So, what do I actually mean by content creation? Obviously, that word, that phrase gets thrown around quite a lot, but what we're actually talking about is anything that is going to be representing your business. So, it could be your website, your social media channels. It could be images, video work, anything really that's about you and your business and that you need to collate together. Of course, we have just moved at such a pace now within our businesses and the world that we live in our content and how we create that and what we are actually seen by our audiences has become crucial that we actually slow down a little bit, sometimes almost stop, think about what you're putting out there and then plan everything together so that everything sings about your brand and really comes together in a really cohesive way.
So, what's the best way to start, and for me, I think the biggest thing that often gets missed is to have a plan.
Now, I'm going to use the example of social media. I think often, especially in this last year, people think that the plan is to regularly put something up on Facebook and it is actually so, so easy to do that it’s actually the danger, that it is so easy to do because you sit down and dare I say it, probably most of us spend a little bit too much time on our devices, and before you know it, tap, tap, tap quick post, job done. Now, there's a time and a place for that. That's not a problem, with doing the ad hoc posts, it's supposed to be social and part of the fun is that they are interactive and topical and of the moment. That's absolutely fine. But from a business sense, the first thing you really need to think about is what you're trying to achieve with your post. So, I'm going to probably stick to the social media example, but of course, this applies to anything that you're doing for any particular content. It could be your website; it could be your blogging. It could be like I say, the video that, this is being created right now…
So, before we can get into actually planning, we've actually got to think about what we're trying to achieve, and that boils down in effect to a strategy. So, you've really got to think about what are we trying to do with our business. For us at this moment in time, we are definitely focusing on delivering our services to our clients, but a big part of our activity, certainly for 2021 is looking at growing our coaching program. That means we've got to plan our output to gear up around what our plan is for our business. I'll talk a little bit more in-depth when we come to the individual slides. Who are you planning to attract and engage with? In summary, the buzzword there is attract. Now, there is no point, thinking that as a business, actually when we ask the question of any businesses, who is your ideal audience?
Who are you trying to sell to? Sometimes, (which is always a bit worrying) the answer that comes back is everyone, my product suits everyone. Well, that makes it really, really hard to niche down and focus your activity on a particular group of individuals. Now, unless you're somebody like Amazon, you're unlikely to have everyone as your customer and so it means that as a smaller business or even a medium-sized business, believe it or not, there's enough in this world for all of us and we don't need to attract everyone. We wouldn't know what to do with everyone if we got them anyway and so by focusing on who you're trying to actually work with, then you can start to craft your message and design your output to suit that audience. The next thing to consider is your channels. Where does your audience actually hang out?
Where will you find them? Now, again, thinking about social media, depending on the product that you have, or the service that you are offering, you may find that Instagram is the perfect platform for the age group, that the audience is the male, female side of things, what sex they are, whether they are in a social environment or whether it's more business environment, you have all that information. Or you should certainly be thinking about that information for your business so that you can then work out where to place your content to be the most effective. Now, somebody told me something just today, which I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and they were basically telling me how one of their clients has an email list that is over ten thousand people, but their social media platform. I think it was Facebook.
They've only got nine followers on Facebook. So, they've got a huge email list of ten thousand plus and they've got this non-existent following on social media, but what's that company doing? They are sending an email out once a week. Because that seems to feel right to them and they're spending a lot of time and energy to make content for Facebook and they're posting every single day. I think that my friend told me that they've got a total of nine-page likes. So, they're spending all this time and energy trying to sit on the wrong channel, the channel of Facebook to entertain potentially nine people, and let's face it with the algorithms the way they are they're probably not even going to get seen by those nine people and yet they're sitting on a goldmine of ten thousand, but they choose only to engage once a week and this is why it's really important to think about the channels and the places that your audience is hanging out at so that you can then gear up your output to match that.
Then, we come to what type of content suits a particular channel. So, we as a business are for our own output are constantly reviewing the changing scenario of the platforms and how they're working, how those different channels are using content, and what suits content better in different places. So, for example, our stats were showing us that the videos that we make, which are around ten minutes long were absolutely perfect for YouTube, with lots of engagement, lots of likes, lots of interaction. But if we try to put the same ten-minute video on social media, Facebook and Instagram in particular, we just didn't seem to get the connection. It just didn't seem to engage with our audience. So, what's the best thing to do. Stop. Re-evaluate and look at what you're doing. So, now we've got an additional thing that we do with our videos, which is we create twenty-second videos and sixty-second videos, perfect for the thumb scroll environment where, you know, it needs to stop somebody and engage someone and make them stop and look at your content.
But it's short enough to be digested quickly. Hmm. Interesting. Move on. People don't mind doing that. YouTube is a slightly different matter. Normally, YouTube visitors are looking at finding a solution to a problem. So, they're more likely to use the search function to try and watch a video that will hopefully give them a better explanation of a solution that they're looking for. So, think about your own behavior, for example, on YouTube. I know that if I'm looking for, let's say, how to change the screen on my mobile phone. If it's only about a minute long, chances are, it's probably not got anything useful in there. It's probably not going to actually show me how to do that. If it's somewhere between five, ten minutes, long, twelve minutes long, it's probably got something useful. It's, it's long enough to show me how to do something, but not so long that I'm having to sit through a really long video to do something quite simple.
And conversely, if it's a really long video, twenty to thirty minutes long, well, unless I've done something really bad to my phone, I probably won't instantly engage with that particular length of the video. So, it really depends on the solution that you're offering. So, think about the type of content that you're putting out there and also think about when your content should be shared. So, this is as much about frequency as it is about the time of day. So, this really does come down to planning and organizing yourself so that you can decide which content needs to go out when, and this becomes really important when we are doing things like, for example, if you're in a business that is seasonal. So, there is no point putting out, you know, messages, for example, selling Mother's Day products because Mothering Sunday happens to be coming up this weekend in the UK.
There's no point doing that next week and saying, this would be a great gift for your mum. You've got to plan your content and make sure that it's already lined up. Equally, it is no use putting that content out this week, necessarily. It should have been planned at least two, three, four weeks ago. Drip feeding the message that you have products or services that are suitable for an event so that you're not left it too late. Because now if you try and do that literally today or tomorrow, you're going to get all the panic merchants and you probably won't be able to deliver it anyway. So, think about how you're going to plan your content and then finally, which tools you should use to make your content. Now, there are literally hundreds of different tools that you can use to create your content.
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