How To Spend Less Time Creating Content But Publish In More Places
You’ve got a product to sell.
And to sell that product, you’ve got to overcome all the noise that’s out there in the world.
To do that, you have to create great content. And a lot of it.
The more time that passes, and the more businesses you see that grow huge followings, the more it starts to feel overwhelming.
Clients tell me all the time, “Why should I even try? What’s the point of starting if there’s so much content that I need to produce? I completely understand. But the thing is, it doesn’t have to be a huge task. You just need to have a system.
How most people create content: The Social Media Hamster Wheel.
Here’s the “system” most people use.
They hear Gary V give one of his “Crush It” pep talks (I love Gary V BTW) and they say “I’m going to create a YouTube channel!” They start making videos, but the channel doesn’t really gain any traction.
They hear a Lewis Howes speech where he talks about growing a following on Instagram. They think “I know! I’ll start posting on IG and then direct that traffic back to my YouTube channel!” So they start posting short videos every day, but their following doesn’t really take off.
Then they hear Pat Flynn talk about the power of podcasting, so they think “I know! I’ll start a podcast and then direct that traffic to my IG and YouTube accounts!” They start posting interviews to iTunes, but… you get the picture.
This goes on and on. Pretty soon they’re juggling all these social media projects… Facebook Lives, Instagram Stories, YouTube videos, Soundcloud podcasts, and everything else.
There’s no rhyme or reason. The content isn’t connected. Instead of one cohesive social media strategy, they’re pulled in a million directions. They’re running themselves ragged.
So they fall behind in their posting schedule. They end up with sporadic content and half-committed shows all over the place.
And worst of all, they’re not spending time doing what they actually need to do: make sales and grow the business.
If this sounds all too familiar, don’t beat yourself up. The vast majority of clients I help with marketing are stuck on this same hamster wheel.
But what if I told you there was another way? What if I told you it was possible to create a single piece of content… then it automatically becomes native content for every social media platform?
It is possible, because that’s exactly what I do. Here’s how…
How To Be In More Places While Making Less Content
Step 1: start with video
Everything in my business starts like this… with me standing in front of a camera, looking at an iPad below the camera, and walking through a presentation with five bullet points.
When I say “presentation” I’m not talking about a beautiful PowerPoint presentation. It doesn’t need to be in-depth. It’s simply the five key points that I want to hit, with maybe a few sub-points under each one. This makes it really easy for me to look at each prompt, talk about what I want to cover, then move onto the next thing.
It’s also important to use examples. Each point on your outline might only be one sentence, but then you bring it to life with a short story or analogy. This will make your content more memorable and powerful for your reader. Plus, once you get comfortable with this, it also helps you make great videos fast.
And for you writers out there, here’s a quick tip…
Some people are good on video but struggle writing. Others are great writers but feel awkward speaking into a camera. If you’re the latter, try teleprompt.me. You can write out your script and read it off your computer screen. The program listens to your voice and automatically scrolls to keep up with you. This lets you read comfortably and speak naturally as you film yourself. It’s hands-down the best teleprompter software available.
If you want help coming up with ideas for videos, we have an article called 5 Videos Every Business Needs In 2019. I teach all my clients to start with these 5 videos, and I think they’ll work wonders for you too.
Step 2: turning it into a podcast
Once the video is finished, we strip the audio and export it as an .mp3. That audio typically becomes a podcast that we release down the road.
That way I don’t have to always be creating podcasts and video separately.
When I film videos, I always follow an outline. This does several things:
It helps me make high-quality content fast, since I’m not starting from scratch every time.
It ensures that I create content the YouTube algorithm will love.
It creates consistency in my content, which makes it easier for viewers to “get addicted” to my videos.
But it does one other thing that is really important: it makes it easy to adapt your video content to a podcast. For example… I know that the third thing I always do in my YouTube videos is ask people to click the notification bell. So it’s easy for someone on my team to go in and remove those few sentences from the audio so it can be a standalone podcast.
You see, the trick is you want to create one piece of content that you can repurpose everywhere. But at the same time, each piece of content needs to feel native on the platform where you publish it.
If people think “Wait a minute, am I listening to a YouTube video on iTunes right now?” They’ll feel cheated. They want to know that you took the time to create content specifically for that platform.
So if you do a little bit of work up-front, it makes it easy to remove the YouTube-specific sections. Then you can add in new pieces of audio like bumper music or an outro, that make it sound like a purpose-made podcast.
This way you do 10% extra work, but get two completely new pieces of content.
Step 3: Turning it into an article
When we strip off the audio, we also do something else that is super important. We transcribe the audio so that we have the information in text format.
We used to have to send off the file to be manually transcribed, and we had to pay by the minute. It gets expensive fast.
Now there is Otter.ai. Upload your file to Otter and in a couple of minutes you’ll have an accurate transcription. And best of all, it’s free.
From here you can do some light editing to turn this into a blog post.
Sometimes you might have an episode where you speak too conversationally. It sounds right as spoken content, but when you turn it into an article it sounds awkward and unnatural. In cases like this, we’ll hire a professional writer to watch the video and turn it into a polished article.
Step 4: Creating Audiograms
For every video I film, we pull out little bite-sized chunks to post on Instagram and Facebook.
These are short excerpts (under 60 seconds so they fit on Instagram) where I give one piece of information. Then we add some animation so that it’s visually engaging, and we add captions so people can read along even if their sound is off.
One of my team members uses Final Cut Pro to make these, but if you want a fast and cheap alternative check out Headliner.app. It’s not as powerful or flexible as creating your own with Final Cut, but it’s much easier if you’re a beginner.
Then when we post these audiograms on social media, we can link back to the main video, podcast, or article. This allows us to cast a broader net and funnel organic traffic back to our core content. From there we can then get people to subscribe to our channels or opt-in to our email list.
Step 5: Creating image posts
The last thing we do is pull short quotes. Since we already have the transcription, we just look through the text and find passages of one or two sentences that stand alone.
I usually look for things that are:
1.) Motivational
2.) Educational
3.) Surprising
4.) Controversial
5.) Funny
6.) Valuable
I want to find anything that is going to help someone, give them a little piece of advice, or just make them sit up and take notice.
I imagine them scrolling through their feed. What can I say that’s going to make them stop swiping for a second and go check out the main piece of content?
Or at the very least, what’s going to make them say “This Ben Adkins guy has shared some really helpful stuff recently.” Once we have a handful of these quotes, we add fonts, colors, and images to make them look great on social media. Now we have a ton of posts to publish all over the place… once again, casting that bigger net to push organic traffic back to our core content.
Taking Inventory
By following this strategy, we make one piece of content, and it turns into:
A YouTube video (that can also be published natively on Facebook)
A podcast
A blog post (that can also be published on Medium.com)
At least five audiograms, that link back to the main content
Several quote images to be posted everywhere on social media
And so you don’t forget, here are the apps we talked about:
Teleprompt.me
Otter.ai
Headliner.app
Seeing The Bigger Picture
I hope by now you’re excited about our “content machine.” With just a little extra input you get a LOT more output.
But the thing is, this isn’t just about posting more. Like I said before, so many people get stuck on the social media hamster wheel. It’s a never ending trap where you keep working harder and harder for fewer results.
What this strategy allows you to do is be deliberate.
So many people are always playing catch-up. They’re always scrambling at the last minute yelling “I’m behind schedule and I need to figure out what to post today!” This obviously results in crummy content.
And so many people also treat their social media as separate “silos.” They focus on Facebook for a while. Then Instagram for a while. Then YouTube for a while. Then back to Facebook…
This creates disjointed, inconsistent content.
By using our content machine, you take all of the stress out of publishing on social media. The HOW is taken care of. So now you can start focusing on the WHAT.
You can post better content. And more importantly, you can create cohesive campaigns. You can develop excellent brand messaging that spans all social platforms, so that everything you’re posting reinforces each other.
Now whenever someone comes into your “ecosystem” and learns about your business, anywhere they find you they’ll be seeing the same important messages. This allows you to generate a ton of attention for you business that leads back to your sales pages and gets people clamoring about what you’re doing.
The Fast Way To Get Started Today
I told you that everything in my business starts with me looking into a camera with an iPad positioned just underneath the lens.
I want to make it fast and easy for you to use this exact same system. So we’ve created a presentation that you can use, called The Serial Progress Seeker 5 Part Presentation. Just download it and fill in the blanks, and you’ll be ready to start right away.
Thanks for reading! Now I’d love to get a conversation going…
Please leave a comment telling us what kind of content you’re currently creating. And let us know what new kinds of content you’re going to start creating after reading this article.
This way we can help share what we’ve learned, and ask advice from people who have some experience.
Thanks in advance, and I’ll see you in the comments!
This article is one part of our massive guide THE “BE EVERYWHERE” CONTENT FORMULA: How To Dominate Social Media With A Cohesive Strategy, Without Having To Be Your Own Media Company. If you want to learn our A-to-Z process for figuring out what kind of content to produce, how to create great content lightning fast, and how to get it in front of potential customers everywhere, you can find the guide here.