Shaun Whynacht and the hosts share a system for generating content ideas: list nine problems your audience faces, note the solution for each, and turn those pairs into blog posts, videos, or social content. Capture real customer questions too, since what one person asks, many others wonder.
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Welcome to the Content Amplification Podcast, where you will gain insight into real-life tactical and strategic elements to help you scale and grow your business. Now let's get started with today's episode.
All right, we're back with another episode of the Content Amplification Podcast.
Today I'm going to be talking to you about the idea, the idea being what is it that we should be creating our content about?
And I've got a great exercise that I want you to walk through for your own business.
So the first thing you need to get through your head and, and really hone in is any content you put out there needs to be very laser focused. And by laser focused, I mean you have one specific goal in mind, and that is to address a concern, a problem, a mistake that your ideal customer or client has or is making And then paint the picture of what it would be like if their life didn't have that problem, that concern, that mistake. And then show them or tell them or teach them what it would be like and how to overcome that. And then invite them to take action. That's really the purpose behind any content that you put out there. Is you need to be teaching, you need to be educating, you need to be enhancing the life of the person who is listening, seeing, reading, attending your event or your content. So here's what I want you to do.
Wherever you're at right now, unless you're driving, I don't want you to do this when you're driving, but you can think about it. I want you to list out 9 mistakes or problems or issues or concerns, whatever word you want to have. Sometimes you can have problems and also another list of mistakes that your ideal targeted customer or client is making, experiencing, or having. So like I said, if you're not driving, take a piece of paper and write this down. Write mistakes, concerns, problems, whatever word you want to use and write 1 through 9 and write them out. Okay, don't get too technical around this and worry about grammar and all that kind of stuff. Just write them as they come to your head. If you get to like 7, you can't think of 2 more, that's okay. You may come to you later on. This is a great exercise to have. And, and one thing that I'd recommend is if you're getting into creating this type of content, and I strongly suggest you should, is to have a notebook sitting there either at your desk or with you in your vehicle, wherever you are. And when you think of that or experience something, write it down. Have an ongoing list of that. Now, what you're going to immediately do then is once you've got those, you can either write below or beside, write results and do 1 through 9. Now you're going to do is you're going to look at if that problem, concern, issue, whatever it was was eliminated, solved, rectified, what would be the result in that client's or prospect's life?
And write out the result of fixing that.
Once you do that, you've got individual points of content.
So if you're going to write a blog post, you can pick a mistake, an issue, a concern.
You can write about what that is, how that happens, what it would be like if those things were not there.
And then you're going to tell them, teach them, show them how to overcome that. Now, if your product or your service is the solution to doing that, you're not going to be giving them everything, right?
You're just going to tell them, this is how this is overcome.
And if you'd like more on this, here's the product that can do it, and here's how— or we can do this with you. We can buy our service or whatever it is. I'm not too big on you holding out all the information hostage where it's like, I'm only gonna tell you 60% of it. You know, that was something that was happening years ago where you'd only give about 40% or 50% of the content and you'd make people have to opt in to get the rest of it.
I think it's pretty cheesy, sleazy.
It's not really ethical. A lot of times, like I mentioned in a previous podcast, where you want to provide value, you want to provide wins for your audience. If you do that consistently, when somebody needs the help that you offer, they're going to think of you.
Okay, so let's just recap what I want you to do.
Write down the mistakes, the issues, the concerns, 1 through 9, and then write out beside that, below it, the results of fixing or eliminating those. That is a great way to start planning out the content, right? Planning out the ideas of what type of content you could create. If you're getting new into this industry of content marketing for your business, this is the number one first thing you should ever do. Now, let's take it up a notch. Let's amplify this. Let's go to the end zone. As you're going through your business, as you're working with clients, as you're servicing your customers, something's going to happen. They're going to ask you questions. And this happened to me this morning. That's what prompted me to pick this topic for number 3 in our podcast series because this happened. When they ask you a question, write it down. Don't do it right in front of them, but write it down, make note of it. Because if they have a question on a topic, I guarantee your potential audience has the exact same question. And then you can leverage that question and turn it into content. Write a blog post, do a quick social video on it, put it in a podcast episode. Or if you've got a podcast, here's another great example is you can have your preset topics like we're doing, but maybe either once a month or once a quarter, you do a questions from our audience episode. Take those questions, put 'em in there. You could do a blog post. I know in my marketing company every year I would do a special Christmas edition where I would send out an email to all my clients and ask them what is one thing that they would like to have an answer to before they head into the next year. They submit the questions and I do a whole episode, a Christmas special, just on those questions and answers. It was really well received. So you don't have to scratch your head a lot and be confused about content. Content marketing is not hard. All the questions that people want answered are there, right? They're asking you these all the time. So go ahead and commit to this. Do this.
Take a notepad, go to the dollar store, buy a $2 notepad, and just stick a label on it or Sharpie or whatever you want and say content ideas. And as things come to your head, as you ask questions, put it in there. When it's time to create the content, start to plan it, that's where you're going to get it from. So hopefully that was helpful to you as you start to plan out your ideas and your content. And if you want some help with that, you want some better ways to leverage your existing content you can go and check us out at AmplifyMyContent.com. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification Podcast. If you have questions about how you can amplify your content strategy, go to AmplifyMyContent.com.
