Useful Creator

Hi, useful content creators. Believe it or not, this is the third time I'm recording this because the other two times the same problem happened. What is the problem? Do you ask? It's that I recorded the entire podcast that you're going to listen to with the wrong microphone.

Audio does not sound very good. In fact, it sounds kind of bad. I tried to enhance it. I tried to improve it using the scripts, uh, studio sound tool, and that made it sound a little bit better, but overall it's not up to the make useful content quality.

So I just wanted to warn you ahead of time. The good news is, is that it's only my mic, my guest mic. Liam was perfect. His audio sounds great. And so when he speaks, you'll be able to get clear audio and get good value out of what he is saying. I just wanted to warn you ahead of time, because I know there will be questions about why does this sound like this?

It doesn't usually sound like this. So enjoy the episode. Uh, besides that, and next time I'll be sure to check the mic before I record. We all make mistakes, 

Hello and welcome to Useful Content. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content classroom, Liam Darmody. Hi, Liam.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me here. I appreciate it. It's great to see you Juma.

Yeah, um, yeah, it's great to see you. And, um, especially in the context of Liam's brand start and the new things that you've been doing. I know we know each other from way back in the days on LinkedIn and particularly Clubhouse. So it's really great to have you on. I don't know why it took so long to get you here.

Um, so you could, you could share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, my, uh, company Liam's brand stand, I started it in August, 2023. And, um, really it it's a consultancy that helps coaches, founders, and executives build personal brands that attract clients. Talent and opportunity. Um, and I started this because for the last four years, I've been posting very intentionally on LinkedIn, uh, just about things that I was passionate about and, um, so many fantastic opportunities fell in my lap.

Seemingly. Just from the activity that I had on the platform and the relationships that I built there. And so, um, you know, I just decided I wanted to try and teach other people how to leverage the platform the way that I have been able to leverage it for, you know, personal and professional benefit. Um, and it's been great so far.

I'm really having a lot of fun.

Yeah, I can see that you're having a lot of fun. I think I know you. So much more from your content that actually from us having personal conversations, because you tend to, to share a good bit, you know, and that's part of your philosophy, you know, that's part of your philosophy of building a personal brand.

So could you, for the people, cause we're going to talk about personal branding and we're going to talk about social selling, but just to start off, could you describe your personal brand for the people?

Yeah. I mean, I think for, from my perspective, my personal brand is somebody who is innovative. Uh, I've spent 20 years in, in technology startups and, um, I've always been in operational roles. So I know how to get things done. I know how to think strategically about business and going to market. Um, but I also am very passionate about.

The actual process of creating content and relate relating to other human beings. Um, and so I have this unique blend of operational and creative that when combined into one works out really well and helps me build a business and help other people build businesses that are relatable and, um, to sort of get over their imposter syndrome or their fear o...

Hello, useful content creators. This is part two of my discussion with Jason Varner on brand strategy. And in this episode, we tackle the topic of differentiation.

We talk about why it's important to find something that your competitors can't or won't replicate.

We talk about the two extremes people often end up in when trying to differentiate themselves and why neither of those extremes are any good. And Jason explains at the core of differentiation, why it's better to describe what you can uniquely do. as opposed to all of the things that you are.

It's a fun and educational discussion. Jason and I have a very good time and you are invited along for the ride. Let's make useful content.

All right. So Jason, so let's, let's talk a bit about differentiation. Uh, and I know one of the first things you probably want to do is define what differentiation is exactly.

Yeah. So a lot of people, when you talk differentiation, They kind of have either two extremes different. My differentiation is my team, my personality, my founder. Like we care about our clients. Like they think it's stuff like that, which if a competitor can say the same thing, it's not a differentiation.

Um, or they go to the extreme and say. Everything about us needs to be different. We need to revolutionize the category and be so different that, that like our competitors, you know, we're not even closely the same, which is a huge mistake. Um, especially for most small businesses, you want to find this balance of, I call it your onlyness, um, what do you do that your competitors can't or won't do?

And it often is. A small thing. So let me, let me use that. Um, comms, the comms agency as an example, she does come strategy, any comms strategy company does comms strategy. She does the thought leadership stuff. Like they do a lot of the same stuff. Differentiation is this idea of how do I hold in someone's mind that I'm the only one in the category that does this.

Even if you don't. So with this client, we found that there is another comms. Uh, strategist who calls herself a serial connector, but it's buried. It's not the main highlight. It's not what she focuses on. It's kind of like buried on the about page towards the bottom. It's not, she's not hanging her hat on that one thing to say, if you want this, I'm the person to come to.

So my client is not the only one that says they can connect you. But she is the only one that has made that her thing. So it's kind of hard to, to define that because it really is taking one thing about you and making it the thing. So we worked with a, um, to give you another example, we worked with a recruitment agency and really all I did with them was an hour and a half.

Clarity call. We didn't do a full brand strategy, but what we nailed down was your brand strategy is to qualify leads in 10 business states. So they guarantee that if you work with them, they will give you two qualified candidates. Within 10 business days of signing the contract, most recruitment agencies would never even dream of making that promise because they don't have the, the infrastructure to make that happen.

This client does. So they came in and told me like, we've got this infrastructure where we have, like how they label candidates and all this kind of stuff, how they find candidates. It's all designed that they have a database that they can quickly turn. And get their clients candidates immediately. And I was like, But, but in all of their marketing, even when I asked him, why should people buy from you?

He was like, well, you know, we're really experts in the industry and we know what we're doing. And I'm like, every business can say that, that doesn't make you different. That makes you the same. So what actu...

Brand is the perception I have about you. And that perception is built from the policies, your contracts you put in place, the proposals you send. It's the cold emails that get sent out. 

I like to use this example. If you have a physical location, How full are the garbage cans when I walk into your office, because if I see that your garbage cans are overflowing, what it tells me back of my mind, this is all subconscious, but back of the mind, it tells me if you can't even manage taking garbage cans out, how are you going to manage 100, 000 project from me? 

This is Jason Vana, a brand and content strategist who has created content that drove revenue

and positioned brands as the premium choice in their industry. even before social media existed.

His clients typically see a 20 percent or more increase in their revenue after they implement his strategies.

and in this episode of useful content, we talk with him about brand strategy and how to fix your backwards branding.

And what happens is a lot of companies, they build backward. They build an offer or a product. Then they look and say, who can we sell this to? It's backwards. 

Why you might be wasting money, running ads. 

Imagine spending 100, 000 advertising and making no money from it. But that like most companies, especially small businesses, they're spending money doing stuff that if they had a brand strategy, they would immediately know that's actually not going to work for us. 

And he shares with us two critical questions we must be able to answer. If we want any hope of creating useful content.

you're not going to create content that really connects with people if you, one, don't know 

who it is you're And two, why they should work, want to And most businesses can't answer those two questions. 

and this is part one of two episodes of Jason.

Part two comes next week, but today. Let's make useful content. 

Hello and welcome to useful content. And today we have a brand new teacher. In our useful content classroom, Jason Vanna. Hi, Jason.

Hey, really excited to be here this morning.

It's good to have you on. Uh, I have been following your content for a while now and I can, I could safely say I probably have downloading more PDFs from you. And any other creator, I will library of a folder that should be labeled Jason right now, but it isn't, uh, everything you could possibly learn about brand strategy is in that folder, which is, is really, really great.

So it's great to have you on. And it's good that you could come on to share some of your insights with, uh, the small business owners will be listening to this. So Jason, could you please tell us what you do and how you help your clients make useful content?

Yeah. So I'm actually a brand brand and content strategist. So I run a brand positioning agency called shift. And basically what we do is we work with small to medium sized businesses to help them determine what's their unique value. Kind of answering the question, why should an ideal customer buy from them?

When they can go on Google and find their competitors within two seconds. So what's that unique value? And then how do you live that unique value out throughout the company and marketing sales operations, um, product, everything that the company does. And so, because we do brand strategy, A lot of our clients, the, the way to extend their brand into the, in front of the right people is through content.

And so we also do that content component, helping our clients like dominate on LinkedIn or really any kind of content for a lot of clients we'll do like, um, we'll take podcasts like this and. Make them into, uh, like bite sized pieces, blog posts, email...

Untitled project from SquadCast

Hello, and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a new teacher in our useful content classroom. Masuma Memon. Hi Masuma.

Hi, thank you for having me.

good to have you on. Um, I know that, Lee, Lee Densma had recommended that we talk because she's very much a fan of your content. And when I went to check you out, I also became a fan of your content. So I've been listening to you. And following your content on LinkedIn for the, I think like as a couple of months now, and you know, it's been, it's been very, very good.

So I'm happy to have you come and share what you do with the people. So could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content,

Sure. So, uh, I'm a content marketer for B2B SaaS mostly. Sometimes it's B2B SaaS, but it's mostly in the SaaS space and mostly in the B2B space. I help names like vimeo, Hotjar, Shopify, and Calendly create, that is write, repurpose, and re fresh content. It's usually along those lines. Besides that, I also offer some content consultation and, um, help with content strategy for B2B companies.

right? So you mainly focus on the writing part of it. and that is what you help people with. Yeah.

Yeah. With writing and advising mostly.

So I know that, um, when it comes to writing, it's very nuanced, especially in the area of SAS. in your experience being a writer for SAS, what has been the most challenging thing in translating products into something people can understand?

For a lot of the teams, I'm lucky to work with teams who are very well educated on this, but there are some teams that need to be, you know, I have to work on opening them up in sharing more product info with me. So that they're, you know, not posting or I am not writing, um, uh, you know, generic sort of content for them.

So getting them on board with the idea of creating product led content while making sure we are not all sounding salesy, because the thing with a lot of people is that they know their product value well. So they might not be able to translate it well in the content, or they might just be overloading it with feature explanations or tutorials, product tutorials, which can be, which can come across as salesy and ruin the entire goal of the content.

And I know product led content is a bit of a misnomer when you say product led content, you really mean there is an acute focus on the customer.

Yes, 

despite it being called product led content, the focus is still on the customer or the target reader, because at the end of the day, we want to focus on helping solve their problem rather than featuring our product. So when you take it off that mindset, you realize that you are still talking about your product, but your focus is on the reader.

So you are mainly helping them. And then one of the solutions that helps solve that problem is your product. So the product comes after the reader, not the other way around.

Okay, great. Wonderful. So today we're going to talk about how we actually repurpose content and the, the way in which you can take one form of the content and turn it into something else. And you, and you said you believe that, uh, content repurposing should not just be copy. and paste. Could you please tell me why you believe that, that, that content repurposing should not be copy and paste?

Well, that's mainly because, you know, um, the important thing is you have to adopt your content's voice based on the publishing channel. So if I were writing a newsletter, my voice as a writer and anybody else's is different compared to what their voice is on LinkedIn. or on Instagram. So each platform has a unique voice that their users have come to accept in their heads, right?

Hello, and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in the Useful Content Classroom. Anna Bravington. Hi, Anna.

Hi, great to be here. 

It's great to have you on, Anna. I, we, we know each other from LinkedIn and I was once able to grace the halls of your podcasts, crossing the content chasm, and that was a good time. And now you're here on my podcast, which I'm happy to have you on. It's so, so good to have you here.

So glad to be here. So get to see how it's what it's done from the other side now because I had to be the host last time.

Yeah, and a good host you were. Um, and today we, we have a lot to cover and talk about, cause we're going to be talking about do it yourself, um, marketing strategies for small business, and that's something that is very important for anyone who wants to build out their business, but before we get into the actual content, could you tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful?

content.

So I actually do two things now. So last time when we spoke, I was just doing the one thing which was owning my own business, which is marketing strategy for customers. And it's a variety of from SMEs to bigger companies. And it's helping them understand from all the way from What their business goals are, how to Translate that into marketing and then how to communicate to customers to reach those goals, really, Um, and since I last spoke to you, I'm also, um, innovation director at Oxford Innovation Space, which is Uh, we have 33 innovation centres across the UK, and what I do is I coach SMEs on how to do their own marketing, their own sales, so that they can do them themselves, which is brilliant.

So I get to do the doing and the teaching at the same time.

Oh, that's a big deal. Coaching SMEs on how to do their own marketing. What have you found to be like the common thread when it comes to SMEs?

and and building out their marketing?

That they start marketing before they have every, all the foundations in place. So, one of the big things is when people come to me, they say, right, I want to do some marketing, I want to blog, I want to do some social media, and we get, I say to them, okay, right, what are your business goals? What do we need to do, um, and, and get to in order to, for this to be a success? And they say, um, Make more sales. Yeah, that's that's their business goal. There's no smart business goals where they're, um, you know, they've got a time and they're, and they sort of a structure to them. So I find that's sort of the biggest thing that we have is that we'll, we'll try and I think it's sort of jumping ahead of In the sort of marketing space, we're actually knowing, you know, do you need more customers?

What space do you want them in? You know, what type of customers? How many products do you want to sell? Because if you don't know any of those, marketing doesn't work. And I think that's the biggest issue that people have.

and so I know that we're going to get deep inside of how to do some of those things, but, you know, there's a problem, like, for example, um, it's a cash 22 situation where you need one and you need the other one. So when you're starting off, you just. Kind of let's just suppose the business you're good at something and you start it and it starts to grow.

Uh, you don't really have that in your mind, like, what am I trying to accomplish in your mind? You just want to make money and stay alive type of thing. And, um, and how in reality is that worked out in the mind of a business person in terms of starting to look at their critically and saying, I need to set these goals.

How do you show people that?

Yeah, I mean, it, it needs...

hello, and welcome useful content creators. And this week we have part two of my conversation with Paolo Cunahan last week, we listened to him talk about video content strategy in general, the need for it, what is on camera confidence and a lot of other different topics that he shared with us And generally what we were trying to cover is how to win selfish audiences with video content strategy, and that was great, but as promised, here is the rest of the conversation that we had, essentially the post credit conversation that turned out to be so good that I decided to split the whole recording in two and have the last week's episode by itself and have this conversation all by itself. Now this week, it's going to be really good. It's going to be a treat because he's going to talk specifically about his video content.

creation process, what he does to create his videos. And we learned last week that Paolo focuses on batch creating content, but this episode is going to show us exactly how, or as much as he could share about his process. A very very useful episode and at the end of the episode when we finish the discussion i'm going to do a breakdown and a summary of every single point he made about his content creation process so we're going to get all that compiled and summarized at the end of this podcast episode so let's get into this part of the conversation between Paolo and I. Let's make useful content.

And we're clear. All right. Good, good stuff. Post credit scenes, time to do some post credit we're in 44 minutes. So let's hear, I didn't, they have so many little questions. I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you like the step by step for how you batch and you know, what is the strategy you're currently using, but I couldn't get those questions and, um, you know, my notebook.

It was in my head and you know, that is all that goes. So let's just talk for a couple of minutes about this strategy. You mentioned earlier, what is this strategy that you're using, that you find that makes you confident in your video now?

Some of it is proprietary, just like the Coke recipe. So I'm not going to go into too much detail, but a lot of it that I'm going to share is, is, is really, is basic stuff that you can start applying almost immediately. First of all, um, with my video shorts, recipe. I, as I mentioned during our conversation, I create shorts that I know can be used across the platform.

So there was a time limitation on YouTube. I believe it's still one minute. So if I want video content that I can use on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn, I create all my video for all those platforms at one minute. Every now and then there will be a hot topic on TikTok. For example, there was this craze about Taylor Swift during the Superbowl weekend.

And a lot of people were posting video content about Taylor Swift and all of that. So I made a special video for that, that exceeded my normal one minute short. And I think it went to probably three minutes or more or something like that. But for the most part, I batch create content for the shorts. By doing it in a way that is across all the video platforms.

In order to create video that is visually engaging, I create a mix of videos that are talking head, but I do more video content that has B roll. So I always try to incorporate some B roll that I shoot myself. Very simply, I shoot around my office to make the video content more engaging. And to break the, the, the, the, the, well, I said, I don't want to use the word monotony, but to keep the brain engaged by switching up the visuals every now and then.

So I will add in the occasional B roll just to switch up the pattern as a pattern interrupter to keep people engaged. B roll is a huge part of my strategy. And it also works on Instagram with some of the videos that I've p...

Hello, Useful Content Creators. Today, we don't have any trailer intro, but we do have an excellent conversation with somebody who Trinnies know and love. He's a journalist, a veteran journalist at that. It's Paolo Kernaghan, and I had a very great discussion with Paolo about video content strategy and we, we covered a lot of different topics so much so that at the end of the podcast, we went on to talk for another 15 minutes.

I had, um, intended to leave that part of the podcast in, but it turns out it was too long. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to split the episodes and I'm going to give you the part that we, the official part that we talked about. And then you're going to get, um, him separately on another episode, going deep inside of his own personal content strategy. And so that is a great conversation, but this one is a great one too.

We're going to talk about why he believes video strategy. is needed in businesses the difference between doing video as a creator and doing video as a business owner who creates we go deep into different things and topics concerning video content strategy i know this is an episode that you'll enjoy a whole lot it'll be very very beneficial to you especially if you are a business owner who is looking to create Let's make useful content.

Hello, and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. And today we have a new teacher in the Useful Content Classroom, Paolo Kurnahan, hi Paolo.

Hello, Juma. Thank you for having me on. It's great for you to have me on. I know that you've been, I know that you've been trying to pin me down for quite a while to come and have this chat with you. And it's not for a lack of interest. It's just, you know, how these things are. You're trying to juggle all of the different responsibilities you have.

So fitting this kind of thing into your schedule can be tricky, but I'm glad I was finally able to

It's good to have you on. It did take a little bit of work, but um, you know, hard work pays off. So it's good to have you in studio with me to talk to the people about video content and on camera coaching and things of that nature. Um, so, so tell the people what you do. and how you help make useful content for your clients.

Okay. I am an on camera and video marketing coach. So I create assets, digital assets that people can use to improve both their on camera performance and their video marketing strategy so that they can actually get some kind of, uh, traction on the platforms with their content. Um, and I also provide one on one training for people who.

Need some sort of well in many cases there are people who are actually already doing content creation But they're not getting the kind of performance they want and they want to see if they can get maybe some Immediate touch ups to their techniques and I can do that through one on one Coaching with them on both the on camera coaching and the video marketing strategy side so that in a nutshell is what I do

Which, which do you prefer to do? You prefer to do it for individuals like the personal coaching or you prefer to do it for like, companies or deal with the, the non personal strategy part?

I don't have a preference really because I've done both and I don't have a preference. What, what I really enjoy doing, and this is going to sound weird, um, is when I'm speaking to people and they, they explain the nature of their problem. I enjoy diagnosing the problem because it immediately sounds like something that I'm familiar with because I've seen it so much so I can immediately tell the source of the problem and I can immediately go about helping them to pinpoint what they can do in the short term because there's no short term strategy that's going to give them immediate results on an overnight transform...

Hello, useful content creators. We don't have any trailer intro this week. I'm teaching a class and we have a big project out in the field, but what we do have is an excellent conversation with Damon Didier, and he's going to teach us how to sell more digital products with email.

He takes us through his email marketing process and his main tool, Klaviyo, and he tells us the exact process he uses to sell digital products, including how to make the least annoying. popups. It's real practical. It's real nitty gritty. And I know it will be helpful to anyone who wants to start to gather emails and use email marketing to sell any digital product.

Let's make useful content. 

Hello and welcome to the useful content. Podcast. And today we have a new teacher in the useful content classroom. Damon Didier. Hi, Damon.

Hey, Jim, how are you doing today?

Doing well, doing well out here in Trinidad and Tobago. I'm sure I'm not as cool as you out in the U S

No way. I'd much rather be there right now. It's, uh, I'm in Dallas, Texas, gloomy, cold weather. I'd love to be on the beach right now. Pina Colada out there.

though. We all, I mean, as much as I am near to beaches, I don't get there often because always doing some type of work. Um, and I know that your particular work is in e commerce and email, but could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content?

Sure. Uh, thanks a lot today for having me here today. So my agency, uh, when it e commerce, we help, uh, e commerce brands, when it e commerce and the way we do it is through, uh, retention marketing, primarily through email, SMS rewards and, uh, loyalty and reviews and what, what we know and what we do applies in the email world. To all kinds of businesses far beyond e commerce. So my goal today is to give out some of the secret sauce of what we do, uh, to help our clients. And a lot of it just starts at the basics, which, um, to kind of give away my first secret is if you're not doing email marketing yet, get started now, uh, you know, the, The stories of the death of email are largely exaggerated.

And today we help companies do, uh, well over a hundred thousand dollars a month in email marketing, uh, alone, just sales right there. And there's a lot of things from. How do you get a permission based, uh, permission to actually email people to the right type of messaging and how to properly present that all the way through integrating your reviews, loyalty programs, SMS, uh, into a strategy, uh, that helps, uh, our customers win

Right. So I know email marketing has been a thing for a long time. An email has email itself has been a thing for a long time. You know, Why would someone want to email market in the first place? Because it seems that they could just do the regular thing, use referrals and send out emails when necessary.

Why is this a thing at all?

perfect, you know, on the most basic level, um, email marketing, it still works. So if you're not doing it, it's an easy way to just get into people's inboxes and get them to move. Uh, On a more, uh, higher level right now, everybody out there, I'm sure has seen, you know, if you do any kind of advertising online, the cost per acquisition has been rising. So when it comes to Google ads, meta ads, tick tock, whatever the price is going up and there doesn't seem to be any into this. So who better to market to than your existing clients? So we have a saying that is, uh, that retention is the new acquisition, which means how do we, how do we increase the RFM, the recency, frequency and monetary value of the people that we're already talking to.

And so on a, on a fundamental level, what this means is we probably heard the term out there of third party cookies and Google'...

So you ask someone, do you want a silver computer or a black computer? They might think to themselves, how do I want to represent myself? And maybe black is more trendy, so I'm going to say black. But then, when you put a silver computer and a black computer in front of them, to choose between one, they may go with the silver one. On Tuesday! But then on Friday, they might go with the black one. And that, that's just consumer behavior, which is why testing is so important as well. 

This is Chris Grage. Lecturer, trainer and digital marketing manager at Volvo Group Sweden. Chris has trained thousands of people to think like a marketer and today on Useful Content we'll be talking about customer research. and segmentation,

making content to match customer behavior. We'll talk about why speaking to your customers is very important. 

For everything from speaking to people who come to your parlor, to calling up truck drivers in, in the North of Sweden. It's, it's the same thing. Let's speak to our customers to get insights. 

What are the best ways to speak to them and why it's important to have an objective beforehand. 

So as we design our interviews, Our questionnaire or a focus group, or as we decide which of those tactics is best for us, we really have to start with what our objectives, what are we really trying to achieve? 

Why customer insights should always come before tactics. 

Don't jump straight into the tactics. You know, we love creative aspect of marketing.

We love to talk about the billboards and the let's advertise on Facebook and X and, and, and Instagram and those types of things. But it's really about the customer.

And in the end we'll talk a bit about branding and he shares something with me that I never knew before. What is a family ice cream hero? 

I had the opportunity to really think about what motivates people to buy ice cream. One, one of the, the personas that I played with in my mind was the family ice cream hero. The person who 

Let's make useful content. 

Hello and welcome to the useful content podcast. I am Juma Bannister, your host and your useful content teacher. And today we have a brand new teacher.

In the useful content classroom, Kris Granger, I, Kris,

Hi, Juma. It's a pleasure to be here, man.

it's great to have you on. I've been following you for a few years now. I particularly remember you being on, um, this virtual conference. Was it, did you mark, I think it was, or crossing the digital divide and you taught a class there and I was in the audience and I was like, Oh, Kris. It's really, really great stuff, man.

Uh, so I know you from there and I know you from about, uh, no, uh, you're here on the show, which is very great. So could you tell people, introduce yourself, tell the people who you are and how you help your clients and your students. With the useful content that you make

I, I, um, I've been in this digital marketing and content strategy game for quite a long time. I've designed and delivered a number of executive education programs at Lockjack for, um, Digital marketing strategy. I've also been working with Ned Coe for about five years. Um, so I've, I've taught classes, um, with hundreds of entrepreneurs in Trinidad and Tobago. Um, I've worked with the OECS teaching entrepreneurs around the Caribbean. Um, and, and I've been doing that back and forth between Trinidad and Sweden. Um, and here in Sweden, I've worked on Um, a number of global, um, Volvo Group brands, including Volvo Construction Equipment, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Penta, Volvo Buses, um, Volvo Group. And I've worked as well with the European Union, um, to deliver quite a lot of digital marketing strategy...

If you cannot get people to stop and even pause on the content that you're putting out, you have no hope of them consuming your video or your carousel or whatever posts that you have. Your headline is the thing that helps hook them. .

This is Candice Davis Blackmon. a certified content and email marketing specialist who has helped clients across 11 niches and in three countries build lead generating strategies for their service businesses with content marketing and today on useful content, she's going to help us bring order to our content with content planning and strategy. We're going to look at how to use tools to enhance your content planning and creation.

Well, I have a whole bunch of tools and some of them people may not consider tools, but I consider tools, any templates, any enabler that allows you to build out your strategy.

Why you need to document exactly how you serve your clients in order to make effective content. 

If you are an expert, you're saying that you are an expert service provider, you must have some sort of process that you take your clients through in order to get the results that you are promising them. 

A better way to use artificial intelligence to create content. 

if you say you are an expert, there are things that you do that you're just not going to get from ai. 

Why repurposing and repeating your content is not a bad thing.

Because they only remember about what 10% of what you say anyway the sheer volume that people are consuming, they do not remember. 

and in our conversation, Candice says something to me that pushes me into a content rant.

and let me just kind of go on a little bit of a rant here, seeing as you kind of opened this door up a little bit. So, so one of my biggest problems with how people create content is that they,

let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. I'm your host, Juma Banister, and I'm a useful content teacher. And today we have a brand new teacher in the useful content classroom, Candace Davis Blackman. How are you, Candace?

I am. Well, thank you, Duma, for having me. I'm glad to be here. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. I'm glad to be here.

It's great to have you on. We got connected on LinkedIn back in 2021, but I somehow had a revelation of what you do because you shared something and I was like, eh, this is really great content.

This is educational. It speaks to, uh, somebody who might want to know about this. And I found it to be very, very good. And I love when people. Share educational content and uh, it really stood out to me. So that's why you are actually here today. 'cause I said, Hey, Canice has good stuff to share.

So you could you please share with the people what you do and how you create useful content for your clients.

Okay. Well, I am a content marketing strategist. I always have to make that clear because sometimes people call me a content coach and I say, no, I'm not a coach. No, that's, that's completely different. I'm a content marketing strategist, and what I do is I work with. Coaches, consultants, expert service providers, helping them to build their content marketing strategy using email and primarily social media that's organic and paid social media so that they can generate leads and clients more predictably without having to create new congen all the time.

Because that's an issue with this crowd having to come up with Congen all the time. It's something they hate. And it's something that you don't have to do all the time if you strategize it. Right? And that's something I help people do.

Yeah, that's a big deal. Like I think because of how content has developed in general, um, an...