ο»ΏWendy McCallum (00:02.826)
Hello there, welcome back to the coaching edge. If you're listening to this podcast, when it drops, it is January. So welcome to 2024. I wanted to talk today about a topic that I think is probably really timely for most coaches, which is content creation sort of do's and don'ts. So we're going to talk about some of the things that are really important to avoid when you are creating content for programs, whether it's for a membership, a live group program, or for
a self-guided program on your website, or even for resources that you're uploading to your website for your one-on-one coaching clients to access. There are some really good guidelines around this that a lot of coaches just don't think about. And I know that for several years, I didn't think about this. And this is something that I figured out through trial and error, but it's now like, honest to goodness, something that I probably say every week in the BBB, which is my business building bootcamp to the coaches that I support in there.
And it is around the idea of making sure that whatever content you're creating is as multi-purpose and flexible as possible. So we're going to talk about that today. Before we get into that, just a couple of things about content creation. I know it's January. A lot of coaches are creating content this month. You might be launching something new. You might be thinking and getting excited about what you're going to offer in this new year of coaching. All of that's amazing. Hopefully you can take what you learn from today and incorporate.
incorporated into the content creation that you are currently doing or that you are planning on doing. The thing I wanted to spend just a couple minutes on before I get into like the don'ts around all of this is this thing that I see happening all the time with coaches and it's definitely a trap that I have fallen into, but it's something that I had to get over and I had to get over it fast because it was leading to basically a state of paralysis for me, which was impacting
bottom line, it was making it really hard for me to make money. And that was this whole idea that it needs to be perfect before I put it out there. So this, I could do a whole podcast episode on, but I just want to touch on this because if you are in the process of creating some new content for this new year, this may be something that is holding you back. It's taking, it's making it.
Wendy McCallum (02:23.81)
it's making it harder for you to finalize content and it's delaying the start or launch time of your program, which means it's delaying the start time of your profit. So this is the whole adage of like, something is better than nothing, perfection is the enemy of good. And basically that if you have this perfectionist attitude around the content that you're trying to create, that you are going to get
stuck in motion and not be actually taking very much action. So I see this a lot in the boot camp. I see a lot of coaches, especially newer coaches trying to create content for the first time, and they're re-recording videos like a hundred times. Because, you know, oh, in that video, this hair was out of place, or in that video, they misspoke, or they said, um, a couple of times, or, you know, they didn't, they forgot to say this one little thing.
I always say to my coaches, five times max for recording. So, and that really is like a stretch as you get better and better at this, you will find that like, you can reduce that to maybe three times max that you give yourself for re-recording content. I never record things more than three times. I will just choose the best of the three. If I get to three and I'm like not feeling like one of them is one that I like totally nailed it in. And the reason for that is that first of a couple of things, first of all,
you're never gonna get it done perfectly, ever. Second of all, people don't expect perfect in video and audio content. Like the standards have shifted over the course of the last five years around this. I'm convinced of it. And I think it's because of social media. People are accustomed to live, to live posts, to live content, which obviously is not gonna be perfect because it's not scripted and everything is just a little bit more casual. So I think there's a lot more forgiveness around this than maybe there was 10 or 15 years ago.
The other piece of this though, is that when you're not perfect, you are real. And it's your realness that helps to build that like no trust. So if you're trying to show up perfectly, you're probably gonna show up a sort of a stilted, frozen version of yourself, which is not gonna help you create any real relationship with the people who are digesting the, and viewing the content. So,
Wendy McCallum (04:45.282)
I actually really encourage you to just embrace the imperfections in the content because that's all the stuff you have a little sneeze, you know, or your cat walks across the desk. Those are the types of moments that can actually add a little levity to a video to a video lesson for example, or to a post and can actually create that feeling with of sort of resonance with your audience where they're like, Oh, that happens to her too. Or Oh, look at that. She's not perfect.
That's the other thing to remember around all of this. The last thing, and this is the thing that I think is the most important to remember, because for me, the reason why I'm dissatisfied with a piece of content most often that I've created is because I forgot to say something. So I'll get to the end of it and I'll think, oh, it said everything I wanted to say except this little thing. And when that happens, I'm drawn to rerecord it. Like I'm pulled to rerecord it. I wanna just get everything in.
But what I remind myself all the time and I wanna remind you of is that nobody knows what you didn't say. And this is actually really helpful as a bit of a mantra around live content and recording content for programs. Nobody knows the little thing you didn't say. If you are putting this piece of content up as part of a lesson, you can add the extra bit in the copy that goes with the video lesson, for example. So if you're uploading this as part of a course on like a platform like Kajabi, for example,
You can, there's a space there for a text version of the lesson and you can add whatever the little point is that you didn't include in the video lesson underneath. But you can also just not include it, unless it's the critical thing, which probably you didn't forget, you probably didn't forget the critical thing. But unless it's the critical thing, then you don't even need to mention it because nobody knows that you meant to mention it. They're not gonna notice it's missing.
So those are the few little points that I wanted to just throw out around creating new content as a course creator or program creator coach. Now I wanna talk about the mistakes that people make that I hope I can prevent you from making that will make your content really difficult to repurpose, which is a key piece of an efficient coaching practice in business. It's to always be thinking when you create content that content might be used somewhere else.
Wendy McCallum (07:08.194)
So here are the things that people do that keep them, that set them up for a situation where they can't easily repurpose the content. Number one, people reference the name of the program in the video or audio content. So you start your video off with, welcome to the 2024 Drink Less Challenge, right?
If you say that at the beginning of your video, now you have something that has branded this video as part of a particular program. Now, yes, you might be able to edit that out if you wanted to use that particular piece of content somewhere else down the line, but that is often much harder than you think it's gonna be to just edit out a little mention of the program. Also, I find that if people do this once, they do it twice. So you might also get into the habit of doing that.
find yourself mentioning the January 2024 drink less challenge at some point in the middle of your video, right? So don't reference anything to do with the program or the brand that the content is being created for. The second mistake that people make is that they number the video somehow. So they provide there's like a number associated with it. And it might be the lesson number. So it might be, you know, so for lesson three of this video, we're going to talk about X, right?
Um, that will, um, make it really difficult to repurpose that in another, in another course, but it also means that if you want to reorder your lessons after you've recorded all this content, cause you think to yourself, Ooh, this would flow a lot better and make more sense. If this lesson became, became before that lesson, that that's really, really challenging to do. Cause now you've got the number of the lesson in there. People also do this with days. So they might say, you know, day one or day two or day three of the, of the challenge or the program.
And sometimes they actually reference like days of the week, right? So it might be happy Wednesday or something like that. So you just want to stay away from anything that actually that adds like a date or a number to this lesson that makes it difficult for you to repurpose that content later.
Wendy McCallum (09:18.018)
The other mistake that people make that is connected to this is that they refer to other lessons. So, and I've done this a million times and it is such a pain when I realize I've done this because it makes it really impossible to repurpose the content if I've said somewhere in the video, remember how yesterday we talked about X or, you know, when I did the video on such and such, I told you that X, right? Now I've got another video that's somehow connected to this video that the person who's watching it needs to understand this video, right?
So you wanna stay away from referencing other pieces of content. The goal is to make this standalone. So something that you can literally take and you can plunk it into another program down the line or you can use it elsewhere on a blog, for example, on your website or as part of social media post or some other program that you do down the line, you can take this and use it in a variety of different ways because the better you get at creating content,
that is multi-purpose, the less content you need to create and content creation takes a lot of time. So stay away from dates, stay away from program names, stay away from days of the week or lesson numbers and stay away from referencing other lessons in the program because all of those things will get you stuck. The other thing, and this is just really little but I've seen it happen where coaches have made the mistake of putting something in the background.
makes it difficult to repurpose. So for example, you might think, oh, I've got this really great cute name for my program, and I'm going to put that logo in the background of all my videos on the wall or, oh, this is this is a Christmas thing. So I'm going to wear this Santa hat. These are obviously extreme examples, but it happens. And then you're stuck with content that only works in the month of December, right? Because you wore the Christmas hat or that only works with this program because the course name is right behind you. So
Little things I know, but honestly, I have made all of these mistakes and it has led to me being really frustrated down the line because I couldn't reuse easily a piece of content. Now what I've done is I've gotten into the habit of making sure that whatever content I create is really flexible. And I do that by following those guidelines that I just set out for you. So I think that's the first thing I want to talk about this. The second thing here around creating content, that's a really helpful little trick.
Wendy McCallum (11:44.242)
is when you're saving your content, which you should do. So you wanna have all of your videos that you create as a coach somewhere together. Obviously you can organize them by sub files based on topics or programs or whatever, but you wanna have all your videos in a place where it's easily searchable. It's only gonna be easily searchable though, if you save that content, if it's video or audio content, if you save it using a name, a file name that actually references the subject of the video. So...
When you're saving this stuff, don't save it as day one of finding freedom or as lesson one or whatever, or with the date that you recorded the video, save it as, for example, willpower, right? Now, when you go and you're like, oh, I know I did a video on willpower that's great that I could use in this course that I'm creating right now, you can just search for willpower in that file folder and you will find that video a whole lot easier.
than if you saved it as like lesson four of the Finding Freedom programs. Now you gotta go watch all the videos to try to figure out which one's which. So that is also a really great little, I think, tip around creating content is to make sure that when you're storing it somewhere separately, because of course it'll be uploaded to whatever platform you're using to disseminate it, but you also wanna keep it somewhere so that it's easy for you to go and grab it so that you can create down the road
a new program where you have maybe some new content, but also some of this pre-recorded content that fits perfectly with whatever it is that you're trying to address with this particular program. Okay, so how can you reuse this content? What are all the ways that you can reuse content? Well, I've talked and or intimated many different ways.
The first way, and I think the biggest way that you might repurpose content is in other courses. So you might take this content down the line and use it to create a new course. You might take the course that you have right now, which maybe is a course that has like a live coaching component to it. And you might decide to offer it between the times when you're able to coach it live. You might wanna offer it as a standalone, self-guided program without live coaching. Again.
Wendy McCallum (14:01.718)
You got to be careful what you say in the videos. Because if you say, if you have any questions on this, just ask me that in our live coaching session this week, then you have branded that content as content that goes with a live coaching program and it's hard to convert it into a standalone program. So just all little things to be thinking about. And again,
I have made every one of these mistakes, which is why I'm on here. And that's the whole point of this Coaching Edge podcast is to help you avoid the mistakes that I've made so that you can get where I am faster, right? So you can take this preexisting content and you can use it to create other programs down the line. You can take the course that you have and convert it from a coached course into a self-guided course without coaching, but you can also use this content.
for social media purposes, or you can add it, upload it to your blog. This is a great way to get a regular blog post. Video posts are great on blogs. And so you can take this content and you can upload it on your blog and you can add some SEO search terms and tags, and then it can help you to get, you know, better organic traffic on your website over time as you continually add to that blog. So why reinvent the wheel, guys? Start creating content.
that is easily flexible, easily repurposed so that you can use it in other places. Social media is another great way to use this content. Sometimes you might be creating really short video content. I really, I recommend that. So whenever you're creating course content, try to make it as brief as possible. People do not have attention spans for 45 minute videos. They're not interested in that. You're much better off to give your content to dole it out in bite-sized portions. That's why this podcast never goes over a half an hour.
It's for this exact reason. It's because people are busy and they don't have time for that. And also their expectations have shifted with social media. People are less likely to set aside the time to sit down and watch a really long lesson. So keep your content short. That's a good guideline. If you keep it short enough, you might actually be able to repurpose it directly to social media. If you haven't done, made any of those mistakes in terms of branding it to the program, right?
Wendy McCallum (16:11.862)
Or you might want to take a longer piece of video content that you've created and upload it to one of these amazing new platforms that will take a longer piece of content and create shorter form content from it that you can then use on social media. So there are a bunch of different platforms out there that do that. Kajabi actually has a creator studio that they're still, I think, in beta on that at the time of the recording of this podcast, but at some point that will be live for everybody who uses Kajabi.
That allows you to upload a longer video and it will create a bunch of shorter video clips from it. You can also use Descript, you can use Get Munch. Oh my gosh, so many different AI tools now that help with this. But again, it's a whole lot easier and more efficient if the original piece of content is really clean and stands alone, right?
So how do you start a piece of content if you're not going to be referencing the date of the program or the lesson number or what you talked about yesterday? You wanna start it always with a strong statement of subject or a hook around the subject. So what do I mean by that? Let's say you're gonna do a video on willpower for your program. You wanna start it with, let's talk about willpower.
And the reason for that is that if you do repurpose that somewhere else, like on social media or on a blog, you are immediately telling people what the video is about to pique their interest. If it's getting uploaded to a course, there are probably going to be other clues around the video that tell people what the video is about, right? Like the title and the description underneath it, maybe the lesson or the worksheet that goes with it. So people are going to be clear that today's lesson is about willpower.
But if you want the content to be multi-purpose, then you wanna start it with a clear statement as to what you're gonna be talking about. So today I'm talking about willpower or let's talk about willpower. You could also use a hook, which is really just a more interesting way to introduce the topic that peaks people's interest. So it might be like something like, ever wonder why it's so easy to go to the gym in the morning, but it's like pulling teeth to get there at night? The answer is willpower, right? So...
Wendy McCallum (18:19.986)
Again, just sort of setting that up with something that's a little more interesting premise that might pique people's interest so they keep listening to it. Okay, I feel like I've jammed this through this podcast episode with tips around content creation, specifically around creating content that is actually multipurpose.
which if you're in the process of creating a program right now, you may already be doing, which is great. If you're not doing it, start from this moment on. You don't need to go back and rerecord the content you've already recorded that doesn't do that. Just from this moment on, start doing it. Always down the road, if there's time, you can go back and rerecord these things so that they're not specific to the program or a day. But if you haven't done that yet, that's okay. This is a learning curve.
Just adopt this as your new strategy and goal going forward whenever you create new content. And I promise you, this is gonna serve you. Okay, have a great week, two weeks, I guess. And I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks with another episode of The Coaching Edge. Thanks for listening.
Wendy McCallum (00:02.826)
Hello there, welcome back to the coaching edge. If you're listening to this podcast, when it drops, it is January. So welcome to 2024. I wanted to talk today about a topic that I think is probably really timely for most coaches, which is content creation sort of do's and don'ts. So we're going to talk about some of the things that are really important to avoid when you are creating content for programs, whether it's for a membership, a live group program, or for
a self-guided program on your website, or even for resources that you're uploading to your website for your one-on-one coaching clients to access. There are some really good guidelines around this that a lot of coaches just don't think about. And I know that for several years, I didn't think about this. And this is something that I figured out through trial and error, but it's now like, honest to goodness, something that I probably say every week in the BBB, which is my business building bootcamp to the coaches that I support in there.
And it is around the idea of making sure that whatever content you're creating is as multi-purpose and flexible as possible. So we're going to talk about that today. Before we get into that, just a couple of things about content creation. I know it's January. A lot of coaches are creating content this month. You might be launching something new. You might be thinking and getting excited about what you're going to offer in this new year of coaching. All of that's amazing. Hopefully you can take what you learn from today and incorporate.
incorporated into the content creation that you are currently doing or that you are planning on doing. The thing I wanted to spend just a couple minutes on before I get into like the don'ts around all of this is this thing that I see happening all the time with coaches and it's definitely a trap that I have fallen into, but it's something that I had to get over and I had to get over it fast because it was leading to basically a state of paralysis for me, which was impacting
bottom line, it was making it really hard for me to make money. And that was this whole idea that it needs to be perfect before I put it out there. So this, I could do a whole podcast episode on, but I just want to touch on this because if you are in the process of creating some new content for this new year, this may be something that is holding you back. It's taking, it's making it.
Wendy McCallum (02:23.81)
it's making it harder for you to finalize content and it's delaying the start or launch time of your program, which means it's delaying the start time of your profit. So this is the whole adage of like, something is better than nothing, perfection is the enemy of good. And basically that if you have this perfectionist attitude around the content that you're trying to create, that you are going to get
stuck in motion and not be actually taking very much action. So I see this a lot in the boot camp. I see a lot of coaches, especially newer coaches trying to create content for the first time, and they're re-recording videos like a hundred times. Because, you know, oh, in that video, this hair was out of place, or in that video, they misspoke, or they said, um, a couple of times, or, you know, they didn't, they forgot to say this one little thing.
I always say to my coaches, five times max for recording. So, and that really is like a stretch as you get better and better at this, you will find that like, you can reduce that to maybe three times max that you give yourself for re-recording content. I never record things more than three times. I will just choose the best of the three. If I get to three and I'm like not feeling like one of them is one that I like totally nailed it in. And the reason for that is that first of a couple of things, first of all,
you're never gonna get it done perfectly, ever. Second of all, people don't expect perfect in video and audio content. Like the standards have shifted over the course of the last five years around this. I'm convinced of it. And I think it's because of social media. People are accustomed to live, to live posts, to live content, which obviously is not gonna be perfect because it's not scripted and everything is just a little bit more casual. So I think there's a lot more forgiveness around this than maybe there was 10 or 15 years ago.
The other piece of this though, is that when you're not perfect, you are real. And it's your realness that helps to build that like no trust. So if you're trying to show up perfectly, you're probably gonna show up a sort of a stilted, frozen version of yourself, which is not gonna help you create any real relationship with the people who are digesting the, and viewing the content. So,
Wendy McCallum (04:45.282)
I actually really encourage you to just embrace the imperfections in the content because that's all the stuff you have a little sneeze, you know, or your cat walks across the desk. Those are the types of moments that can actually add a little levity to a video to a video lesson for example, or to a post and can actually create that feeling with of sort of resonance with your audience where they're like, Oh, that happens to her too. Or Oh, look at that. She's not perfect.
That's the other thing to remember around all of this. The last thing, and this is the thing that I think is the most important to remember, because for me, the reason why I'm dissatisfied with a piece of content most often that I've created is because I forgot to say something. So I'll get to the end of it and I'll think, oh, it said everything I wanted to say except this little thing. And when that happens, I'm drawn to rerecord it. Like I'm pulled to rerecord it. I wanna just get everything in.
But what I remind myself all the time and I wanna remind you of is that nobody knows what you didn't say. And this is actually really helpful as a bit of a mantra around live content and recording content for programs. Nobody knows the little thing you didn't say. If you are putting this piece of content up as part of a lesson, you can add the extra bit in the copy that goes with the video lesson, for example. So if you're uploading this as part of a course on like a platform like Kajabi, for example,
You can, there's a space there for a text version of the lesson and you can add whatever the little point is that you didn't include in the video lesson underneath. But you can also just not include it, unless it's the critical thing, which probably you didn't forget, you probably didn't forget the critical thing. But unless it's the critical thing, then you don't even need to mention it because nobody knows that you meant to mention it. They're not gonna notice it's missing.
So those are the few little points that I wanted to just throw out around creating new content as a course creator or program creator coach. Now I wanna talk about the mistakes that people make that I hope I can prevent you from making that will make your content really difficult to repurpose, which is a key piece of an efficient coaching practice in business. It's to always be thinking when you create content that content might be used somewhere else.
Wendy McCallum (07:08.194)
So here are the things that people do that keep them, that set them up for a situation where they can't easily repurpose the content. Number one, people reference the name of the program in the video or audio content. So you start your video off with, welcome to the 2024 Drink Less Challenge, right?
If you say that at the beginning of your video, now you have something that has branded this video as part of a particular program. Now, yes, you might be able to edit that out if you wanted to use that particular piece of content somewhere else down the line, but that is often much harder than you think it's gonna be to just edit out a little mention of the program. Also, I find that if people do this once, they do it twice. So you might also get into the habit of doing that.
find yourself mentioning the January 2024 drink less challenge at some point in the middle of your video, right? So don't reference anything to do with the program or the brand that the content is being created for. The second mistake that people make is that they number the video somehow. So they provide there's like a number associated with it. And it might be the lesson number. So it might be, you know, so for lesson three of this video, we're going to talk about X, right?
Um, that will, um, make it really difficult to repurpose that in another, in another course, but it also means that if you want to reorder your lessons after you've recorded all this content, cause you think to yourself, Ooh, this would flow a lot better and make more sense. If this lesson became, became before that lesson, that that's really, really challenging to do. Cause now you've got the number of the lesson in there. People also do this with days. So they might say, you know, day one or day two or day three of the, of the challenge or the program.
And sometimes they actually reference like days of the week, right? So it might be happy Wednesday or something like that. So you just want to stay away from anything that actually that adds like a date or a number to this lesson that makes it difficult for you to repurpose that content later.
Wendy McCallum (09:18.018)
The other mistake that people make that is connected to this is that they refer to other lessons. So, and I've done this a million times and it is such a pain when I realize I've done this because it makes it really impossible to repurpose the content if I've said somewhere in the video, remember how yesterday we talked about X or, you know, when I did the video on such and such, I told you that X, right? Now I've got another video that's somehow connected to this video that the person who's watching it needs to understand this video, right?
So you wanna stay away from referencing other pieces of content. The goal is to make this standalone. So something that you can literally take and you can plunk it into another program down the line or you can use it elsewhere on a blog, for example, on your website or as part of social media post or some other program that you do down the line, you can take this and use it in a variety of different ways because the better you get at creating content,
that is multi-purpose, the less content you need to create and content creation takes a lot of time. So stay away from dates, stay away from program names, stay away from days of the week or lesson numbers and stay away from referencing other lessons in the program because all of those things will get you stuck. The other thing, and this is just really little but I've seen it happen where coaches have made the mistake of putting something in the background.
makes it difficult to repurpose. So for example, you might think, oh, I've got this really great cute name for my program, and I'm going to put that logo in the background of all my videos on the wall or, oh, this is this is a Christmas thing. So I'm going to wear this Santa hat. These are obviously extreme examples, but it happens. And then you're stuck with content that only works in the month of December, right? Because you wore the Christmas hat or that only works with this program because the course name is right behind you. So
Little things I know, but honestly, I have made all of these mistakes and it has led to me being really frustrated down the line because I couldn't reuse easily a piece of content. Now what I've done is I've gotten into the habit of making sure that whatever content I create is really flexible. And I do that by following those guidelines that I just set out for you. So I think that's the first thing I want to talk about this. The second thing here around creating content, that's a really helpful little trick.
Wendy McCallum (11:44.242)
is when you're saving your content, which you should do. So you wanna have all of your videos that you create as a coach somewhere together. Obviously you can organize them by sub files based on topics or programs or whatever, but you wanna have all your videos in a place where it's easily searchable. It's only gonna be easily searchable though, if you save that content, if it's video or audio content, if you save it using a name, a file name that actually references the subject of the video. So...
When you're saving this stuff, don't save it as day one of finding freedom or as lesson one or whatever, or with the date that you recorded the video, save it as, for example, willpower, right? Now, when you go and you're like, oh, I know I did a video on willpower that's great that I could use in this course that I'm creating right now, you can just search for willpower in that file folder and you will find that video a whole lot easier.
than if you saved it as like lesson four of the Finding Freedom programs. Now you gotta go watch all the videos to try to figure out which one's which. So that is also a really great little, I think, tip around creating content is to make sure that when you're storing it somewhere separately, because of course it'll be uploaded to whatever platform you're using to disseminate it, but you also wanna keep it somewhere so that it's easy for you to go and grab it so that you can create down the road
a new program where you have maybe some new content, but also some of this pre-recorded content that fits perfectly with whatever it is that you're trying to address with this particular program. Okay, so how can you reuse this content? What are all the ways that you can reuse content? Well, I've talked and or intimated many different ways.
The first way, and I think the biggest way that you might repurpose content is in other courses. So you might take this content down the line and use it to create a new course. You might take the course that you have right now, which maybe is a course that has like a live coaching component to it. And you might decide to offer it between the times when you're able to coach it live. You might wanna offer it as a standalone, self-guided program without live coaching. Again.
Wendy McCallum (14:01.718)
You got to be careful what you say in the videos. Because if you say, if you have any questions on this, just ask me that in our live coaching session this week, then you have branded that content as content that goes with a live coaching program and it's hard to convert it into a standalone program. So just all little things to be thinking about. And again,
I have made every one of these mistakes, which is why I'm on here. And that's the whole point of this Coaching Edge podcast is to help you avoid the mistakes that I've made so that you can get where I am faster, right? So you can take this preexisting content and you can use it to create other programs down the line. You can take the course that you have and convert it from a coached course into a self-guided course without coaching, but you can also use this content.
for social media purposes, or you can add it, upload it to your blog. This is a great way to get a regular blog post. Video posts are great on blogs. And so you can take this content and you can upload it on your blog and you can add some SEO search terms and tags, and then it can help you to get, you know, better organic traffic on your website over time as you continually add to that blog. So why reinvent the wheel, guys? Start creating content.
that is easily flexible, easily repurposed so that you can use it in other places. Social media is another great way to use this content. Sometimes you might be creating really short video content. I really, I recommend that. So whenever you're creating course content, try to make it as brief as possible. People do not have attention spans for 45 minute videos. They're not interested in that. You're much better off to give your content to dole it out in bite-sized portions. That's why this podcast never goes over a half an hour.
It's for this exact reason. It's because people are busy and they don't have time for that. And also their expectations have shifted with social media. People are less likely to set aside the time to sit down and watch a really long lesson. So keep your content short. That's a good guideline. If you keep it short enough, you might actually be able to repurpose it directly to social media. If you haven't done, made any of those mistakes in terms of branding it to the program, right?
Wendy McCallum (16:11.862)
Or you might want to take a longer piece of video content that you've created and upload it to one of these amazing new platforms that will take a longer piece of content and create shorter form content from it that you can then use on social media. So there are a bunch of different platforms out there that do that. Kajabi actually has a creator studio that they're still, I think, in beta on that at the time of the recording of this podcast, but at some point that will be live for everybody who uses Kajabi.
That allows you to upload a longer video and it will create a bunch of shorter video clips from it. You can also use Descript, you can use Get Munch. Oh my gosh, so many different AI tools now that help with this. But again, it's a whole lot easier and more efficient if the original piece of content is really clean and stands alone, right?
So how do you start a piece of content if you're not going to be referencing the date of the program or the lesson number or what you talked about yesterday? You wanna start it always with a strong statement of subject or a hook around the subject. So what do I mean by that? Let's say you're gonna do a video on willpower for your program. You wanna start it with, let's talk about willpower.
And the reason for that is that if you do repurpose that somewhere else, like on social media or on a blog, you are immediately telling people what the video is about to pique their interest. If it's getting uploaded to a course, there are probably going to be other clues around the video that tell people what the video is about, right? Like the title and the description underneath it, maybe the lesson or the worksheet that goes with it. So people are going to be clear that today's lesson is about willpower.
But if you want the content to be multi-purpose, then you wanna start it with a clear statement as to what you're gonna be talking about. So today I'm talking about willpower or let's talk about willpower. You could also use a hook, which is really just a more interesting way to introduce the topic that peaks people's interest. So it might be like something like, ever wonder why it's so easy to go to the gym in the morning, but it's like pulling teeth to get there at night? The answer is willpower, right? So...
Wendy McCallum (18:19.986)
Again, just sort of setting that up with something that's a little more interesting premise that might pique people's interest so they keep listening to it. Okay, I feel like I've jammed this through this podcast episode with tips around content creation, specifically around creating content that is actually multipurpose.
which if you're in the process of creating a program right now, you may already be doing, which is great. If you're not doing it, start from this moment on. You don't need to go back and rerecord the content you've already recorded that doesn't do that. Just from this moment on, start doing it. Always down the road, if there's time, you can go back and rerecord these things so that they're not specific to the program or a day. But if you haven't done that yet, that's okay. This is a learning curve.
Just adopt this as your new strategy and goal going forward whenever you create new content. And I promise you, this is gonna serve you. Okay, have a great week, two weeks, I guess. And I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks with another episode of The Coaching Edge. Thanks for listening.
