“Why” to create content

“Why” to create content

Yesterday in the “Sharing your Brilliance: loving content” course and the “Grow an aligned Audience group program we talked about Content creation and the “Why” that sits behined it.

Creating content can be hard if:

you aren’t clear on your why

or

your motivators are extrinsic

First up – before you read this, I would encourage you to set a 5 minute timer and do some journalling about your own why.

If you are coming up question marks you might be interested in these 4 “Why”s…

And here’s a video to tease it all out. :

Here are 4 “Why”s you might like to experiment with:

1. Curiosity

2. Generosity/service

3. Develop a body of work

4. Share your energy signature with those you need to journey with

I acknowledge the Djiringanj people of the Yuin Nation, the custodians of this beautiful land on which I live and work.

I also pays respect to all Elders past & present.

Thank you for taking such good care of the wild, beautiful places of Araganu, the coastline and forests where I get nurtured.

1. Curiosity

Some ways that I stay curious are to ask questions. Like: 

I wonder how I can share this in a 60 second video?

I wonder how my audience feels about this topic? 

Do people agree with this or not? 

Am I the only one who thinks this? 

How could you be curious in creating content?

2. Generosity/be of service

If you are like me them you just love to be helpful, and you have a value to be of service to others. 

It’s tempting to work for nothing, or to under-charge. 

Creating content is another way to be generous and be of service. Let your loving heart shine and share those goodies inside you!

3. Develop a body of work 

I really never thought it would be me, but it is actually possible to start now and develop a body of work. Your contribution to humanity. 

Creating content happens one post and one blog at a time. And so your body of work can grow, post by post, video by video. 

This is YOUR light and y our perspective. Let it rip. 

4. Share your energy signature with those you need to journey with

You are emanating a unique energy. Your vibration is a conduit to the transformation of others and vice versa. 

But how can those people find you if you are hiding out, or too busy or too whatever to share your goodness??

And you know, it’s not just for their benefit; you have so much to learn through journeying with your clients. 

Goodness knows how much I have learned about boundaries by working with some challenging clients over time!

So, what’s your why?

Got thoughts and questions about this? Hit me up in the comments. I can’t wait to see your work in the world. 

If you found this helpful and you like, you can make a small donation.

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Written content and how long should my blog be?

Written content and how long should my blog be?

When you think about creating written content, are you like me? Do you feel like writing is a major challenge? Or are you a natural writer?

If you aren’t clear on “what is content”, you can read my other blog about that here.

Today I want to help set you free in regards to sharing your brilliance through written content.

Many clients ask me “how long should my blog be?” and I get the feeling that they don’t really like my answer.

I get the feeling that people need a container or they want to be told or they are just awesome and they want to do the best thing. They want to be wise and take advice from someone who really knows what they’re talking about to make the most of their time and energy and get it right. 

The thing is: this is your creative expression. 

Sharing content is part of your expansive, human, creative expression and what I would really like to offer you is to experience freedom of creative expression in your written content and marketing. 

I would also like to offer you a couple of concrete ideas and suggestions, practical ideas that I have used to help me with my writing. 

I have not spent much time practicing writing. 

When I was younger I was really great at maths so I didn’t really Focus much on my writing because I found it challenging whereas maths was naturally easy. I’m a bit lazy sometimes so I would just naturally gravitate to what was easy and shy away from what was hard. 

Now that I’m a big grown-up girl, I am up for the challenge of writing and I’m almost enjoying the practice haha.  

A few things have been very helpful for me in creating written content. 

Don’t get me wrong, I can write. 

I did a commerce degree and I wrote long essays and reports in the academic style of writing. Learning how to write for my own marketing and business has taken me a long time. It hasn’t felt natural. It hasn’t felt easy. I have actually shied away from writing & found that I can create video fairly easily. So my content has rested heavily on video until last year or so. 

Even now when I sit down to write and I look at a blank piece of paper I semi seize-up and freak out. 

So: how to write content and how long should your blog be.

Let’s do it the other way.

First of all let’s look at some super famous, semi famous and not so famous (although they should be) bloggers. Sometimes looking at other people’s writing can be inspiring and sometimes it can be intimidating. So in this process let’s try not to get bogged down in comparison or worry about your own style. 

What I’m hoping to share here is really just freedom. I’m hoping that you will see that the written word in marketing land has a great deal of variation, personal freedom of expression and options.

Example blogs 

https://seths.blog/ 

Seth’s Blog

this is Seth Godin blog. He is pretty super famous. What I love about his blog is he right every single day. personally I think back to major accomplishment because I don’t find writing everyday easy. The other thing I love about this blog is the variation in length. In my mind this blog is a beautiful example of how free you can be with your writing. You don’t need to fit into any container around how many words you write for your blog. I hope this blog sets you free in terms of length.

https://corbettbarr.com/whats-wrong-with-social-media/ 

Corbett Barr’s blog

 What I love about Corbett’s website is the intentional minimalism. it is such a strong contrast to most of current marketing and online media. I have a whole video about his web site which you can view here. I would say that corbett’s blog is an example of a more classic blog style with longer blogs. He has no focus on SEO or images to make it sparkly and spiffy. He is just keeping the focus on what he has written and he obviously likes writing. I hope that this example shows you that you can just focus on your message and don’t worry about lots of bells and whistles if all those things don’t come naturally to you. if you love to write you can just write.

https://leoniedawson.com/blog/ 

Leonie Dawson’s blog

 Leonie Dawson is a creative Powerhouse. She does very nicely in her business and doesn’t really care about fitting into any boxes. I find that so inspiring. Leonies blogs very greatly in length and instructure. She doesn’t try to apply any rules to her blogs and she really just creates whatever she wants and publishes it as often as she wants. Unlike set she doesn’t blog every day and unlike Corbett she doesn’t keep it simple and basic. She sprinkles it up with fun images personal anecdotes and other engaging content.  I hope this blog sets you free in terms of how personal you can be in your blog and writing. 

https://melaniejwhite.com/podcast/ 

Melanie White’s blog

 This blog is by the brilliance white. My team and I help Melanie to deliver her blog. She creates a podcast and then we transcribe it, lightly edited and turn it into a blog post. this method can also be applied to video content and is perfect for people like me or other people who just aren’t really in love with writing.  I love to use rev for transcription and some people love to use otter for transcription. There are loads of options for transcribing. I actually wrote this blog using a Google doc and the tool called voice typing. There are so many options for getting written content created and they don’t necessarily involve typing on a keyboard or writing on paper. I hope this blog shows you how you can use audio or video content to create writing and skip writing all together. 

Practical tips

Whenever I sit down to write, I look at the blank page and I seize up.
But I have been managing to write blogs, and social media captions and emails and sales pages. Now, I’m going to share my most recent writing success tips. I hope they are helpful. 

Just write anything.

I get over perfectionism and worry by just getting started. I don’t have high expectations of anything awesome coming out. I just write anything, without judgement and expectation. I have been doing some free-association writing, like journaling, in my personal life and I think this is helping. 

Talking it out.

I sit there and talk it out. Even for parts of this blog, I spoke it out and typed what I was saying. This helps me to write in a way that sounds most naturally like me. Plus, if it doesn’t make sense to say it, just writing it down won’t help. The message needs to be clear enough to be understood as someone reads it and I find that just talking it out helps a lot. 

Use a transcribing tool. 

Sometimes I need to just pop an idea out and I can’t wait to get to a keyboard so I create a voice memo in my phone, then send it off to a transcription service. Some people lately have been recommending Otter and in the past I’ve used Rev. I also like to use Tools>Voice typing in a Google doc. However you need to do it is fine! I heard that Brene Brown writes her books by setting aside a weekend and getting some girlfriends over to tease out the ideas. 

Set a timer.

I like to allocate a 15 minute slot when I’m writing sales pages. I use George Kao’s copywriting tips in this video and write for 15 minutes per section. Having a time constraint and a specific prompt has been helping me a lot. 

What do you do to get writing? 

I hope this has been helpful. I look forward to reading some of your brilliance soon. 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

What is content? And how to make more

What is content? And how to make more

I often hear people say that they are “Content Strategists” or the explain how to “Create Content”.

And although I know what content is, it seems to me to be a weird and jargon-ey term that causes so much confusion.

I was thinking that we could just rename it to: “Sharing your brilliance”

Because that is all we really need to do. We all know so much and have so much brilliance to share. But to clarify: what is content? And how can you make more?

Content comes in so many different forms. 

It can be: 

Image based

Written

Video

Audio

I am sure there are more categories too that I’ve glazed over.

And then there’s the length. I’m calling them micro (or snippet), small and long.

Examples: 

A reel on Instagram = I would say that is a micro-video. 

An Instagram image post with a caption = is a written and image small piece of content. 

A Facebook text only post around 2000 words = a long, written piece of content. 

That same Facebook post on your blog with images as well = is a long, image and written piece of content. 

A podcast of the same article would be = a long, audio piece of content. 

Using Headliner to turn that podcast into a video makes a snippet of video content. 

Transcribing that podcast into a written blog with images = is a long, written and image piece of content

But more important than the classifications and definitions is the purpose.

For a long time I found it really hard to create content and I did not enjoy creating content.

I spent a long time creating content with the idea in mind that I had to do it to reach clients and that content would help me sell my services. The only content I was able to make easily were “how-to” videos. I think these felt easy because they were of service to my clients with low expectations of reward. They were more of a selfless service. 

In the yoga tradition I studied for many years, selfless service is called karma yoga. In karma yoga you work for others and try to release your expectations of reward. 

Recently, I have been loving creating content. Short videos, long videos, short written posts, longer writing. All kinds. And I think what has changed is my frame for why I create content. 

Now, I create content as a practice for myself. As more of an enquiry and creative expression. The things I think about it are more like: 

“How can I say this in 60 seconds?”

“I wonder if anyone agrees with this?”

“How clearly and simply can I explain this in writing?”

“Can I explain those instructions in writing?”

“I wonder what my peeps think about this idea?”

And now I never really think: 

“I need to create this so I can sell my offer/service”

If I want to offer my service I just do it. I create a separate post, or separate piece of writing that speaks directly to the offer. 

Sometimes, while I’m developing offers, I do some research and get excited about that topic so I’ll naturally share about it, but since I separated my selling and my content, my content feels a lot cleaner and a lot free-er. I feel that I can experiment more and genuinely share with people who I care about. 

This is my story around creating more content. 

I wonder – what do you think about when you try to create content? Could those thoughts be hindering your ability to create content like mine were? 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

How to figure out what you should blog and write about

How to figure out what you should blog and write about

Great!

You’ve decided that it’s time. You are ready to start writing and sharing your brilliance with your audience and the world. Your next thought now might be: What you should write about?”.

In this blog I will share some ways to generate ideas for your writing so you can have a big list of inspiring topics to dip into whenever you sit down to write.

This information also applies to “what should you make videos about” if you are into making videos.

A couple of important things to consider are:

What topic/s do you want to write about?

and

What do your ideal clients seek information about?

1. Talk to your people

Current Clients

If you are doing sessions with your ideal clients, you are getting great ideas on tap. Every session can provide you with ideas for writing.
What was the client’s challenge?
What did you do to help them?

I’m sure you’ve had days like me where you seem to say the same thing to about 5 people in the one week. THIS is great information to share as a written blog or video.

Friends + Market research

Current clients are a reliable source of ideas but you may not have many or any of those yet!
Other people that are YOUR people are your trusted friends. You could also have market research conversations with people who would be perfect clients with no pressure for them to buy from you.

The sole purpose of those conversations is to find out what they type in the Google search bar when they look for solutions or what questions and challenges they have around your topic of expertise.
You can do this more informally by being a great listener at parties and gatherings.
People are a great source of ideas.

A side note about your own ideas

You may not have a problem thinking up great ideas on your own.
Yay! 

Why are you reading this article?? LOL 🙂

Your own ideas are great, however I would make one loving caution about your own ideas. 

You may find that when you write from your own well of ideas that your writing doesn’t do as well as you had thought. As in: it doesn’t seem to get a response from your audience. 

If this is happening, I would suggest that you may be writing at a level too far ahead of your current client’s level of growth or understanding. 

Sometimes I write articles that I think are gold and no-one gives any hoot about them. And other times, I create something that I think is throwaway and that everyone already knows and people go mad over it. 

So, if you are experiencing this, I encourage you to have some conversations with friends who are like your ideal clients. Have those client or market research conversations to make sure you are speaking the right language for where your people are right now. 

2. Use the Google search 

Bring to mind a topic you want to write about. I used this method for MailChimp. 

(i) Type the idea into the Google search bar and don’t click search. 

Have a look at the drop down. 

Do you see a bunch of suggested search ideas?

These are ideas for blog articles or videos. 

(ii) Further down the page it might say “People also ask” with a bunch of questions and drop downs. The headings of these drop downs are also great titles for your blog. 

These two options give you ideas that the Google robot has noticed people asking a lot. So even if you don’t have conversations with people because you are clear on your topic, this method can help tease out a lot of ideas that a lot of people have definitely searched for in Google.

Creating articles that help you be found via Google search is a method of blogging that uses Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Google is a search engine, and you can focus on optimising your website and blogs to show up better in Google search.

If you are interested in how to grow your business with a blog, I have a course about that. I delivered it with the brilliant Melanie White. I also have an SEO course with the ONLY person I recommend for SEO, Karen Phillips. This one is called “How to get the right website visitors”. Both of those courses can help you with your SEO if this is important to you and your business. 

3. Use the YouTube search 

Similar to the Google method above, you can type your topic or vague idea into YouTube and see what other content exists on the topic. Simply type your idea into the YouTube search bar and look at the ideas that drop down. 

Once you have mined those ideas, click “Search” and have a look at the kind of content other people are creating and the other titles being used. You can write an article with the exact same title if you like!

Now listen though: DON’T GET INTIMIDATED IN THIS STEP

Even though other people may have already created content that you want to create, no-one is quite like you. You have a particular configuration and lens to see life through that is of unique value to the world.

So PLEASE still go ahead and write that blog!

4. Use Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a free tool you can add to your Chrome browser. It enables you to see more when  you do a Google search, when you do a YouTube search and when you view YouTube videos. It actually does way more than I use it for. I am not a major ninja at it but this method of using it simply will definitely help you find writing ideas. 

So, once you have installed Keywords Everywhere to your Chrome browser and you look at your results using the above Google and YouTube methods, you will see a bunch more info on the side:

These are just more things to, hopefully, spark inspiration for you. The beauty of these methods is, Google is such a large database. Millions (or billions) of people are using this every day. And it’s free for you to mine for ideas. Yay! 

Have these ideas been helpful for you? Let me know how you go and tag me in your social media post if you used this method 🙂

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

Better targeting for Facebook ads: mine your own interests

Better targeting for Facebook ads: mine your own interests

If your ads don’t feel like they’re working there are a lot of things we can tweak to get better results.

One of those is targeting. But what do I mean? 

When you are creating your ad, and you’re in the “Ad Set” you can choose “Interests” – this is one of the best tools you have at hand.

But what should you put in there? 

I have a great way to mine for ideas; it’s in your own Facebook profile. 

Here’s how you can find your own Interests and use them in your next ad

Did you know that you are served specific ads based on posts & pages you’ve liked, things you’ve typed in the search bar and websites you’ve visited?

Facebook calls this your “Interests”.

You can find your interests by going to:

Account > Settings and Privacy > Settings > Ads > Ad Settings > Categories used to Reach You

Why would you look at your interests?

Quite often

Your client is you

6 months ago

or 2 years ago

In which case, your interests are her interests and you can get great ideas from there. Alternatively, in a market research interview, your interviewee may be willing to let you see their interests. You might need to teach them how to find them 🙂

How did you go with the video? 

The best way to make use of this video is to work along with me. 

Watch it again and:

  1. Find your interests
  2. Create an ad using one of those interests

If you get stuck comment or get in touch with me and I’ll make another video

 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Do you just want to talk to me about your business and website?

I’d love to chat. You can book a free chat and we can discuss website set up and all of the other things I mentioned here. We can even set it all up of ryou and save you the headace. 

Go ahead and book a free chat here: 

How to share Facebook + Instagram videos in a MailChimp campaign

How to share Facebook + Instagram videos in a MailChimp campaign

Do you like to make video content on Instagram and Facebook?

And then, of course, you’d love to share it with your newsletter subscribers in MailChimp…

But MailChimp will only let you embed YouTube and Vimeo videos….so how do you do it???

It IS possible with this manual workaround 🙂

You will need this video to watch along and pause me to make it happen. Some vague instructions are outlined below the video. 

Basic written instructions

 

Basically, this process involves grabbing a screenshot of your social media video post, turning that into an email suitable sized image and linking the image in the email to the social media post. 

Which sounds great as a one liner, but there are a few hurdles, like what size should the image be and how to get the correct URL for the social media video. 

So let’s get to it. 

  1. Go to your social media video on Facebook or Instagram
  2. Take a screenshot of the video
  3. Find the URL of the video. If you’re in Instagram it’s relatively easy from the desktop to get the URL. You DO have to make sure you’re in the actual post page and NOT the preview. But if you’re on Facebook, it can be confusing. You need to find the permalink of the post which you can find by clicking on the time it was posted. This is displayed under the name of your page like the image above. Once you click on that link, you get the URL of the video. Not making sense? Check out the vid.
  4. Now it’s time to go into Canva and create an email freindly image. What do I mean email friendly? Well, if the image is too large, it won’t send well from MailChimp, so it’s better to resize it first. PLUS, this way you get to add a “Play” icon on top so it’s clear to click play and watch.
  5. Once inside Canva create a custom image, like 500x500px. 
  6. Then you can import your screenshot. 
  7. Drag the image into the design space. 
  8. Click “elements” on the left sidebar and search for “play” – you can choose a play icon you like. You can change the colour or whateer you like. 
  9. Now it’s time to download your design. Click download – png or jpg is great. 
  10. Go to MailChimp and start your email campaign. 
  11. Once you’re in design mode, drag “Image” over from the right sidebar  options.
  12. Pop your image in
  13. Link it to your video url/permalink
  14. Voila!

Now you should have a link in your email from people to view your social media video! 

How did you go? 

 

Let me know if you have more questions and I’ll make another video to help you 🙂 

“I pay my respects and acknowledge the people of the Yuin Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work. I also pay respect to all Elders — past, present and future.”

Got more MailChimp questions?

I now offer MailChimp mentoring so you can tame your MailChimp and really get the most out of it. It’s currently in Beta mode (test run) so I don’t have a fancy sales page for you 🙂

However I do have this social media post.

If you would like more information, you can email me. I’m also offerring this for MailerLite.