Three Ways To Take The Pain Out Of Content Creation - Episode 21

Today is the first time that Caron's joined us for a podcast. And Caron is a content ninja. She's fantastic. So what we thought would be a good idea is if we can give you three ways of gathering content that are fairly straightforward, painless, and will help you to massively increase your content marketing effort. Caron, do you think it's fair to say that for most clients, gathering the content that you're going to use to create the actual content that you're going to publish is a bit of a pain.

It is a bit of a pain, but I think it's because people hate writing stuff, stopping what they're doing and sitting down looking at an empty screen and thinking, I've got to fill this screen with words and it's got to be meaningful. I've got to talk about my business and people struggle.

Welcome back to Digital Marketing from the coal from.

The.

Face pod. I just can't get it's digital marketing from the coal face. And I keep wanting to say digital marketing from the podcast. Um, today is the first time that Caron's joined us for a podcast and Caron is a content ninja. She's fantastic at getting content off clients. And content is at the heart of a lot of the work that we do. It's at the heart of most digital marketing. So what we thought would be a good idea is if we can give you three ways of gathering content that are fairly straightforward, painless, and will help you to massively increase your content marketing effort without it becoming a real issue. And Caron, do you think it's fair to say that for most clients, getting content, developing content, even just gathering the content that you're going to use to create the actual content that you're going to publish is a bit of a pain.

It is a bit of a pain, but I think it's because people hate writing stuff. They hate stopping what they're doing and sitting down looking at an empty screen and thinking, I've got to fill this screen with words and it's got to be meaningful. I've got to talk about my business. It's like, I don't know, writing your CV or your resume. If you're in, you know, if you're in the US, it's like writing your CV. Somebody approaches you in the street, takes you into a cafe and says, write your CV for me right now and sell yourself really well. And people struggle.

People find it hard to write generally, don't they? So anything that we can do to make that easier so that we can get the content we need as a digital marketing agency, so that we can, you know, help the client to grow and develop the kind of content or develop the content that their customers, their ideal customers are looking for has got to be a good thing. So in this podcast, let's just explore three of those ways that we can do that. And the first one is, you know, I might even claim that this was my idea, but you might correct me. But certainly with one of our customers, we figure out what we need, what we need content wise. And we write a short scenario and we send it down to them and they go into the T shack. This is the guys that um, repair and and restore classic Astons. They go into the T shack, they set something recording, whether it's an iPhone or a laptop or whatever, and they discuss the subject that we've sent them. Was it me who came up with that idea?

That was your idea?

Yes.

I'll give you that.

That's good to hear.

Well, you know, it was your idea.

No, no, I couldn't. No, but I thought I was going to claim it was my idea. And then you were going to say, actually, it wasn't your idea. If you remember, three years ago we did X, Y or somebody else said something. But yeah, I'll I'll take it. It's my idea. So like when we do that, we, we do the graft, if you like, we figure out, look, we look at the data, we figure out what we need, the content or what content we need. And then we try and make it as easy for them as possible. We set a scenario or we set, um, you know, we just give them a couple of paragraphs on what we want them to discuss and they then get on with discussing it, don't they?

Yeah. They, they discuss it. But what helps is that they have the, uh, sort of an interrogator, if you like, in, in the form of, uh, Karen not, not me, Karen, but the other. Karen.

So many Karens.

Uh, so many Davids.

But two in this office.

They get the Karen person who is going to interrogate them and keep them on track. We, we can't be there. But Karen-

That might just be them. I mean, these guys are busy. They're running a garage. They're they're hands on mechanical geniuses. They're not used to talking. They're not used to doing that. In some situations. It might not need a referee, might it it might not need someone to prompt them. It might just be like, please talk about this for as long as you can or for, for ten minutes or whatever we need.

All right, so you're saying just have a conversation between yourselves. We've we've tried it a couple of times, but the best way is always to have a referee.

Well, yeah. I mean what Karen does, um, when she referees not this Karen the other Karen, um what she does is she keeps bringing them back on, on track because what they'll do and it's not necessarily a bad thing. What they do is they start talking about the subject that we want them to talk about, and then they wander off in different directions and go off at tangents. And what Karen does is she brings them back, say like what the guys at Red evolution are looking for is bah bah bah and reminds them, which is a good thing. I think that works. Well.

It does. And we sometimes get some real gems from those conversations. And the other thing that Karen does is she'll feel them drying up on a particular topic, and they'll kind of calm down and kind of, you know, you can almost hear them putting their mugs down and heading off back to the workshop and she'll say, she'll just throw something out there and say, but what about this? Or didn't that happen when you finished that? And they come back and they're just off again on another another conversation.

It's fair to say it's related. The the recordings we get are actually usually really enjoyable to listen to.

They're really interesting and it's almost a shame that they have to become transcripts and then be sort of written into a blog, because the conversations that we record are really interesting.

They are, they're really engaging. And certainly we've decided that we want to do a podcast with them. And actually, I think we've got maybe four in the can, which we haven't put out yet because we would like to have a few more before we release it. But yeah, doing those recordings made us realise that if we're enjoying listening to them in order to produce content, then there's a good chance that that other people would enjoy listening to them.

That's right, that's right. So when we took that a bit further and we said, well, you know, we've got some clients who who don't really want to sit down for an hour and talk about a particular topic.

But just one second before you carry on with that. I mean, yeah, just just for people listening, usually they're only going to talk about a subject, sometimes five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes is quite long and twenty minutes is almost the max we've ever had from them. And even a ten minute conversation could give us enough content to write a really good fifteen hundred, two thousand word blog post.

Yeah, I'm not thinking about blog posts now. I'm thinking more about sales content. If you like services, what we do, how we do it, why we do it, who we do it for. So yeah, sorry, I, I went off down track, but you pulled me back again.

No, no, not at all. I mean, I think you make a good point. I mean, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, in this podcast, get across three simple ideas, three ways to collect content that are kind of pain free. They're kind of quite easy to do and will help people to get from the place which a lot of people will be in, where they're really stuck and they're not making a good job of this to a place where they're actually making some good progress. So that's the only reason. But yeah, I mean, I get it sometimes you'll want clients to talk for much longer, perhaps.

Yeah. And, you know, talking about Aston Martins and restorations and things, it's exciting. It's it's kind of it's not a dry topic.

Are you suggesting that some of our clients have not such interesting things to talk about?

It's not that they're not interesting. They're drier than shiny Astons. And you know, the history and and the life lived, you know, doing, doing that. Yeah. Even even the people, you know, their stories around that business are fascinating.

Yeah. That's right. Absolutely. Agreed. Okay. So, um, I remember I sent, I had a little Samsung microphone, which I, which I, I bought one and I quite liked it. It's not what I'm using just now, but I quite liked it. So I remember I sent Karen one of them to make it easier for Karen to actually record the podcast. But to be honest, I mean, before that, I think they were just using the iPhone sitting in the middle of the table, set it recording, and it was perfectly fine. So you don't need any special tech to do this. Not, you know, it's really just it's, it's about the content because nobody's going to hear it. It's purely for us or, you know, for people listening for your digital marketing agency, whoever that might be, to have access to the subject matter experts and get that all important content.

It is. Yeah. And one of the things that I think works for them for, for Karen, is she, she knows that the guys are going to go and have a tea break. So it's not manufactured. It's not, you know, it's not contrived. Whereas for some people, some businesses, that situation has to be contrived. Yeah. We we don't take twenty minute tea breaks. Well not often. Yeah.

Sometimes we. So that takes us on probably quite nicely to the next one, which is where we will, you and I or you will or I will or Julie will or somebody will at Red Eagle will actually get a client onto a Zoom call.

Yes.

And we'll record with their permission. We'll record the Zoom call so we don't have to scribble down notes. We can concentrate on teasing out the content. It's very similar to what we're doing with the guys who just go and record something. But it's the subtle differences that we are hosting that. Yeah.

Correct.

Okay. I mean, how does that generally work? Does it work quite well? And and what kinds of clients does it work well with?

It works well with clients who feel they have nothing to talk about.

Right. Yeah. Good point.

Yeah. So we'll say, you know, we would like you to talk about this topic or write about this topic, get a feel for whether they want to talk about it or write about it. Um, we've already decided, I think in the backs of our minds, we've decided they're probably better at talking about things than writing. Yeah. And that's just based on our experience with them. You know, maybe they struggle to sit down for an hour to devote time to writing about a particular service. But if we were to get them on a half hour chat and usually two of us, because then we can, it's like a pincer movement. Yeah, we can play off each other.

And I guess the good thing about that is something you you mentioned either before we started recording or while we were recording was, was if you know, if you're faced with a blank screen, you know, we've said, you know, you need to tell us about this some, some particular subject or a service or whatever, something that you offer, you need to tell us about that. Please send us three hundred words on it. That is really hard for a lot of people. Whereas, hey, you know, grab a cup of coffee, jump on a Zoom chat, twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes, whatever it takes. But it doesn't have to be a long, a long Zoom chat. And then they might come on and say, oh, well, you know, I don't really know what to say. I mean, it's, it's like, all we do is this. But like with being, for example, with you being a content ninja, you can ask the right questions and tease out the content so that they spill the beans and we get what we need.

Yeah, it's the throwaway comment that you're looking for. So a couple of weeks ago, I'm talking to somebody and they said, well, we're different because our guys are experienced. And they carried on chatting and said, there's nothing special about it. But, you know, we're different because our guys are experienced. And I said, just a minute. What do you mean by experience? Because anybody could say that you could stand in a room and say, you need to work with us, because my guys are experience. Nobody's going to stand there and say, work with us, even though our guys are not experienced and we're not experts, but you should work with us. And it made him sort of stop and think in a good in a very good way, because he was his his kind of his whole demeanor changed. We were on Zoom so I could see he he lifted.

His body.

Language, smiled.

And.

That's right. Yeah. And he said, you know what he said, the guys that we work with, we've worked with them for a long time. They are subcontractors, but they almost exclusively work with us. So they know how we work. We know how they work. We have a good working relationship. So some of that, that's what I mean when I say experience. But I said to him, you know, so really you're talking about that connection. They they know your business. They know what you're trying to accomplish for your clients. So they're not just being parachuted in, do the job, run away. They're working, you know, with the client. And, and yeah, like I say, he's his whole demeanor changed. And he was very sort of animated.

Suddenly I was going to say, did you find that he suddenly found enthusiasm for the subject and as you rightly just just indicated, became animated? Yeah. And I guess that enthusiasm, that animation would then lead to us getting some really good content, verbal, you know, content in, you know, recorded in the Zoom chat, which we can then do what we need to do with in order to create the case study or the blog post, for example.

That's right. And it's not just about, you know, the product or the service being, you know, something boring, it becomes something that's unique to that particular client.

Yeah. And it's, it's teasing out what makes them remarkable, what makes them better, like why, you know, we're not questioning that they're great at what they do and they have a loyal client base or anything else. But in trying to get the essence of that is what we were looking for with this Zoom chat. And then we've then got the content that we need.

Yeah. That's right. And I think the Zoom chat is quite good because when we are doing the interrogation, I like to see the body language, you know, the face, what's making somebody feel a bit uncomfortable. Yeah. And maybe change the topic or change the track a little bit and then maybe come back to it later. Not because it's sensitive, but just they're just maybe gathering their thoughts or something.

Okay. All right. So we've got the hey, Mr. Client, please record a conversation about this subject. That was option one. And then we've got hey, Mr. and Mrs. Client, can you jump on a Zoom chat? And we want to talk to you about a particular subject, maybe like, say, a service or a product or a case study or something. So we said we'd cover three in this, in this podcast. What was the third one? We said we'd look at?

It's my least favoured because I do like the conversations. Mhm. But the simple template. Q and A all right.

Okay. So basically you'll just send them a bunch of questions and ask them to like.

To.

Elucidate, right. A type out, I guess. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. But you said this is like your least favorite because we're back to, hey, Mr. or Mrs. Client, sit down at your computer and write some words.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, is it working? Has it, has it got its part to play this, this way of doing it? Do you think it.

It works for some clients and they're very good at using the I call it a template. I'm trying to think of a better word template.

Sounds good. It's a.

Template. It's a kind of a content guide if you like. Um, but it asks the right questions. So we've put our heads together and decided for a particular client what kind of information they are able to give us around, say a case study. So every client's case studies will be different. Yeah. Uh, so some clients, we ask five or six simple questions for some clients. We fill, you know, a couple of pages with questions and they're happy to get back to us with simple answers. One client will just put bullet points against each question. Um, we write, which.

Might mean you have to go back to them and ask more questions.

Sometimes. But, um, you know, you get used to writing around things and figuring out once you know a client, you know, that some statement they've made, you know, what else goes around that so you can fill in the gaps. And they, they're very happy with it. Very seldom will they send back and say, well, we said this and you've written that you've got completely the wrong idea. It wasn't as good as that. You know, you need to change that. The tenor of that. Okay.

All right. Well, that's three ways. I mean, the last one was pretty concise because it was fairly self-explanatory. You send them a template asking a bunch of questions and just ask them to answer them. Uh, the first way, just to reiterate, was to send them some, a synopsis of a subject and say, please discuss this subject. Um, the second way was the Zoom chat, which is we don't have to send them anything. We just have to say, can you give us twenty minutes and book a meeting and jump on a Zoom chat and you might give them some prep. So you say, well, this is what we're going to talk about. So that that might be the way. Okay. That's great. I think that for a lot of people, um, they understand the importance of producing good content. They realise it, it's what makes the difference when it comes to getting more traffic to your website and not only getting more traffic, but converting more traffic, as in the people that visit the website, fill in a form or pick up the phone. Um, but equally, I think people struggle still with, with creating content. So I think giving those, you know, with those three ideas, um, I think that, you know, that that's like, if they just do nothing else, but the first couple of things, you know, then I think they'd notice a really big change in the amount of content that they can produce, the amount of good content that they could produce.

Yeah, I agree. It's, it's, there's lots of ways to gather content, but the least effective way is to say, I'm going to write about this. Yeah. And you just, yeah, keep, just.

Give the client a one liner saying, we're going to write a blog post about this. Or rather, we need to write, you need to write a blog post about this. And then just hoping for the best because that that way.

Sit back and wait.

Never wait a long time. It never works. That's right.

Okay. And everybody feels disappointed. We feel disappointed because we haven't, you know, being able to write the content that we know will work, the clients disappointed because they've given up and they know that somebody is waiting for it because believe it or not, clients, you know, do feel engaged enough to feel bad if they haven't given us something because, you know, we're a team and, you know, we want to work together.

That's right. Okay. That's, uh, that's great. How have you enjoyed doing your first podcast?

Yeah, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Okay. Yeah.

Will you do more podcasts now? You've done the first one.

Yeah, absolutely. I can talk till the cows come home.

Well, I know that. Okay. Caron, that's great. Um, if you've got any questions, anything you'd like us to cover in the podcast, then just go to the contacts tab and send us a question. You can either come on the show and discuss it, or you can just ask us to discuss it if you're looking for answers. Um, in the meantime, thanks for listening and speak next time. Bye.