A really easy way to blend in and just contribute to the noise is to
share the exact same tips and tricks that everyone else is sharing. It's safe
content. It's not going to get you any haters, but it's probably not
going to get you any true fans either. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm
Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the
freebies, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking
imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect action is
about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and
moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show,
you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build a
business that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy.
Are you on the list to get my daily businesses? Every day, I'll
send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in a
more intentional way. Sign up at steptaylor dot co, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to the
Perfect Action. This is episode eight hundred and thirty seven. In a world
that is saturated with so much free content. This is how you can create
content that stands out. Today, I'm going to be sharing with you a
couple of ways to zag when everybody else zigs with their content. I'm going
to share some ways that you can create content that isn't just contributing to the
noise, but actually adds value and stands out. But let's just start by
looking at the problem with content marketing. These days, we have way too
much content pushed into our faces every single day. We have Instagram reels,
feed, TikTok, stories, email inboxes, podcast apps, facebook groups,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and we can only consumes so
much content in the time that we have. The algorithms on social media platforms
they are designed to get the right content in front of you so they can
keep you hooked. Because if they keep you on their platform for longer,
you can chume more content, they can serve you more ads, they can
make more profit. TikTok does this really well. The for You feed is
just like this never ending feed of full screen videos that will keep you scrolling
pretty much forever. It's one of the reasons why I try not to look
at TikTok on my phone ever, because I know just how dangerous and how
time consuming that can be. Whenever a new platform launches, or whenever a
new format launches on an existing platform, like, for example, when Instagram
reels came out, fewer people were using it at the start, so there
was less noise and your content could get in front of more people because you
were competing against fewer pieces of similar content. Essentially, you are competing against
fewer pieces of or fewer other Instagram reels to reach the people who were consuming
Instagram reels. And if we think about when this first happened, this was
the point where a lot of experts would pop up and they'd say, oh,
you have to be on TikTok or reels is the best way to get
in front of new people. And while these statements might have an element of
truth at the time, they can also be quite misleading and harmful because they
can lead solo business owners to think that they have to be doing all of
the things and be on all of the social media platforms, and that if
they're not doing these things, they're not doing enough to market their business and
that can lead them to feel really down about themselves. It can lead them
to try and do everything and sometimes burn out. There is no one best
platform to be on. There is no one thing you have to do to
grow your business. There are many different ways you can grow your business.
There are many different platforms, each with their benefits and disadvantages. And anyone
who tells you that you have to do a particular thing, they're probably pushing
some kind of agenda. They're probably trying to sell you something. Now,
as more and more people start to use this new platform or this new format
on an existing platform, there becomes more noise, more content. We think
about Instagram reels years ago compared with now, I would post an Instagram reel
and it would reach thirty thousand people. Now I'm lucky if it gets maybe
five thousand views. That's because there are more reels out there, and it
becomes harder to get my reels in front of the people who are consuming reels.
And what tends to happen is you also start to see people posting content
on that platform or on that medium without asking whether they should be. They
don't ask, oh, should this video be a reel or does this piece
of content need to be a podcast episode. Instead, they post content to
tick a box so they can say, oh, yes, tick, I
posted that Instagram reel today. Rather than being intentional about what they're posting and
whether it aligns with their goals, they're thinking, Okay, I need to
post three times this week so I can tick these boxes off and say that
I've done marketing, rather than creating content that is strategically aligned with the direction
they are taking their business now. Algorithms then have to find a way to
distill the noise. They have to find a way that when everybody starts posting
Instagram reels, for example, users are seeing what they want to see.
They're not just seeing all of the rubbish. Otherwise they would leave the platform
and they would go elsewhere, and that's a hit to their advertising revenue.
We've seen this happen with Facebook. Fewer people are using Facebook and they've had
a decrease in revenue. So when the algorithm then finds a way to distill
through the noise, your content gets shown to fewer people than before, and
yeah, your engagement drops. And typically this is not because of the algorithm
so much as it is about the actual content that you are posting, because
if somebody is still posting really good, really relevant content, that will still
be shown to people. The algorithm will find a way to show that to
people. In the case of podcasting or blogging, this might look like really
slow growth. People are consuming your content, but maybe they're not coming back
for more, or they're not taking any steps to work with you, inquire
with you, join your email list, follow you elsewhere. It's like they
consume that piece of content and that is it. And it's really easy to
blame the environment. It's really easy to say no, it's just way too
hard to stand out these days, or the algorithm doesn't show my content to
anyone anymore, and give up. And this is easier than putting on your
big girl pants or your big boy pants and asking what is it about my
content that doesn't stand out? What is it about my content that means it's
not impacting people, it's not resonating the way I want it to. And
that's a really tough question to ask. The good news is, though,
that you can still create content that stands out. So I'm going to give
you a couple of tips in a minute on how to create content that stands
out, But I do want to say there are a few prerequisites. Prerequisite
number one, you need to stick with the same platform for a while,
regardless of what platform it is, whether it's a podcast or TikTok or YouTube
or a blog. You need to stick with it for at least twelve weeks,
rather than showing up for like a week on one place and then deciding
that, oh, no, TikTok's better, so going over there, and
then deciding no, I need to be on YouTube. The grass is always
going to look greener, but it's not. I promise the grass is greener
where you order it. The second prerequisite is that you need to be consistent
with sharing content on that platform so consistently, and it doesn't consistently doesn't mean
every day. Consistent means every week at least, and it means sticking to
some kind of schedule that you can you can fit with your schedule with your
other priorities, some kind of content creation and publishing cadence almost And that means
prerequisite number three. You need to prioritize content creation the biggest the biggest area
where I see business owners slipping on their content creation and their consistency is because
they're not prioritizing it. You get a lot of clients in through the door,
and it's amazing because now you have a really good income and you're really
busy. But because you now have that income coming in, you're not worrying
about how you're going to get those next clients. And then when the projects
that you're working on with those clients finish, or if they decide that they
don't want to pay you a retainer anymore, then suddenly you find, oh,
I wish i'd done some marketing three months ago, because now I really
need to hustle to try and get some more work through the door. But
if you prioritize it and it's something that just becomes part of your week,
then you're going to stick with it and it'll help to create that consistency in
your business. You really do need to treat it as a very important task
in your business, because it is. In my business. Content creation is
my most important task. Now. The occasional piece of really good content might
get you some attention, but consistent great content is how you build that audience
and how those people begin to know you, like you and trust you enough
to buy from you. It's not about having one TikTok video that goes viral.
It's not about posting one Instagram reel and a lot of people like it.
It's not about putting up one blog post. It's about consistently showing up
in the same place so that people know you, like you, and trust
you enough to buy from you. Okay, So the three three for creating
content that stands out in a world where we are just saturated with content.
Tip Number one. Share content that others in your industry are afraid to talk
about. A really easy way to blend in and just contribute to the noise
is to share the exact same tips and tricks that everyone else is sharing.
It's safe content. It's not going to get you any haters, but it's
probably not going to get you any true fans either. Now I'm not saying
you need to be controversial on purpose. It might suit some people's brands,
but it's not going to suit everybody to be controversial on purpose, And honestly,
I don't think you need to do that to try and grab attention.
But if you truly believe in something, if there's some kind of unpopular opinion
that you have and the reason you haven't talked about it is because you're afraid
that some people might not agree with you, or some people you might get
a few haters. That's probably something you should talk about, especially if it's
something you believe really strongly in and like. It might be an unpopular opinion,
or it might be a personal story that you are afraid to share because
you're worried others will judge you for it. So share those things that feel
uncomfortable, to feel vulnerable that other people in your industry aren't talking about.
It's really easy to just regurgitate the same tips and tricks, but that's not
how you stand out. The second tip is to meet your audience where they're
at right now and answer their questions for them. When we are the experts
at what we do, it's really easy to keep coming at every topic from
that expert angle, putting our expert knowledge out there, sharing the research,
sharing what we know. But sometimes we need to put ourselves in our audience's
shoes. We need to understand, Okay, what are the knowledge gaps?
What do they not know that we don't even realize they don't know? What
kind of basic things are they not understanding? Are they not grasping completely?
What are they struggling with? How can we empathize with these struggles even more
in our content. For example, if you are sharing tips for how to
maximize their running workouts, but they are struggling to lace up their shoes and
get out the door for a run, then your content is going to fall
flat. So instead, what you would do is find out what questions they
have about running, find out what's stopping them from getting out of the door.
What is it? Mindset? Is it, accountability? What is it?
And use their language, solve their little struggles with them, empathize with
them, help them with those little struggles first, rather than giving them what
they're giving them that really far down the track kind of content. Personally,
I find that my best content topics come from asking my audience what questions do
you have about? And then whatever the topic that I want to know is.
So, for example, this episode, when I ask my audience what
do you want to know about growing your audience? One of the questions that
came up was how can I stand out online? Great, that's given me
an entire podcast episode I can talk about. I could talk about this all
day. Okay. Tip number three, go deeper. In a world where
short form content is everywhere and it's distracting us and it's entertaining us, create
content that is the opposite. There is so much short form content out there,
and it's really easy to create, it's really easy for people to consume
it, and it's really addictive because of the short form content. It's so
addictive and it keeps people consuming more because it's just dopamine hit after dopamine hit
after dopamine hit. But short form content works so much better for entertainment than
for education. And for most of us, those of us who are selling
services, those of us who are selling our expertise, our own digital products,
anything around our own knowledge. A huge part of marketing that is educating
our ia deal client. It's educating them on what they need to know before
they'll be ready to solve the problem that they have. And unfortunately, a
ten sentence TikTok video isn't gonna really go very far for that. It might
grab somebody's attention, it might entertain them, but it might not really be
that effective in moving them closer to buying from you. So instead of battling
against all of these fifteen second tiktoks and three sentence Instagram captions, why not
write a one thousand word blog post going deep into a topic that will help
your ideal customer. Now you might be thinking, well, it takes so
much longer to do a thousand word blog posts than a ten second TikTok.
Great, but that one thousand word blog post will have a much longer lifespan
than a ten second TikTok and you won't be doing as many of them.
And then what I find really good is repurposing that long form content. So,
if you've written that thousand word blog post, can you earn a little
snippet of that into a TikTok video? Could you talk about it for ten
seconds and then direct people to go and read that blog post. Maybe instead
of a thousand word blog post, it's a ten minute podcast episode or even
a five minute Instagram video rather than a fifteen second Instagram reel. So it's
more about going deeper into the topics than creating just mass amount of content.
For example, so I could have given you these tips, these three tips
in a really short Instagram reel. I could have been on camera pointing at
little bubbles, you know. Tip number one, Tip number two, Tip
number three, But without listening to this entire episode, you'd probably be scratching
your head wondering what I mean by go deep or meet your audience where they're
at and answer their questions, because that short form content doesn't give me enough
of an opportunity to go any deeper into a topic. And yes, I
could say, hey, read the caption below, and I could expand on
it in there. That could be a longer form kind of content. I
could use that shorter form video to promote this podcast episode and send people to
listen to it. But just by watching that fifteen second video on its own,
they're probably not going to get a whole lot of value, all right,
So there you have it. Three tips to stand out better. Share
content that others are afraid to talk about. Meet your audience where they're at,
and answer their questions, and go deep. Do long form content rather
than just creating lots of short form content. Your step to put this episode
into action, I really would encourage you to pick a platform, a platform
where you're going to share longer form content, and you can commit to sharing
one piece of long content each week. That could be a blog, it
could be to your email list. It could be YouTube, it could be
in longer form Instagram videos, it would be anywhere, anywhere. It's not
so much about the platform as it is about finding a type of content that
suits you, that you can commit to consistently, and that you can go
deep enough into a topic that you are an expert in. All Right,
that is it for this episode. If you have any friends who you know
are struggling to share content that stands out, share this episode with them.
Hit the share button, copy the link, send it to them. It's
how I get to help more people. It's how I get to help your
friends. And if you haven't already subscribed to the show, hit the plus
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new episode released straight to your podcast app every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.