Speaker 1: Hey, hey, welcome back to the Freelance Friday podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about how to build a content strategy for any brand, whether you are looking to build up your own personal or freelance brand, or you're consulting with a client who needs some help. Here is my formula. The first thing that you'll want to think about is content pillars. So to put it as simply as I know how a content pillar is basically just like a category or a bucket of content that supports your overall brand and your overall message and strategy. I recommend having no more than two to three key content pillars or content themes. Otherwise, you kind of start to confuse people. I've recommended the book building a story brand by Donald Miller many times. And he says in that book, this quote that I just love, he says, when you confuse you lose. And I am always reminding myself of that when I am writing a landing page or deciding on content pillars for my brand or somebody else's brand, you really want to make sure that you're not just building a story brand. Make it straightforward and obvious what you do and you know, what you are the sort of expert or what you want to be known for. Think of content pillars. Like, you know, if I say your name or your business name, what words do you want to follow that? What do you want me to associate with your brand? For me, that might be social media marketing. That might be content creation. That might be freelancing, right? Those are kind of my key areas of focus. And truthfully, it should probably be niched in even further than that. I'm just definitely a multi passionate person. So I like to talk about a lot of different things. But yeah, keeping it to two to three is gonna make sure that your audience knows what you're talking about. And my my big tip on this too, is to make sure that you can tie your pillars back to actual services or offers that you have, you don't want to waste your time, you know, talking about I don't know, like I could make SEO a huge part of my brand, because I do think SEO is important. But I don't have an SEO course, I definitely don't do SEO as a service. And that's not something that I personally can make money from. So while I might throw in an SEO video here or there, if I feel like it's really going to benefit you, or I might bring in an expert, you know, interview an expert for the podcast, who does know SEO, it's not going to be the overwhelming majority of my brand, because I can't make money from it. Besides, you know, if you're monetizing your ads and things like that, but now we're getting in the weeds with it. Once you decide on what your overall themes or content pillars are going to be, of course, you're going to want to decide on individual topics that you're going to want to focus on. So if you're going to want to focus on a specific topic, you're going to want to focus on a specific topic, you're going to want to focus on a specific topic ideas. But before you can do that, you need to decide where you're going to be putting this content by way of distribution channels. So if I have my way, if I had my choice, I would say that you should focus on one long form content distribution channel, meaning a YouTube or a blog, there may be other ones, but those are the key ones that I think people usually focus on. And then, you know, a couple, at least one though, short form content distribution channel, meaning a TikTok, an Instagram, a Facebook, a Twitter, you know, focusing on your long form content piece first is going to make things so much easier for you. And I know that a lot of you are so tired of me saying this, but it really is true. At least this has definitely been how I have found success is focusing on that bigger, long form, more well thought out, more detailed and carefully planned content piece that really drives the rest of my strategy. So if you're going to want to focus on one long form content piece first, you need to focus on one long form content piece that really drives the rest of my strategy. I can easily cut up these YouTube videos and podcasts into Instagram reels and TikToks and Instagram posts and tweets and blog posts and all that stuff by starting with that big long form piece first. The long form content is also going to help drive SEO strategy. You know, if I do SEO research for my YouTube videos, then I kind of already know that those topics are optimized for other platforms somewhat. Now, of course I have to do platform specific hashtag research and things like that as well. But I know that I can easily cut up these YouTube videos and podcasts into Instagram reels and TikToks and all that stuff by starting with that big long form content piece first. So I can easily know that I have a pretty good grip, at least with Google, considering YouTube is owned by Google. As far as coming up with my YouTube content ideas, I like to use websites like answer the public is an interesting one to start with. You know, if one of my pillars is social media marketing, I can pop that into answer the public and then look at some of the topics that are suggested that people are searching for. And then you can sort of, you know, take your pick and say, are any of these relevant? Or can I put my unique, interesting spin on any of those things? And then I can sort of, you know, take your pick and say, are any of these relevant? Or can I put my unique, interesting spin on any of those things? I also use a tool for YouTube called TubeBuddy. I'll leave a link in the show notes. And I really make sure that I can optimize that let's just say answer the public gives me social media marketing for Twitter, something like that, I'm going to then put that into YouTube and TubeBuddy and really wordsmith that to come up with the most SEO optimized title specifically for YouTube. Now, I also like to get content ideas just from like being a person on the internet, I'm always lurking on sites like Quora, and Reddit, and Twitter, of course, and just seeing what kind of the discourse is, if I'm noticing that, you know what social media management portfolios, people are really talking about this on Twitter this week, maybe I need to post this week's podcast about social media management portfolios to kind of hop in on this trend while it's still sort of being discussed. So that's sort of how I break up the topics based on the content pillars. And then I break those up even further into those short form distribution channels. By using a tool called descript, I just like easily cut up my different long form content. Sometimes I record original things too, of course, but starting with that base of the long form content is really what works best for me. And by the way, I am working on finalizing details. I know I told you, I think in the last podcast that I'm working on a video sort of challenge accountability group for this spring summer, I'm finalizing the details for it right now. So if you are thinking that YouTube might be your long form distribution channel, if you want to pop your email into the link in the show notes and description box, this is not making you pay for anything. It's just a hand raiser. If you think you might be interested, I'll be sure to let you know before everyone else, when doors are open, I think it's going to be really fun to get us encouraged to actually do the thing because I know that that's the hardest part is actually, you know, starting. I've been there. Believe me. Last thing real quick on distribution channels. If you're wondering, where do I go? There are so many of them out there. I hear you. I struggle with this sometimes as well, but this really comes down to knowing your audience. Who are you trying to talk to? And what are you trying to get them to do as well? That's also important. You know, most people are using social media to hopefully help them generate leads, which will lead to sales. Um, but maybe you have a different idea. Maybe it's customer service. In which case, I'm going to tell you probably like focused on Twitter or Facebook. Those are good places to have dialogue with customers, things like that. But overall, you're going to want to make sure that you know who your customer is. If you're going to tell me that you are focusing on a very young Gen Z audience, then of course, I'm probably going to tell you, you need to be on TikTok. But if you're focusing on like, you know, I don't know, moms in their late thirties and forties, Facebook, particularly Facebook groups might still be a very valuable place for you to be. If you're focusing on maybe younger millennials who are a little bit, you know, trendy and into fashion and style and things like that, Instagram is probably where you want to be. So look up these platform demographics, learn what the key audience is on each of these different platforms. You can just Google, I'll try to find some links and put them in the show notes for you as well, that I like to reference, but you know, have an understanding of what each platform is for LinkedIn. Of course, if you're trying to reach professionals and you're doing B2B content, LinkedIn is the obvious choice, but you might also want to be on Twitter, you know? So, um, research the platforms and that's going to help you determine which of these shorter form and long form distribution channels you should be focusing on. Now, one of the things that I'm going to talk about today is, you know, one of the things that I'm going to talk about today is one of the hills that I have been kind of dying on lately. I don't know if you can continuously die on a hill, but if you can, one of the hills that I have been dying on lately is, you know, really getting people to understand the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is what we just kind of talked about, you know, knowing your audience, researching to determine which platforms you should be on, doing content research, developing your messaging and your pillars. That's strategic work. Now, when we get down to this part of the day to day, or the week to week content calendar building and deciding, are we going to post a reel today? Or are we going to post a TikTok? Or are we going to post a story today? Or are we going to post a carousel? Those are tactics. Those are things that change a little bit more frequently. And that may be impacted by a number of things like the algorithm, you know, like new features being rolled out like trends, right? So that is going to be the stuff that's going to be a little bit more flexible and you're kind of going to need to go week by week, day by day, month by month, et cetera, versus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is our strategy for the year or for the quarter. So the last piece is that you're going to need to decide on those tactics. You're going to build out the content calendar. You're going to take a look at what's trending. You're going to decide what you have the resources and the bandwidth to do. Some of your clients may love to be on video and they just want to record TikToks all day long. In which case I'm kind of jealous of you because those are rare unicorns. Others are not going to be into that and you need to get creative and you need to maybe work with the designer to create some carousels or some. Posts and things like that. So decide on what content formats are really going to focus on and start communicating your message that way. And going back to content pillars really quick, why they're so important and so helpful to have is when I'm building up my content calendar, whether it is digital or whether it's on paper, I'm just writing a list, whatever. I like to either highlight using a particular color or use an emoji or whatever to identify each of the pillars. And that way I can see, okay, we've got a good mix going here of our one or two or three. Pillars. And it's not like all focused on one. And then I'm like throwing in, you know, video or whatever at the very end. And it's coming out of left field. So people do really start to align you with those key things that you do want to be known for. I am going to try to not make today's question of the day into a long rant, but I'm warning you, it might happen. The question is, is reels the only way to grow? And if someone is not comfortable with reels, then what should the next step be? So again, reels are really a tactic. They are a feature. Uh, they're not like the whole strategy. So do you keep that in mind? And my answer to this is no, I don't think that you do need to create reels to grow on Instagram. For those who don't know reels are very similar to a TikTok. They're a short form vertical video content type. And no, I don't think that you have to be posting reels every day to grow on Instagram. I personally don't post reels very often at all. I pretty much have my content strategy on Instagram from like 2020. Now I will say is growth as fast as it was in 2020. I don't think so. I think it's slowed a little bit because the algorithm is favoring reels and just a lot of other reasons, uh, usage may be down. I don't know. There's a lot of, a lot of things that may be going on, but I still am growing and I still am getting what I personally need out of Instagram. This is why it's also so important to know your goals because one of my goals, one of my big goals for Instagram is to have a, you know, a communication hub, between myself and my audience. So I get tagged in things I'm able to respond. I'm able to respond to direct messages and proactively send direct messages. So that like it's really serving me, whether I create reels or not. Now I do create them every once in a while. They're largely repurposed from TikTok and TikTok is largely repurposed or, you know, inspired by what I post on YouTube. So you see how it kind of all works together. I'm, I don't remember the last time I created an original Instagram reel, to be honest with you. Now, of course that is just, you know, one story. Yeah. There's no doubt that a lot of people are absolutely crushing it by using reels, but you also don't want to force something if you absolutely hate it, or you don't have the bandwidth for it, or your audience is not liking it. You know, everything really is so subjective. It's hard to give a blanket strategy for everybody that just doesn't exist. If, if it was that easy to do it, there would be no need for social media managers or no need for strategist or, you know, a YouTube channel like mine, right? Because it would just be plug and play copy and paste, but that's not how it works. So test things, figure out if they do work for you. If like this person asked, what should I do if my client is not comfortable with reels? Well, the first thing I'm going to encourage you to do is still test them. If you can, I actually created a video. I'll link it in the show notes about how to create reels without using your face. So maybe you can try something like that, try some screen shares or just test out some, you know, stock videos and quotes and things like that to see if they do work. You know, I think it's worth testing. And then another thing that you can do is repurpose. So if they are on video anywhere else, or even just on audio, because you can get creative by using images and things like that, using a tool like Descript repurpose, you know, just take clips of that content and use it on reels. This is something that I'm doing with TikTok. And then in turn with reels is like, no, I don't think that's the best strategy to make me go viral. It's just like taking clips of my podcast, but it is content. I'm, I'm creating my own content. I'm creating, and we really need to maximize it. So at the very least, I'm going to repurpose some of this hard work that I'm putting into this channel onto those other channels. So I at least have a presence. So if somebody does search for me on TikTok, they can find me, they can see that I'm there. Um, and they can get to some of my other content from there at the very least. So what I'm going to say just to reiterate and clarify that I would start testing. If you can do some faceless reels, do whatever you can to at least test it and then repurpose, test them, measure them, like actually write down numbers. This is important to the scientific process, right? Is to actually be able to analyze your data and see what does perform. If you see that the reels are just off the charts, you're just going to need to have a tough conversation with your client and let them know that these reels are performing better than anything else we're doing. So you might have to suck it up and get on camera, or maybe we hire somebody to be on camera, or maybe it's you. You want to come up with a plan. That's the long and the short of it. All right. Let me know in the comments, I would really love to know which distribution channels you are focusing on right now, both for long form and for short form. If you're not participating in any type of long form content yet, let me know what's holding you back. No judgment at all. And if you think YouTube might be one that you are looking to either grow or start, be sure to put your email into that hand raiser list. I'll leave it in the show notes for you. It doesn't obligate you to purchase anything. I just want to let you all know before anyone else, when the doors are open, I'm going to let you know that I'm going to be posting a new video every week. I'm going to be posting a new video every week. I'm going to be posting a new video every week. So thanks so much for tuning in and spending time with me today. I appreciate it as always. And I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.