The Business Millennials Podcast

The Simplified Content Creation Process

• Ashley Dreager & Safa Harris • Season 1 • Episode 16

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In this episode of the Business Millennials Podcast, hosts Safa Harris and Ashley Dreager delve into the essential aspects of content creation and messaging for businesses aiming to scale. They emphasize the importance of consistent and cohesive messaging as a foundational element of brand building and business development. The discussion covers strategic advice on efficiently producing content that resonates with the target audience and propels business growth. Key topics include the benefits of batch creating content, leveraging video for maximum impact, and using AI tools to expedite the content creation process. The hosts also introduce a step-by-step content bundle designed to streamline content production across different channels, ensuring consistency and effectiveness in marketing efforts. The episode is packed with insights on overcoming common challenges such as time constraints and content burnout, aiming to inspire entrepreneurs to implement these strategies for long-term success.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Messaging is a core foundational piece of a business, setting expectations and ensuring consistency throughout the entire customer journey.
  2. Consistency in content creation is crucial for success, and batch creating content can help streamline the process and save time.
  3. Repurposing pillar content, such as long-form video or podcast episodes, into smaller, bite-sized pieces can maximize the impact of each piece of content while reducing the mental load of content creation.
  4. Inspiration-driven content creation works well for businesses with a clear understanding of their unique value proposition, ideal client, and marketing strategy, but may not be the best approach for everyone.
  5. AI tools can be leveraged to expedite the content creation process, but should be used in conjunction with human expertise and strategic planning.

Timestamps:
00:58 Diving Deep into Content Creation and Messaging
03:39 The Power of Batch Creating Content
06:03 Micro-Level Content Strategy for Social Media
07:08 Repurposing Content: A Strategic Approach
08:28 The Importance of Consistency in Content Creation
16:31 Leveraging AI for Efficient Content Creation
18:11 Introducing the AI Content Bundle

Get the real shortcut for content creation here:
https://businessmillennials.scaleandthriveco.com/ai-content-bundle/

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Welcome to the business millennials podcast. This show brings you strategic insights through raw and unfiltered real world advice to accelerate your business growth for longterm success. I'm Safa Harris, and I'm Ashley Drager. We're the founders of scale and thrive co a full service marketing and business development firm, helping visionary companies scale sustainably. Expect us to have the uncomfortable conversations that no one else is having. We'll break down what it really takes to grow and scale your business beyond six Seven or even eight figures, as well as inspiring interviews with diverse leaders across marketing, product development, sales, and more via fly on the wall. As we conduct strategy sessions with business owners experiencing issues such as plateaued income, burnout, and generally dropping the ball, giving you the tools and resources to break through your own roadblocks, but also personal development methods to grow you as a balanced conscious leader amidst business growth. Let's jump into this week's episode.

Ashley:

So content creation is like one of the hottest topics in the online business space. Content creation and messaging are like the two topics that capture everyone's attention. I think because it takes a lot of time and it's a skill set to have to create content efficiently and effectively. So it's like a storytelling aspect to a lot of it.

Safa:

Yeah, I will say like all of our stuff, we get better stats and data on anything that talks about content creation and talks about messaging. personally, I think messaging is a very core foundational cornerstone piece of a business in general, not just your marketing, because it's a big part of like this world brand building you're doing. It's about like the core of the company. The communication you're doing in your messaging in your marketing and that is going to be what make sure you're pulling in the right people that are the right fit for your offer that you're communicating that effectively and like it's setting the expectation of what it is to work with you and or get your whatever product. and setting that expectations for success throughout your entire process. And you will also make the kind of litmus test your entire process to make sure it's actually what the messaging says it is, and if not changing one or the other. So it really is this really strong core foundational piece. And I think that aspect of it gets the job done. in like, I need to get my messaging right. Is this speaking to my people? Whatever, whatever. Like you need to figure this big piece out a part of your brand and keep it consistent throughout your entire business. But also most importantly, because it's consistent throughout your entire business, making sure the communication and the marketing, that part is clear. consistent. And then you have to do that and then also create a large amount of content just because that's just what the marketing and digital landscape marketing takes right now is The content is king, content is queen because you do need a lot of content to go in all these different places and they all have to be consistent and cohesive and share the same message over and over and over and over and over again for it to do anything effective.

Ashley:

Yeah, one of the, one of the biggest downfalls that I see is when people don't plan out their content and they only create content when they feel inspired or they try to create content in the moment because they don't have the systems and the processes in place to batch create their content. I speak so highly about batch creating content. I understand, you know, the, the challenges with, well, using trending content and like jumping on a trend and being like, I get all that, but until you have a full team, I'd rather you get content out consistently than to be on every single trend, because at the end of the day, your authentic content is going to perform better than if you just had trending content.

Safa:

I was just going to add a point of like, there is. importance to having the speaks of like the sustainability of need to have baseline first baseline consistence sustainability long term before you do all these cool optimization things like the up like trends and all of that and like showing up quickly all of that that's like an add on

Ashley:

Cool. Optimization things,

Safa:

Yeah, like

Ashley:

the fun stuff.

Safa:

Yeah, I'm gonna try this I'm gonna do that I was like that's gonna take off like if you're not doing base a baseline first then add ons Like it's like you it's a chicken first then sauce

Ashley:

I totally pictured a live chicken in my head when you first started saying that. And I was like, oh, we're going to, I was like, chicken or the egg? Is that where we're going? No, we're, we're talking about like dinner. Uh, oh my gosh, that's too good. So I. Whenever I'm trying to explain like the, my best practice for content creation, speaking from a solopreneurs perspective, if you have a team or if you have a social media manager or a VA, this process, this whole process can get expedited. So awesome. Good for you. But these phases, I don't mean it in like a bad way. I mean, like, I love that for you. This is going to be on a very micro level. So I wanted to add that disclaimer that this is a very small piece of your overall marketing strategy. So we're not going to talk about that today. That'll be for a different episode. We're talking about just for one month, a micro level, this month's content. We're going to start with a content calendar. Then you're going to go into the caption writing. Then you're going to go into the graphics or the visual element of it, and then you're going to post it. So it's like four steps on a micro level.

Safa:

And I just want to say this is very specifically for like Instagram or Facebook. So

Ashley:

Mhm.

Safa:

channel

Ashley:

Yeah.

Safa:

of these steps have to happen for one month. And so that like this is a very it's this is like I know you said micro, but this is like What one part of your entire marketing channel? I mean your marketing strategy. So we went from strategy strategy to channel and then now we're talking about like the actual pieces for that one Specific channel for one month. So like that's how micro this is

Ashley:

Mhm. Yes.

Safa:

And like

Ashley:

And

Safa:

within the micro.

Ashley:

they, uh, when you're planning out your content calendar, It is beneficial to note if you're going to be repurposing any pillar content. So pillar content is like main core content that you're creating that can then get dispersed out. So typically it's longer form content, video based content, podcasts, blogs, those longer pieces that can get sliced up into many, many content pieces, right? Uh, we always advocate for video content. You're going to get the most amount of repurposing out of your video based content. And it does wonders for the no like and trust factor. We can go into that in a deep dive if that's something that you guys are interested in, but we'll just leave it with video based content is king, queen. What do you want to call it? It is the top. It is the best of the best. Um, and then we can repurpose it out. But when you, when you break it up into those bite size phases, it's much easier to stay consistent because then instead of saying, I need to sit down and write, create all my content for, I think people could easily spend eight hours, eight plus hours on a month's worth of content. You only need to do this one step. And it makes it much more manageable, much, much easier to stay consistent because consistency without it might as well just turn the episode off. It doesn't matter. Like it's,

Safa:

So

Ashley:

to have consistency.

Safa:

for clarity on what you're saying. So you're saying that there's one or two ways to do this. One, you can sit there, make a content calendar, be like, I'm going to do eight posts. Then figure out the topics for those eight posts and then do captions, graphics, post on each 12 of those. And those could very much take you eight to 12 hours because it takes you one hour to do each thing or working kind of moving so that's like the most micros the smallest level you can get to or kind of going up a level creating this larger pillar piece which saying video is going to get you the most bang out for your buck like a longer form piece of content that could then be that one piece can be taken and made into 12.

Ashley:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. In the first step. You're coming up with eight different ideas, eight different topics, which is fine. There's not, not necessarily anything wrong with that, but I know a lot of people are constricted on time. They don't have a lot of time to sit there, nor do they like it. Like it's very draining and overwhelming. And that's why they've gotten into this rhythm of, well, let me just post something today, which. then I also tend to see it very, uh, educational focused, which your content can't just be educational based content. Like everyone's going to get really bored of that. It's going to be dry. Like at the end of the day, they don't necessarily just want five tips for this every single day. Like

Safa:

Yeah.

Ashley:

there needs to be other elements, other angles.

Safa:

this conversation really is like if you won It's taking a really long time to get your content out and or it's exhausting or it's draining or you don't have that full team to take on that load, then this is a good alternative to get that and still stay strategic because if you're just posting when you can, when you're inspired or things like that, you lose the benefit of And when you lose that, you're just going to be putting things out there that aren't going to be all working in the same direction. You're doing all this effort that aren't going to compound in the way you want to, which nine times out of 10, that's going to be for sales. And you're putting an effort for something that maybe eventually might give you the impact you want instead of really like being, intentional about what you're trying to get out there. And you want the strategy. You want to do it together. You want it all to work together. You don't necessarily have the time to do all of that at this lower level because you don't have the team. You don't have the time. You hate doing it. Period. Like this is one way to do it to get the benefits of all of that and cut out the time and the overwhelm on it.

Ashley:

Yeah. Yeah. Cause then you can look at the whole month and say, this is how, this is the content that is going out. Do I need to modify anything? Do I need to supplement anything? Right? Like, like you said, nine times out of 10, it's because we want sales. There's you're trying to book another client, sell this product. You have a launch coming up. And so when you look. When you're looking at that month, you don't just look up and say, Oh, I haven't talked about anything promotional in the last 30 days. You can say, I need to talk about this two times a week, or I need to post,

Safa:

Yeah.

Ashley:

I need to write out this hard sales post once a week. I need a total of four of them so that when I launch on X date, it's not a surprise to your audience. Like you've been warming up to it. It's easier to look at everything holistically and. make sure that everything is moving in the direction that you want it to move. You've included everything that needs to be included versus wishing and hoping that you're going to remember everything. Because last episode, I couldn't remember what we talked about 30 minutes ago. How on earth am I possibly going to remember what I posted on the first of this month, you know?

Safa:

Exactly.

Ashley:

Yeah.

Safa:

So it's like, this is actually what it means to repurpose content is to take it and make it into more other things and still being strategic in it instead of just like, Oh, take this old thing and repost it and maybe change it up a little, which like you should always change it up a little. I know some people don't, but like that's a conversation for a different day. but like taking something and. making it into something else to still be strategic about it and get those, get all those efforts.

Ashley:

And it really cuts back on the mental load too. When you're repurposing content like that, like you don't have to think about it. You don't have to come up with a new idea. You don't have to, I mean, when you're trying to come up with 30 new ideas versus two or three new ideas,

Safa:

Mm hmm.

Ashley:

which. I don't know if you're any, if you're like me, then you could just, once you get going on something like you could write a very long

Safa:

Mm hmm.

Ashley:

of content when you're really tapped into it. And that's the other, that's something that I wanted to mention because I know that there's going to be someone say, well, this person does their content when they're inspired and it works really well and they make a lot of money, yada, yada. The reason why that works for them is because they are very in tune with their marketing strategy and their content strategy. They know very well what their unique value proposition is. They know very well who their ideal client is. They know very well what their problem is that they're solving and the solution, the transformation and the benefits when you get super clear on that, yes, it becomes much easier for you to just write inspired content and still sell out your launches and do all of these things, but the vast majority of business owners are not that in tune with their content strategy.

Safa:

And I think one very distinct thing on that is they're constantly always only selling the same thing to the same people. It, like, that part, they might have different iterations of their offer or anything like that, it's usually for the same exact people. In the same space of their buyer journey with the same problem and that's like, that is their brand and it's, it probably took them a while to get there where they're just like living, breathing their brand and their one specific solution. And if that's not your business model, it's going to be a lot harder to do that just on the fly.

Ashley:

Um, and if you feel like your content isn't performing, you're not getting the reach, it's hard to generate leads. Don't try to just write inspired content.

Safa:

you need to do the back end data work, the technical stuff, one, figure out what they actually want and need, and if you're talking to the people that actually align with what you're offering, how the people that fit for your offer, how they're talking, what they're receiving, what they're saying, what they're doing, then, Put all that into motion and test it out and see what resonate, what doesn't, what converts, what doesn't convert and do it for enough time and then change, keep changing and trying something out till something hits. And which is probably what all these inspired people did. And then when they got something that hit, they just stuck with just that one thing forever until it stopped working. And they're like, no, I don't know how to run my business. But guess what? Go back to the beginning and do it again.

Ashley:

Yup.

Safa:

you, if you know how to do that, you can just always do it.

Ashley:

Cause you have that process. You have the systems in place. Click up is built out.

Safa:

Yes.

Ashley:

statuses, all the automations. Um, but I will say if you do have something come up that you're like, wow, I feel really passionate about this in this moment. I don't have time to record a whole video, whatever it is. Um, I used to just record voice notes for myself and then transcribe them the next time I went to go work on my content with otter. ai. I love that transcription because you just play it really quick in front of the computer and then it gives you a whole transcription. So that could be a.

Safa:

smart.

Ashley:

Yeah, it's a save it. Don't just let the thought go.

Safa:

you know, we love AI. We use

Ashley:

Oh, yeah.

Safa:

to like, I don't want it to be like, oh yeah, we have social, all our, all like our work is AI. No, we definitely use it as a tool for expediting things and getting things to a point quicker. kind of bring in, because I think there's an expertise that needs to go into using AI, how you use it, what you use it for, and feeding it in, like, what the information that's in your brain, letting it synthesize it into something, and then putting more expertise onto it to deliver it, but, like, not having to, letting it synthesize you really does save a lot of time.

Ashley:

And so to wrap this up really quick, we went over the four different phases that I would recommend for your content creation, put it into bite sized pieces. If those specific phases don't work for you, do whatever does work for you. Just make it bite size. Try to just allocate a little bit of time every week to it. Um, but we do have a bundle for you. If you would like all of this just written out for you so that you can follow a step by step process, utilizing video based content to repurpose into those smaller pieces, we'll link it in the show notes called the AI content bundle. I know it's a very creative title at the moment, but it gets the point across.

Safa:

inside the bundle have very creative names.

Ashley:

They are very fun. We had a lot of fun creating

Safa:

did.

Ashley:

the branding and the marketing for all of this, but, um, check it out because it is very helpful. It's the same process that we use with, um, with our video podcast here at the business millennials, repurposing it into all of the different channels. And it really has cut back significantly on the amount of time it takes us every month to market the business. Um, With expanding the marketing channels

Safa:

Mm

Ashley:

consistently. So

Safa:

Yeah,

Ashley:

it's our own process inside.

Safa:

so in there you'll get one, it's like total brainstorming, how to come up with all these ideas that you need that align with your strategy. Doing that and then recording one to two hour long video, how to do that. And then taking that and using AI in. a great way to do that expediting. You don't have to use it, but you can. We told you how to do it in there, uh, to help you make all of that into bite size. Pieces and put your own touch on it and all of that, and then get it out. And that could be for one channel or it can be like for us on like five channels and it's all just to one, get it out there consistently. Two, you're only really coming up for topics for a video. Or two or three, however long you want to do it. And then getting it everywhere where it is cohesive. You're building the brand. You're have the same message. is cohesive and standard, and you're just constantly being so consistent with what you're saying and putting out there it being million hours of work.

Ashley:

Cause it could easily rack up to be that. I mean, I've heard some people take three hours on a single Instagram post and I, my heart broke. I was like, Oh my gosh, how do you have time for anything else? It doesn't need to take that long. I promise.

Safa:

I would only be able to do that at like 2 AM because that's the only time I would have three hours. This is like SOPs,

Ashley:

So we have really given you a legitimate shortcut. I know sometimes we're talking about templates and shortcuts being like a bad thing, but this is, this really is a refined stream. Yes. It's an SOP, a refined, streamlined process for all of your content every single month. So check it out.

Safa:

a process.

And that wraps up another episode of the business millennials podcast. We hope you found this conversation, thought provoking, inspirational, and helps you make a larger impact with your business. Growth is not just about profits or revenue. It's a journey of personal development, contribution, and bettering ourselves in society. Our challenge for you take at least one key lesson from our time together today that you can apply, not just to your business. But your relationships, creative expression, wellbeing, and personal evolution to, we appreciate you tuning in. If you enjoyed this show, we invite you to pay it forward, share it with an entrepreneur, creative student, or community leader who needs an infusion of insight or inspiration right now. And make sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. So you never miss a single episode. And if you like what you heard, leave us a five star review. See you next week.