Are you fed up of either posting on your social media on the fly, or putting loads of time and effort into your content and not getting much in the way of results? Well this episode is for you. I will be covering reasons why your content isn’t hitting the way you want it to, and how to improve it to make sure that you aren’t wasting your time with what you create. It’s a good one, so dive in!
Prefer to Read? Here’s the Podcast Transcript:
What’s up my beauties and welcome to another episode of the Story by Design Show.
This episode was inspired by my own recent messaging audit, where I review all of my client onboarding forms to see exactly what my lovely clients came to me wanting help with.
Now, hands up if any of the following sounds familiar:
” I don’t know what to actually talk about on social media. “
” Creating new content feels really hard and I feel like I’m stuck. “
” I’m posting, but I’m not seeing any results “
” I don’t feel connected to my audience and I’m not making any sales. It’s making me feel stressed and like a bit of a failure. “
” My content feels a bit like a Dear Diary moment, but I don’t know what else to do or say. “
” I feel like I spend so much time on social media, not knowing what to talk about, and it’s eating into the precious hours I have to get everything else done. “
If any of those felt a little close to home for you, then this episode is for you!
We’re going to talk all about intentional content, what it means and why it’s going to be a game changer for you.
There’s also some questions at the end of the episode to help you apply what we talk about here to your business, so do stick around until then.
Now, what I’m ultimately doing with this episode is aiming to deepen your understanding around using Content Creation to sell your products or services, and more specifically, to help you start to understand the type of content you need to create, to turn strangers into super fans.
So before we go any further, I want to zoom out for a second and just establish the overall role your content plays in your business.
Now, your business, your brand and your offers exist to solve a problem.
The role of your content is NOT to solve that same problem.
I repeat: The role of your content is NOT to solve that same problem.
The role of your content is to raise awareness that the problem is solvable and that you are the person or brand that can help them solve it.
We want to bring people to that magic point of curiosity, where they know just enough about what we do and how we do it, so they understand why they need our specific product or service,
but not that they feel they know so much that they’re already getting the solution or benefit, without buying from us.
For a service-based business, it’s the difference between someone understanding that to achieve the specific transformation you deliver, they need to actually experience your service,
versus someone feeling as though they can re-create that transformation without you, using your free content –
which by the way, they will never do so even if that’s your intention, it’s going to be an uphill struggle my friend.
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For a product-based business, it’s the difference between someone loving what you do but feeling as though they can get the same or similar thing cheaper somewhere else,
versus them knowing that when they buy YOUR specific product they’re buying into something bigger,
whether that’s your approach, your mission or the identity that you help them step into – they’re buying something that ONLY you can offer.
Either way, the goal of our content is to pique their interest enough for them to take the next logical action with us.
The reason I’m bringing this up, is because the number one mistake I see for both product and service-based businesses, is that we ultimately try and overdeliver with our content.
We try and deliver THEM the expertise or help them solve their problem through our content
instead of using our content to position ourselves as the expert or solution.
It’s an important difference!
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To really cement this for you, what you really need to remember when creating content – is that your ultimate goal is to further the relationship with your audience, to the point where they are ready to take action.
What that actually looks like, MASSIVELY depends on what it is you’re offering, your audiences current awareness, the price point of your product or service amongst many other factors.
To help you in your journey of figuring this out, I want you to answer two questions to establish what that specific role your content plays actually is, and I will give you examples too
Question 1:
How ‘problem-aware’ are my audience and how do they view my product or service in relation to that problem?
Question 2:
Knowing this, what therefore is the role of my content in developing the relationship with my audience so they’re ready to take action. What are the beliefs I need to create or change?
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For example, if you’re a service-based business that offers copywriting – it’s pretty likely that your audience already knows that if they want help writing copy, working with a copywriter is the obvious solution.
Therefore, the role of your content isn’t to teach them how to write copy, that’s what they want to pay you for, the role of your content is to establish why YOU are the right copywriter for them.
See the difference?
Another example for service-based businesses, let’s say you’re a coach that specialises in helping women who are holding themselves back make a career change.
Your ideal client is probably thinking the answer is to their problem is to just find a new job, not to work with a coach.
Therefore the role of your content is to educate them as to why this might not be true for them and to shift that belief to where working with you, working with a coach, becomes the next obvious and logical step.
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This same principle applies to product based businesses too.
Let’s say a high-end jewellery maker – your audience has the ‘problem’ of wanting to project a certain appearance and to find pieces that help them express something about who they are as a person.
The role of your content is therefore to help them understand what your jewellery will help them ‘say’ about themselves, and get them excited at the prospect of embodying that identity through what they wear.
It’s about helping them understand the true value of what you offer as a brand that is different to every other jewellery brand out there.
Another example could be if you’re selling a subscription to something, maybe it’s to get gardening bits through your door every month to encourage you to take time for yourself –
again your audience may be aware that they want to take more time for themselves and sure, maybe they’ve considered getting out in the garden as part of that –
but they may think the solution is just to
‘make more time for themselves’
or buy a couple of seeds down the gardening centre which in reality we all know are never going to get planted.
So therefore the goal of your content is to bust those myths, to really make them aware of why a subscription might be the answer, as it helps them make a commitment to their future selves and their future garden, with monthly accountability to make it happen.
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Now I would REALLY love it if the minute this episode finishes you go and spend a bit of time answering those two questions which I’ll repeat in a second so you can get a firm grip on the role your content needs to play in terms of furthering that relationship with your audience so they’re ready to purchase.
So hit pause, go grab a pen and paper and come back to me.
Ready? Those questions are:
- How ‘problem-aware’ are my audience and how do they view my product or service in relation to that problem?
- Knowing this, what therefore is the role of my content in developing the relationship with my audience so they’re ready to take action. What are the beliefs I need to create or change?
If you can answer those two questions confidently – you’re already going to be 10 steps ahead of most other people creating content for their businesses on social media.
Now, the other thing I want to talk about when creating Intentional content is to honour the platform you’re on.
This is something I’ve only really started to lean into myself more recently, evidenced by the fact you’re listening to a Podcast right now and not tapping through a million Instagram Stories.
One of the reasons I see people get so frustrated with creating content, is because the amount of effort they put in does not directly translate to what they get out of it.
If you’re out there, writing out these beautiful, thought-provoking captions only to have no-one respond… I see you.
If you’re posting a Reel and trying to squeeze in all the reasons someone might work with you in 6-seconds only to get more views when you post a video of your cat… I see you.
I’ve been there and it’s frustrating as hell because the reality is, if no one is viewing your videos, reading your captions or watching your stories and it’s the only place where you’re really putting in the effort to get your message out there?
If you know that all your efforts essentially have a 24hour window to succeed or not? Excuse my language by fuck, that pain of feeling like you’re shouting into an empty room is very very real and it’s exhausting.
Now I’m not saying that you need to suddenly jump on all the trends to get your message heard, I’m simply inviting you to take a look at the platforms your using and to make sure that you’re not letting all that effort and hard work of yours for lack of a better term, go to waste.
The way your audience shows up to each of the different content platforms differ, so it’s reasonable to think that the way you share content should differ too.
For example if you know you like writing long, thought out captions but no one’s reading them… maybe it’s not a sign that what you’re saying isn’t any good, but rather that Instagram is designed to keep people scrolling, not stopping.
But if you deliver that content to me in a Blog Article or email… it’s a different story
If you love showing up and delivering mini-trainings on stories, but you can see the drop off happening pretty quickly with views – maybe it’s got nothing to do with the quality of your content, but it’s because waiting for auto-captions to load is just not that interesting to watch and as a viewer, I’m actually sneaking in an Instagram break as a distraction for 5-minutes and I’m not really in the mood to learn?
Whereas when I’ve actively chosen to commit 20minutes to a Podcast episode during my daily walk? Well, now we’re talking.
Intentional Content Creation is simply about understanding the role it plays for you and your business, and being a little bit strategic about the platform you’re using and respecting the reason that your audience is on that platform too.
Sounds pretty simple, when you put it like that, hey?
I’d love to know if you found this helpful, and please do leave me a review if so – it would mean the world to me to know what you think.
Now, go answer those two questions from earlier and have fun getting intentional my friends!
