one, if not stage two as well? So I hope that this is helpful. It is true that more polished content tends to do better for audiences, but the problem is that lots of polished content doesn't do well because they haven't tested the overall idea yet. So I hope this is helpful. Stage one, casual free. Do this as often as you can, even if it's the Facebook Live video, or make it as easy for you to do the first stage as possible. Social media is great for this. Just posting a text, social media update with some ideas you have, et cetera. Stage two again repurposed and then share it again for free with a little bit more thoughtfulness. And then stage three is turning into something paid if you wish to do that. And I think if we all did that, we would all have a much easier time growing our audiences growing and exploring our content and our ideas and have a better business and we would all be able to learn from each other much more quickly because there's going to be more free content out there without feeling like you've got to be perfectionistic. And the first free thing you put out as an email opt in is amazing. No, no, test it, test it. Test it first. So you might want to watch this video again to kind of relearn and get some of the nuances. I'm always open to your questions and your comments. And until the next video, I'm George Kao, wishing you a more a wiser content development method. Take care.
