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Amber: 15 Ground Rules for Content

we will finish with my 15 ground rules for great content. Now if you haven't read CC Chapman's book, by the way he was here on his co author and Handley. They wrote a book called Content Rules. That is absolutely awesome. So if you want to understand, the INS announce of content there even better at it than than than I could ever hope to be. So go read that because there's there's Aton of great information in there about all the tactics and strategies around content. But these are my 15 rules. The 1st 1 of course, is to have a voice but have inaccessible one. And I learned this kind of the hard way because I wanted to talk about big, important, sophisticated business concepts. But you need to be talking to people at the level that they're coming into you at. So I need to be able to talk in a relatable way where my community feels like they can reach out and talk with me, that I'm not talking at them, that they're talking. They're in a conversation with me and having an accessible voice...

that's welcoming, open, warm and lets people know that you think that you're part of a community not talking down to them from above, I think is actually a key to building really great content, cause you want people to feel like they belong to something. Definitely keep it simple. I giving you a lot of ideas. But don't don't try to go do all 12 at once. If a blogger is something that interests you, focus there. If building a video channel is something that interests you, focus there. But try to keep your content simple and straightforward because as much as I tell you that there still is a place for storytelling in long form content, the bulk of the majority of our time is consuming snacks of content, little pieces of information that we sort of two on throughout the day. And I always have 75 browser tabs open on my computer because you have been the rabbit hole of the Internet. I do that all the time so people consuming content will do so better if they get to do it in smaller Tunks for the most part. So keep it really simple and keep it concise so that you give people lots of opportunity to two on that, and then go find something else. The 3rd 1 is to think adjacent. This one I have to explain a little bit. When we think about content, we tend to think very literally, about creating content that talks about what we dio our services are products in our business snore? That's not the kind of stuff that people are gonna read on a regular basis. They might need Read it the first time when they need that information, but it's not gonna keep them coming back. So when I say think of Jason. What I mean is think two or three levels above and outside your brand in your industry to things that are related to what you dio. So for you in health and fitness, it could be everything from eating toe exercise to all of those kinds of things. There's so many adjacent topics there. But the the idea is to think over and above just your immediate universe to create content that would relate to your audience in those other dimensions we talked about. So if your audience is made up of health and fitness people but is largely moms talk to them about mom stuff. And if you're talking with pet owners and they're also a bunch of business owners, talk about pets and business stuff, so you start to think adjacent to your brand, and you get lots of new and fresh ideas for bigger content. I think we've hammered this point to death, but being useful is again the single most important thing that you can dio with the content you create. That means useful in a lot of ways That doesn't mean necessarily education and information. Of the only kinds of useful content like we talked about, entertainment is useful or amusing. Someone is useful. Introducing them to somebody new can be useful. But the whole idea is we're trying to give the world leg up here, and we're trying to show that we care about more than just the transaction of my selling my services to you. I care about being a business that you want to interact with on an ongoing basis for the long term focus. We're back to this, and I want to make sure to emphasize it one more time because when you're creating content, we your audience can tell if you're all over the map. What we love our predictable, consistent sources of content or no, we're gonna get something amazing. So Brain Picker focuses on curating amazing content. Copy Blogger focuses on content marketing So that's what I know and predicted can get from those places and love every minute of it. There's a guy called bad Astronomer who is he calls himself a professional skeptic, but what he really is is a scientist is really super smart, and he does a lot of talking about the science community and astronomy, and he's incredibly focused on his blogged and on Twitter, and I know that's where I'm gonna find him. So he directs his content to those places, and I know that he's doing really well because it's working. One of my favorite points is about creating evergreen content, and by that I mean content has a shelf life. And if we're writing about things that are super trendy or super of the moment, eventually those things were going to be out of date. So I've written content about social media tools, and six months later I had to rewrite it. So what you want to do is try to create pieces of content that can live on for a really, really long time and continue to be relevant that way. That thing can make it back into all of the work that you do. And when people continue to share it over time, it's always going to feel current. Creating evergreen content is not as easy as it sounds, because it's amazing. When you start to write something or produce a video, you start going. Wow, there's a lot of information in here that's kind of specific to this moment in time. So evergreen content usually hinges on ideas and concepts that that kind of endure everything else that you dio for me talking about strategy is always going to be evergreen because those kinds of things don't particularly change on a day to day basis. And mostly I can talk to you about the fundamentals of strategy. And if you read that six months a year, two years from now, it's still going to be pretty relevant. So when you're creating content for your business, think about the business. You want to be six months, 12 months, two years from now, what kind of content would that business be creating and build around that when you write long form content, think of things that are gonna be shared over and over again. And then I'm gonna live on the Internet for a long time, so create them as big picture and evergreen as you can. Definitely don't fuss over length. Well, though, we just had a conversation around word count. But what I'll tell you is don't stress about this right? What's comfortable If a five minute video feels better than a three minute one do the five minute video length is one of those things that's completely relative. It's totally subjective. I might sit for a five minute video. Somebody else might think they needed 10. So this kind of thing gets kind of tossed around a lot in social. You must do block post this many words. You have to do videos that are less than two minutes you have to do. There are much bigger things to worry about in the world than how long your blood posts are so right until your idea is expressed. And then stop writing. Yeah, have some imagination. Oh, if I had a dollar for every piece of content that I saw that was basically just borrowing somebody else's idea and redoing it in a different way. I would be rich and not here because I wouldn't have to work anymore. So have some imagination. Be creative. Don't be afraid to try something that nobody else has done before. You know, we get a little bit fixated on the idea of what have other people done. Give me some examples of businesses in my industry that did this and show me what they did. My issue with things like case studies and case examples is that there never a road map to show you what works there simply an example of something that worked for somebody else. And I actually think they can hinder us a little bit, because if we get too mired and looking for examples of other people's work, we have then already boxed ourselves in and said this These are the boundaries. This is what I have to work in, because this is what other people are doing. So I encourage you, especially if you're new. To creating content is to let your imagination run wild. Who cares what other people are doing? Do something that's useful and suitable for your business, even if it's never been done before, because the kinds of things that Carrie and stick and resonate with online audiences are the things that are different and unique and that have never been done before. So when you're trying to create something, don't be afraid to be different. Always make people feel welcome no matter where they are on the Web. And this is actually harder to do than you might think, because it requires having a very accessible human voice. But it also involves creating an environment where you x, where you're expected to be present and respond and give back, and that takes time and effort. But you want people to feel like they are not only encouraged to be a part of your community, but they're encouraged to curl up, put their feet on the furniture and stay a while. Because if we're in business and we're encouraging people to come and build a community because we want them to eventually buy our stuff once they buy something, we can't forget that they're still important, so nurturing that people are welcome to come and hang out any time they want in our virtual and online communities is so critical to making people come back again and again, make people feel welcome in your world, and they will come and hang out and be part of it because it's so rare. Don't reinvent the wheel if you wrote six or seven great block posts, repurpose those into an e book and then have somebody take the high points of the E book and make a podcast and then tape your slide presentation to make a video of the same thing. So I mean the great content creators out there right now do this artistically and beautifully. So if you take if you've worked so hard on developing one piece of text based content, make it visual and vice versa. If you've worked hard on creating an amazing visual piece of content, find a way to tell a story narrative around that and published it in text. There's so many ways you can chunk up contents, do it in little snippets and big snippets. But don't be afraid to take the same idea and build on it in the whole bunch of different ways, because chances are I'm if I see your block post. I may not also see the video or the slide deck or the Pinterest page, so you're appealing to a bunch of different audiences with the same idea. And you're also providing a really consistent theme behind your work. That says, I specialize in this and you're giving people lots of different pieces of that to take home with them. Consistency always always, always trumps volume and your Valium. I don't mean loud, I mean quantity. So it's much more important toe blogged once a month regularly and do it well. Then it is to block every day and hate it, because if you get in the trap of saying I have to, I have to put a video out every week and then that becomes a major tour. Those videos are going to start to not be so awesome. So do something that you can actually realistically commit Teoh on Do It with regularity. When I first started blogging, I blogged once a week, that was it, and eventually I got to two times a week. I never got more than three or so, So it's not just a matter of how much stuff you produce, it's a matter of that, you do it on a consistent basis so that you're always sort of presence in the world and people know that you're there, but that you don't have to be loud and frantic and all over the place. Consistency always wins, of course, storylines cell, which means that if you've got stories to tell in your business, that is where you should be focused on your content. Storylines of the things that connect us is people, and we don't necessarily make the distinction that that story is happening as part of a business or as part of a blogged. We love stories because they're the things that help us relate to other humans there. The thing is, we see ourselves in, we can reflect ourselves and other people's work. Storylines always sell. And if you're giving me to advertisements and one is a list of features and benefits of a product and the other one is a story about someone, which one do you think is more compelling? So the story is always gonna win out there. When I when all else fails, look for a story to tell, and your content will always show that we made this point once before, but I want to re emphasize it. You need both awesome content and people to give that content to, so it's important to take the time to build both of those things in your world. Now, don't go out and buy Twitter followers, for heaven's sake or anything like that. But do you spend time worrying about creating amazing stuff but also cultivating a great community to share that great stuff with? Those things are symbiotic. They build on each other so you can't have a great community without great content and without great content. The community is not gonna stick around, so you got to kind of do both of those things. But don't I don't believe that one is more important than the other, because you do need both. Always, always be adapting, which means that if it isn't working, change it. If it's not any fun anymore, stop doing it. If it's working great, do more of it, but always adapt to what's happening. The Web is one of the fastest, most insane, out of control, chaotic things in the world. You will never harness it, embrace the chaos. Go in there and going. Okay, I'm going to try this. And if it doesn't work, I'm gonna try something different. The only thing that's irrevocable in life is death. The rest of it we can undo. So if you're doing something in your business that you're totally worried about, don't take a breather. It's OK. You put something out there and your email campaign didn't do what you wanted it to. Dio try again the next time. There's very few things that we can't redo, undo or rework. And content should be kind of a constant experience where we're putting it out there getting feedback, getting creative ideas, doing it all over again and putting it back out into the world. So it should be a great cycle now, given everything I've told you, there's one last, most important point that if you don't remember any of the other 15 rules, I want you to remember this one. There are no rules. There are never any rules. All of this stuff is this crazy, fast moving. No, there's no rules. Your business is not. My business is not her business, so when it comes down to it, the only thing that works for you is what works for you, and it doesn't matter what anybody else says. It doesn't matter what anybody else has done or tells you. You need to make your own rules, and you need to decide what works beautifully for you, your circumstances, your personality and your business. So, above all, hang the rules because there aren't any.