A common problem for a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners is that they get caught in the weeds of their business and forget to market themselves, create content, and continue that brand story over time. The greater problem is being able to create enough content in a way that is compelling for the audience but does not take months of time to develop.
#1 — Have your pillar content
Go back to your first principles, your core messaging, your show concept. That’s the foundation of what you’re going to be talking about for your brand. Then you need to begin a process in which you are regularly creating “pillar content.” This is your long-form content.
For our show Content Is for Closers, it’s our long-form interviews. We have episodes in which we talk to some professional, content creator, or someone who has built a business and capitalized on content in a way that we think the audience will learn from.
During that episode, there are topics that are discussed, ideas that are shared that we then pull on as threads for the Content Snacks series, our emails that go out every Friday, and our social accounts.
That interview episode serves as the pillar content for everything else that we do, so you have to have that first.
#2 — Repurpose your content
This is super common advice: repurpose, repurpose, repurpose, but it’s not always executed effectively.
Repurposing is not just taking your long-form content, cutting it shorter, and pushing it out on a different channel.
The better term would be “reframing” your content for a new distribution platform.
If you have an hour-long episode of something and you’re going to reframe that to push it out on TikTok, it should look entirely different. Maybe you’re using the same content, but you should go through an editing process again, reframe it, make sure that the message is clear and concise for the platform you’re distributing it on, and then publish it.
Gary Vaynerchuk is probably the most prominent person who redistributes in an effective way— and he’s not just taking interviews, cutting them into 15-second bites, and pushing them out.
- He takes a 15-second bite, overlays different graphics or text, and then posts it on his Instagram
- He’s auto-tuning a part of what he said into a little bit of a song and then pushing that on TikTok
That is what you need to think about when it comes to reframing.
#3 — Make Spin-Offs
Think about AMC’s hit show Breaking Bad. They had tons of seasons of Breaking Bad and shared a lot of clips to drive attention. When the story of Breaking Bad concluded, instead of going back to the well and continuously rehashing, AMC made a spin-off.
They made a new show called Better Call Saul. Better Call Saul allowed the writers to explore and pull on threads, story elements that they couldn’t fully investigate during the narrative of Breaking Bad. It’s the same thing for your brand. That’s actually what this show is.
Content Snacks are a spin-off of Content Is for Closers. This is where I find little tidbits, little threads that I don’t get to fully explore during an episode and I think are valuable for you as the audience to have that idea more fully explored, so we spun this show out of Content Is for Closers.
You, no doubt, have some spin-off opportunities with whatever your core series or pillar content is for your brand.
Bonus Tips
- Record in chunks. Dedicate two or three days a month solely to content. Don’t take any meetings, don’t make any sales pitches, nothing like that. Just create content.
- Automate as much as possible. Once your content is ready to go, schedule it out to publish automatically. This will allow you to stay ahead of the game and distribute over time.