Episode 004 - What are the different type of content you can leverage?

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. Hey everyone, welcome to episode number 4 of the Amplify Your Content Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Shaun Whynacht. Last episode I talked to you about how to come up with different content ideas, brainstorming exercise that I gave you, and hopefully you did that. If you didn't check that episode, this is the first one, go back to episode number 3 and listen to that. And while you're already doing that, you might as well start at episode number 1 and work through the series because you're really gonna set yourself up for being able to create better content, being able to come up with ideas to curate that content, and then as we progress through different episodes, we'll be talking about very niche tactics that you're gonna be able to use in your business, in your practice, and even in your life if you're listening to this as a personal brand. So today I wanna talk about the different types of content or modalities that are out there. Now if you went and did a Google search, as I did, to see what is the internet giving us for these type of content ideas, so I did a simple search search for types of content. Very simple. And a couple different posts came up, and I, as you'll see as we go through this episode, I have some concerns with the way that, that they have segmented what they consider different types of contents or modalities. So like I said in the previous episode, when you start to get into content marketing and start to develop new content to reach your ideal avatar, your ideal customer, you're gonna really wanna start with something that you're most comfortable with. Now when I talk about modalities, what I'm talking about is, you know what, writing, so that could be blogs or different ones that we're gonna talk about in a moment, video, audio, or in person, right? Really those are our 4 different areas that we're probably the most comfortable with. Now starting at the top with writing, there's a bunch of different things that you could do. I mean, you could write blog posts, you could write white papers, you could write ebooks and all that, and I'm gonna talk about all those different ones for you just in a second. But if you're comfortable with yourself on camera and being seen, then video is a great platform. It's one that's extremely engaging for the audience. And for multiple reasons. One is their use of time, right? It's much easier for somebody to press play on a video and watch and/or just listen to you. And two, they get to see you, they get to hear you, they become familiar with you. So it's a great platform for that, you know, as opposed to reading. People are reading and they're hearing the voice that they want to hear in their head as they're reading, and they take in any of those preconceived emotions that they have going on in their life at that current time when they're reading that content. So getting across the intended meaning of your content is a little harder in written form as it is in video form, which is a lot easier. And then audio, just like this here, the podcast, you know, you get to hear me. You don't get to see me. You can obviously check out a picture on the website, but you get to hear my voice. You get to hear the tonality of the way that I deliver this content. So if I say, you know what, this is extremely important, so pay attention, Right? That is a different meaning than, hey, this is important, so you better pay attention to it. Right? So there's different inflections in your voice that you can get across to really drive home that meaning of what you're gonna talk about. And then we get into social posts and live events. Now, if you are in the financial services sector, you may be very well conditioned to what we call live events, and that could be seminars or workshops, or I've got some money coaches that are doing retreats, so multi-day events that are offsite. Those are live events. Now, the content that might lead up to promoting those and/or prepping the attendees for those events could include any of the following that we just, or any of the previous things we just talked about, like video, audio, all types of different content, right? Worksheets, workbooks, you know, you name it. So what I want you to do is consider which ones that you want to even try, right? And consider which ones are in your wheelhouse. So let's go through these and let's just talk briefly on all the different types. Now when we look at, at written form, we're going to talk about that because it's the one that people are most common with. And you hear the term blog thrown out all the time. Do you have a blog? Do you write a blog? You should be blogging. Um, all those type of things. Now, blog is a term that's been thrown around a lot, and it doesn't necessarily get narrowed down to an exact definite schematic or outcome of what a blog should be or what it shouldn't be. In my opinion, a blog is what you want it to be. Right, I've seen blogs that are 300 words, right? They're quick, they're concise. I've seen other blogs that are more in-depth. I've seen blogs that are, are multimedia-faceted, which means that, you know, there's video elements in there, there's images, there's graphics, there's animations, right? A lot more time has gone into creating that blog content, which is great. It really connects to the audience. You know, myself, and I've self-proclaimed this before, that if I go to a blog and it's all text, I'm not as interested in it as if there's graphics and there's video elements in there. I feel more engaged with it. And in a future episode, we're gonna talk about how to build out a really engaging blog post so that you can generate more leads and convert more traffic for that, but that's not for this episode. We've got things like case studies. So what a case study would be is you're taking You know, there's different types of case studies. There's case studies for your clients. So, you know, if you're trying to attract a certain other client to your business, then you could make up a particular fictitious character, right? And you can set that scenario of, you know, here's Jane and Joe, right? They live in suburban Toronto and they make this much income, but they have this much debt. "Here's the concerns they have, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When they came to us," and this is all fictitious, right? "So when they came to us, this is what we did, and now they're blah, blah, blah. They're living a lavish life that they wanted, debt-free, and they can have a vacation with the kids every year." Something along those lines. And the idea behind that is you want people to connect with it and understand it. Now, the better use of case studies is actually profiling somebody that you have done work with, right? So a before and after. And a lot of times when I'm coaching people on getting things like testimonials, that's one of the biggest things is not ask them, hey, can you give us a testimonial? And then just leave it up to them, right? Give some context. So if you're going to get an audio one or a video one, or even if you want them to write it or leave it on your Google page or on your Facebook page, Say to them at least, hey, you know what, I'd love to get a testimonial from you, and here's what I'd like you to do. I'd love you to just give an idea of what life was like before working with us, and then what is life like now after you've been working with us. So now when they go into it, they know exactly what it is you're looking for, because that's kind of like a micro case study for somebody to read that, right? People want transformation in their life. They want to see what it's like to do work with you Not necessarily just in the process of working with you, but what are the outcomes, right? It's the what's in it for me that really hits home to people. So case studies are really good. They're a little longer, right? They're not just a testimonial. Maybe there's some images or some graphs and charts and all that kind of stuff, you know, setting the storyline for people, right? They're written more as a story. And then we got white papers. Now if you've heard of the term white papers, then you know, you're probably either, if you've never downloaded one, you're probably still wondering what it is, very literal in its name, right? It's white, it has black text, right? Very similar to what you would consider writing a report in high school. No images, no graphics, just white paper, white document, black text, but you're really, you're teaching in that document. And there's no real limit to the size of it. It could be 2 pages, it could be 20 pages, right? But you're really, you're almost like taking a chapter of a book that you're gonna write. Writing it into a white paper into a specific topic. And then we got ebooks. Now ebooks are, you know what, they've been extremely popular in the past. Now the big thing that I want to keep you in mind for with an ebook is people will get a lot of initial excitement when you announce that you're releasing an ebook, right? They want it. But the issue is if you don't have follow-up, you don't have hype, you're not providing additional content leading up to it, and then after launch when people download it, A lot of ebooks go unread, right? It's in that whole hoarding mentality that I want this because it's new, it's flashy, but then when I get it, you know what, there's no excitement anymore. There's no follow-up a lot of the time. So what is it for me to read it? And keeping in mind, a lot of times if you send an ebook, you'll send in a PDF copy, and you know, unless somebody's sitting in front of their computer, they're not going to read it. So ebooks are really great if they're very like niche-minded, right? They're very focused on a specific topic, a specific problem. And I'm a big fan to make ebooks, you know, very easy to read, very light, you know, and have multiples of them. So if you wanted to put together a book that was like, you know what, 15 chapters, and every chapter was on a different topic or different pain point, it's probably a lot easier to take each of those and probably going to give you more runway and more longevity in your content to break that up to 15 different ebooks or 15 different micro white papers if you wanted to do that, if you didn't want to have the graphics in it. So being able to do that, also the benefit with that is if you've got a specific problem that a prospect or client has, you can send them that specific one, right, versus sending them the whole ebook. Moving on from ebooks, we got things like infographics. Now infographics are taking a process that somebody would go through, a journey, and turning it into a visual representation like a poster or graphic that will illustrate visually what it is that they're supposed to do, the journey they're supposed to go on. Very powerful, very great in supporting an existing process that you have. I'm working with a client in Western Canada right now who is in the estate planning world, and they have a process that clients go through. Now prior to estate planning,, or prior to them coming along, a lot of people have gone to lawyers and it's very complicated things, but they tried to streamline the whole process and make it easy for people to see that, hey, working with us is different. So in order to do that, to get their process across, we help them develop an infographic that shows that entire journey. And now people can see where they're gonna go when working with them, and it's been very effective in that matter. Uh, things like checklists. Checklists are, are great on a stage 1 engagement. And by stage 1 engagement, what I mean is the very first engagement when you want to exchange something of value with someone, right? So opt-ins on websites, in your blog posts, people will engage with a stage 1 engagement. And from there, you really have 3 different stages, and we'll talk about the different stages of engagement in a future episode. But in this, you don't want somebody to go to a blog post off of a social post that you do, and then they're reading through that, and then suddenly it's like, hey, sign up for my 1-hour webinar. That's a big commitment, right? That's a huge commitment for somebody to go from, hey, I'm just checking you out, to now you want me to commit an hour of my time to you. Not to say that you won't get some people, but the people that don't want to commit to that level, you're not going to get anything because there's nothing for them to get. So if it's a checklist that says, hey, here's a 10-step checklist to figure out where you are at right now,, right, in whatever industry you're talking about, people will do that. People love to have a list. They love to feel that somebody's helping them organize or somebody's helping them give them answers. So checklists are extremely important. Now I just want to touch back on the blog idea because we're talking about the writing formats here. I am a big fan of short blogs, right? Short blogs, you know, 300 to 500 words, a lot of bullet points or 3 points, right? The 3 steps to this, you know, the 5 steps to that, those type of things, because those are easy hooks for people to see coming through the social posts that you put out there. Or if somebody's looking for a problem and it comes up in a Google search with awesome SEO, then when somebody sees 3 steps, their brain is gonna say, hey, that's an easy read, that's gonna give me answers to what I want, right? Versus, hey, here's a blog post on everything you should consider when doing this, right? That's a lot, right? That's another big commitment. So that would be like a short-form content. And then there's other sides of blog posts where you see what are called long-form content. That's where you're taking it and building it out and it's sometimes 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 words and it's a really long blog post but it's very in-depth. The key with that is it has to be broken up into different types of content. It can't just be 10,000 words of just text Ain't nobody around that's gonna have time to read all that or even attention span to wanna stay with that. So breaking it up, right? Using images, absolutely crucial. Breaking it up into sections, absolutely crucial. Maybe even have a micro-navigation at the top using different anchor links in your post so people can get to a certain point and if they wanna come back, they know they can click on the link and get to it and go that way. So long-form content versus short-form content. Now let's flip the gears here and let's talk about video. My initial background 20 years ago was as a television videographer. Technical television producer was really what my diploma was coming out of school. So I did a lot of live video, a lot of sports video, news reporting, things of that nature, and then naturally progressed my business into video production, marketing, and all those different elements of it. But video to this day is still a huge game changer when it comes to getting your message out to people. And you're seeing it a lot more prevalent in, in even how people are engaging in emails. You know, being able to send personalized one-off emails with different plugins in your Gmail or in your Office 365 is becoming more mainstream versus typing out replies. People are getting so conditioned to video, and they absolutely love video. YouTube, huge platform, a great opportunity for you if you don't have a YouTube channel get one today. When you're done listening to this, go and get a YouTube channel. And even if you're not putting content on it right now, go and do it. Because if you go and start something like that and you make that commitment, right, you're already starting that ball moving forward. That momentum is starting with it. But even putting out a video, you shoot on your phone, throw it up there, it'll start to get found and you'll start to generate some momentum. You're probably not going to get hundreds and thousands of subscribers, you know, in the first couple months, But it takes some time, and we're seeing that in our channel as well. You know, once that momentum starts, then the subscriber base starts to go up higher and higher. But like I said in, in the opening of this episode, video, because they can see you, they can hear you, it's a great engaging platform. And when I first started making videos for businesses 15 years ago, you know, we were making 10 to 15 to 20 minute videos, promotional videos, marketing videos. You're never going to see that now, right? We are now making 10 to 15 to 20 individual 1-minute videos on very specific microtopics because that's the society that we're in, right? We're so busy that it's easy to consume something quick on a very specific topic than something long on multiple topics. Podcasts, just like this extremely you know, barrier-free to get into. I mean, if you can get a microphone, and you've got one in your pocket if you're carrying a phone around at the bare minimum, even if you got an iPhone, take the voice memo, you can record that, you can start podcasting that way. Very easy to get started. But if you really want to leverage it and build a tool, an asset for your business, then there's some thought and process that needs to go into thinking about it. And just a little plug here, I just actually launched a program called the Podcast Prep School where we will work together with you one-on-one to help you think through and vet out your idea, format your show, figure out what's the best process for you to record it, whether it's gonna be you talking like I am to a microphone solo, or if you're gonna have guests. And there's different platforms and different formats for the show that are gonna be extremely important. And then how do you technically record it? How do you edit it? How do you get it online? How do you promote it? These different steps that go into it. So if you want to check that out, you can go over to our website, AmplifyMyContent.com, and you'll see a link there for the Podcast Prep School. But podcasts, extremely valuable, not necessarily always just to be used for getting new clients. A podcast can be extremely powerful, and I've seen it be used this way for existing clients to keep them engaged, to keep them nurtured throughout the entire process of working with you, even after working with you. With you. You know what, you got to service those clients after the sale as well as trying to bring in those new prospects. So you might be in a position where you would be able to create multiple different podcasts for different audiences that you have. And the last two I want to talk about are social and live events. So we're going to talk about social first. When I use the word social, you know what, you can use social media, whether it's LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you know, all the different ones that are out there, for two different ways. For one is to share your other content that you created, so your videos, your opt-ins for your white papers, your downloads, all that kind of stuff. You can do your videos up there, you can do live videos, but there's a way to use social media to create content. This is a method that we use, and we use it with great success, and this is where we coach our clients to do this, is to be able to create your content in different groups that are targeted towards your niche avatar. And when you're going there, you're creating content in there to try to get some engagements. And then once you get that engagement, then you're going to start to build those relationships with those people who are either commenting, liking, or sharing your content that you're creating in there. So there's a mishmash of different methods and frameworks for that, and that's the purpose of Amplify the Content, or Amplify My Content, is is we want to be able to give you all these different methods to grow your professional business to the highest capacity so you're not working yourself to the bone every single night. And last but not least is live events. I love live events. Live events are fantastic. But here's the problem with live events when you haven't really thought out the process. If you're starting to do live events, whether you're going to put on a seminar, a workshop, or even a conference, is you might fall victim to getting so focused on the live event that you haven't focused enough energy on getting the momentum high in your audience to the event and continuing that momentum after. Raise your hand, right? How many people have been to an event, it's been awesome, the content is great, you leave so pumped up You go back to your office and work happens. You forget about it. There was no follow-up. There was no continued momentum to keep you amped up so that you start to get the results of things that you self-committed to at that event. I've got my hand raised. You can't see it. I have done that. I've been there and I've experienced that where you don't hear from those people after that. There's no follow-up. There's no, there's no course of momentum continuation that's happening from that. So what you want to do is you want to make the experience of the event before, during, and after, right? So you want to know that if you're giving people takeaways for things that they are to, to do at your event, things that they're committing to do after the takeaways, that you're putting a system or a process in place to make them successful so that they are going to be able to continue that and follow through on that success after the fact. Whether it is going to be— and here's a great tactic, especially if you're in the financial services factor— is if you go out and you do a seminar on a certain topic like retirement, and then you give them a tool to maybe self-audit their retirement, offer them a time to say, hey, you know what, I'd like to book an hour with you to review this process to make sure that you've covered all your bases. Right now you're getting in touch with them after the fact. There's a reason for that follow-up. There's a reason for that call. And you're going to help them through that process. And like I said, when you help people, and they need help later on, or they need help at that moment, they're going to think of the person that helped them, not the person that's trying to sell to them. And if you can get your prospect to ask you to help them, you're golden. You've won the battle right there. So just to recap, you know what we talked about, the different types of content modalities, video, audio, written, text, and live events and all that kind of stuff. We talked about the different types of written content and elements that are there. Hopefully you've taken some mental notes. If not and you wanted to go back and listen to the episode, I'm not gonna stop you. Actually, I would recommend that you do that, write down a notepad, if this is new content for you. But figure out what elements would you like to create. Are you open to doing the video? Are you open to doing a podcast? Do you want to write? Can you write? Are you okay with writing? I never would want you to do something that you absolutely despise. If you think you're going to be good on video and you're excited about the idea, that's all you need. Whether you're good out of the gate doesn't matter. Right? People can see when you're trying. And the worst thing that you could actually do is shoot a couple videos, watch them back and be heavily critical of yourself. So when I'm coaching people to do on video appearances, what I tell them is do the first 3 videos for no one. Right? Shoot the videos, and get rid of them, right? Just get into that method of creating that content, right? The idea of hitting record, starting the video, right? Going through the process, and then throw them away unless you feel they're awesome and you want to use them. But if you're still kind of on that fence of, I don't know if I'm any good at this, you want to get rid of them, right? Don't even look at them because you're going to be super critical and it's going to halt your progression moving forward. And one last tip that I forgot to talk about in here that I'm going to throw in there is if you want to write yourself a book, right, you feel that you have that value knowledge there, you want to do writing, but you really can't get it through your head to sit down and write an entire book. This is a tip I got at a conference about 10 years ago. I was at a booth on how to write your own book, and I said, you know what, I'd love to write my own book, but I don't have the time. I don't really know how to sit down and do it. They gave me this tip, and to this day it's been phenomenal. I've written 3 different books on different marketing topics using this method is take yourself outside of your business, go to a coffee shop, go to a quiet place, but just take— remove yourself from your business. Open up your email and then write an email to yourself giving yourself advice on the topic. So you've— let's say you've got 10 different topics you want to talk about. Right, in your book. Write them all out and then take one, right? Put in the subject line, write yourself an email as if you're giving yourself advice on how to fix that and overcome that problem. Send it to yourself. Once it comes in, throw it in a folder, right? After about 10 times of this, 10 weeks, however frequent you want to do it, you take those all out. Now you've got your book, you've got the content for that, right? It's a great method to writing your content. So this episode, like I said, was about the different types of content. We went a little long, and hopefully you still stuck with me through this. And, uh, if you got any questions, please, wherever you're listening to this, comment, reach out to me. I'm here to help. I want to make sure that your content and you're very comfortable with it, that you absolutely love what you're putting out, your clients love it, and your business is growing. So if you want to hear more, you want to find out more about amplifying your content, you can go and find us at Amplify My Content. Amplifymycontent.com. Love to see you over there. And until the next episode, keep creating great content and help you grow your business. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification Podcast. If you have questions about how you can amplify your content strategy, go to amplifymycontent.com.