Useful Creator

hello, useful content creators. We don't have any fancy trailer intro this week. We were quite busy for the past week, but what we do have is a great conversation with Justin Simon, your favorite distribution first podcaster. 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, Justin Simon. Hi, Justin.

Hey, hey, super excited to be here.

It's great to have you on, Justin. I've been following your content for a while now. Um, we connected early on LinkedIn at some point when you were starting your content journey. And I must say, you have been one of the more influential people inside of my content creation process. And I'm always trying to look around the landscape and spying for people who are saying things that are easy to understand that are relevant.

And you surely struck a tone with distribution first. Um, and so could you please tell the people what you do and how you create useful content?

For your clients.

Yeah, absolutely. So for me, I mean, I run a small consultancy solopreneur running my own business. And as far as creating useful content for my Audience, I create useful content through the podcast distribution first, um, a new, a weekly newsletter, daily LinkedIn content, bigger and larger pieces throughout the year.

And, and how I basically doing that for clients is helping them. A lot of times clients have a lot of content they are creating, uh, and the problem with. With that is typically they are spending so much time creating that they don't actually think about how to get that content in front of the audience.

Um, it seems fundamental. It seems like it would be something a lot of companies would think about, but, uh, most of the time it's create, publish, create, publish, create, publish. And so I'm able to go in and actually help them build out a strategy, build out a plan, repeatable process to be able to consistently build a distribution.

That's great. And, um, I know many companies, part of the drum you've been beating is that people have too much content and they don't know how to get it in front of people. Uh, in your case, you work for yourself. So how has it been creating content while being

employed by yourself?

It's the best, uh, because I get to, you know, I'm in full control, right? Uh, it's the best, maybe it's the best and the worst, right? Like, I think it's probably true of like running your own business overall. It's awesome because you're your own boss and it's the worst because you're, you're your own boss.

But for me, it's been really It's been really eye opening because, because I'm in control of every single piece of it, I can run any test I want, I can just do different, you know, different experiments, I can try different things and not, not be worried or be beholden to any particular metric or any particular, like, growth or, you know, different things like that, I can really spend the time to do.

Think about what the audience needs or wants, validate those things, and then build on those as we go. And it really is fun. I mean, a super small example is, for the, for the podcast, like, I started repurposing little micro clips out of older episodes and just calling them quick hits and putting them back into the feed just to see how the audience would react, right?

Like I know for a fact, not everybody's going back and listening to episodes from last April, but I know those episodes are really, really good and have lots of good content in them. So how do I pull out those nuggets and put them back in the feed? And it's been awesome. Like I would say. For the typical podcast that I run, it's, you know, a 30 ish minute, sometimes solo, sometimes co...

in my experience, probably nine outta 10 people are petrified of creating content on LinkedIn because they're worried about colleagues judging them, their boss judging them.

What if you lose your job if you post the wrong thing? Like these are real concerns from real people. 

This is Michelle J. Raymond, the corporate trainer and two time best selling author who has become the go to authority on LinkedIn company pages.

And today on Useful Content, she's going to share her proven strategies on how to grow your LinkedIn company and personal pages.

It's about finding what is the thing that you are most comfortable with. That for the first couple of months, you can commit to doing consistently every week. Because it's that consistency which is gonna pay off 

Why your company is better off having many people creating on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's a team sport. The more you get your team involved, I. The more success that you're going to have.

Why it's critical to fix both your personal and company pages before you start making content.

Imagine creating amazing content. Somebody has a poke around, goes back to your profile or your company page, and they're greeted with either a ghost town or something that's completely outta date or really undersells the person or the business. 

And finally, she shares a perspective on the one thing you really need to be worried about when you start sharing content on LinkedIn.

There's so much advice going out there from LinkedIn. Trainers like myself often conflicting and I say. Throw that all out the window, push it to the side. The only thing you need to worry about is 

Let's make useful content.

Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast and today we have a brand new teacher in the useful content classroom. Michelle Jay, Raymond. Hi Michelle.

Good day, Juma. I am so excited to be on the podcast with the man with the smoothest tones and best teaching. So I've been waiting for this, uh, episode for so long, and here we are. Oh, you flatter me too much. Too much. And I could say so many good things about you. So we've been connected on LinkedIn since 2021. I checked and that is pretty accurate. And over the past few years, you have had tremendous. Growth on LinkedIn. You create a ton of weekly content, you have a successful, um, LinkedIn company page 'cause that's the thing that you do.

You have launched two podcasts, written two books. You've launched a newsletter, launch, a YouTube channel, and uh, at this point you have, I don't know, hundreds of live, live shows and you've basically become the go-to authority authority when it comes to LinkedIn. Company pages. Not to mention you did a massive rebrand last year.

How has the journey been for you on LinkedIn?

When I listen back to what other people tell me I do. There's no way that I believe that I'm doing all of that myself, because it's kind of crazy to think about. So for the person who doesn't listen to podcasts, I run two of my own. For the person who doesn't really enjoy video content, I run a really successful YouTube.

Channel for the person that never thought I'd be an author. I've written two books. and why? Because I like to create content for how my audience likes to consume it. So, that's what drives me. So, and I think that's one of the things that when I look back, I'm most proud of. I can't wait to talk to your audience a little bit more about how that all came about.

Company pages on LinkedIn are my specialty, but there's just so many more opportunities that have come out of that. It's kind of crazy when I stop and think about it.

And also you, uh, by the time this comes out, it'll been long gon...

Hello and welcome to Useful Content and this week's podcast is going to be a bit different than what we usually do because I'm going to share some thoughts on how creators can approach releasing their content 

Even when they are challenged by some of the external things that they see on platforms and particularly when larger creators also release similar content. This is something that I've experienced and I know that people who are releasing content as a business and people who are releasing content for their business would experience this too 

because there are a lot of content creators out there 

and inevitably people will have these same thoughts or similar ideas to what you might have.

And so what do you do when that happens? How should you respond? And I talk for about 10 minutes about that and my perspective on it, what I'm gonna do for me, 

and how you should respond as someone who's creating content. for your business. This will be very useful.

It's less of a tactical thing. It's more of how to think it's a mindset thing. 

And I think it would help many creators make the right decision when it comes to releasing original thought content.

Let's make useful content.

I know there are many people who create content. Who are constantly being held back by the thought of being seen as someone who's just riding on the coattails of someone bigger. So recently I saw a creator that I like very much actually, and I've, I follow their content, talk about the fact that they've been observing people copying everything that they do. So they release something that is pretty unique, that is out of their years of experience doing what they do, and then somebody almost immediately comes up and kind of does the same thing, or says it in the same way, just changing up the words a little bit.

And it got me thinking, it got me thinking about how many times over the years that. I've not released something because I've seen a bigger creator do it first. So I've had many ideas over the years based on my experience, based on things I've figured out that could be defined as like unique thought leadership, or at least something that has been crafted out of things that I learned, my experience, and things that I'm thinking about that I feel haven't really been focused on in that way before and I've had lots of different pieces of content like that and I would like make a video or write it down or get some jottings.

And then what would happen inevitably is that I would see some bigger, more popular creator just offer the same idea. And of course, what then happens is that everyone who follows that person piles onto the idea, comments, and talks about how of a great perspective it is, and you know, this is unique and what not.

And then I'm like, oh gosh, I can't share this anymore because now everyone would think I'm just kind of just saying the same thing that they said just in a slightly different way because the language is never exactly the same. The language is always a little bit different because of course they are not thinking, thinking the same thing that you are thinking.

And so I, I, there are many ideas I've shelved. because of that or I've just waited till all of the fire around that particular person kind of dies down a bit and then I reformat mine and release it sometime after but I'll just, you know, I've stopped myself from releasing it almost immediately for the concern and sometimes even the fear of being pointed out as, oh, you're just copying this person.

Um, so I've decided now that I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not gonna not release an idea that I came up with or that came from my experience or from in business or from consuming conte...

followers. Wa wa, right? Likes also not very interesting. It makes you feel good. You're like, oh God, I have so many followers.

But did they share your content? Did they comment on it? And who are those people? 

This is Lee sma, a content marketing strategist and manager who has helped execute on marketing programs for a company that generates over 250 million in revenue

And today on Useful Content, she's going to share her super simple framework to create a content strategy using the rule of threes. 

Think that companies may trivialize how easy it is to succeed on a social channel.

And then they get frustrated when they're not getting impressions, they're not getting leads, they get frustrated and they give up 

She's going to share five different things you should focus on, including the right channels.

Getting a channel right is not trivial. Each channel has different requirements, different types of content, different um, patterns of usage, different algorithms. 

what you should really focus on when measuring your results.

I've seen way too many teams get overwhelmed. They, they don't measure because it's overwhelming, so they just don't, it's like putting your head in the sand, right? I'm scared of it, I'm not gonna do it. 

Why having an owned channel is so critical for your content and for your business.

So people raise their hand, they wanna hear from you, they sign up and then you are fully free to communicate with them in a personal way when you want to, about the topics you want to. 

And in our conversation, she shares something that really gets me thinking.

That's such a good point. That is such a good point. 'cause people always think about 

Let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast and today we have a returning teacher in the useful content classroom. Lee Sma. Hi Lee. Ola Lee. I should say

Hello, thanks for having me on today. Nice to see you.

Yes. Uh, it's good to have you

on. And, um, today we're gonna talk about some thoughts that you've been having on LinkedIn and some new things you've been developing in terms of frameworks for content marketing. Uh, I'm excited to talk with you about that today because I really love your content on LinkedIn.

I love what you've been doing. Uh, you are very, very active and people who are active on LinkedIn always catch my eye and it seems that in a short space of time. You've been able to capture this magic of developing and giving your content momentum. How has your growth been over the last few months?

Uh, thank you for, um, noticing my efforts online, my content. It's been a lot of fun Past few months. I have, um, really caught on that people are having trouble getting started with content marketing. I. Small teams are having hard time figuring out where to put their budget or who to hire, and people need a way to kind of reduce the overwhelm and just get started.

So I see a lot of people who are blogging or posting on social but not getting return, um, feeling like there's no strategic layer and they, they just need a way to get started without, like I said, all the overwhelm. 

Yeah. And I know you like to keep things simple, so this is like a super simple framework that we're going to

talk about today. We're gonna talk about the, is it like a framework

of threes for small, these B two B marketing companies. Will this work for B two C as well, or it's just for B two B stuff?

Um, I'm gonna go B two. B two B because that's my area of expertise is B two. B two B, B two C. I mean, right. Marketers love to try things. Why not adapt this? See if it ca...

Hello useful content creators and today I have no fancy Intro. In fact, uh, I have a confession. I wasn't able to complete it. I wasn't able to finish it because tonight I had a bit of a lime, what we call a lime in Trinidad and Tobago. You call it hangout other places in the world with some of my friends.

And, uh, it was a Good friend of mine and his family and our kids we had a lime together and it was a great lime, excellent lime, but it was in the nighttime right before this podcast so I wasn't able to do the usual fancy intro for the podcast. did however with my wife and with my friend's family make some excellent homemade pizza.

Those on the audio will not be able to see this but those on the video will be able to see it. This is proof. You see this is the pizza right here. I had my fill so I'm not going to eat this on camera, but that's what we were doing tonight. And so I have no fancy intro. Giving a synopsis of what we're going to talk about.

What we are going to talk about today In the podcast, however, is about sparking curiosity in your content. Emily Aborn is on. She's the one who sent me the really nice postcard after we did the recording and something is in my eye now. This is very messy, but I'm just doing this. Let's just show that, you know, I wasn't going to get everything done perfectly and the show has to go on.

So enjoy the podcast and 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. Emily Avon. Hi Emily.

Hi Juma. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

It is great to have you on. I, I found you on the. Facebook Podcasting Collaboration group, and it was a really good find because when I went into your content, I saw all of what you do and you are really excellent copywriter and content writer. I think you do both, do you? I.

Y Yes. Yes. Interchangeably, yes.

All right, great. And I am, I am enamored by people who write because I don't consider myself an excellent writer.

I do scripts for videos and things of that nature, but I am really, I really give kudos to people who can sit down and create and write content. So could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients create useful content?

Sure. Thank you for the opportunity and for the, uh, ment with writing. It's, it's like one of those things that I just can't stop. You know how like an artist, they just have to create same idea. Um, so. I do copy and content, and the reason I kind of like, there's sort of two pieces to that is copy is a lot of that sort of, um, conversion, written for conversion.

So it's like your website, copy, um, sales pages, emails, things like that. So things with the goal of probably trying to get somebody to be a customer or guide them to take the next step. And then content is a lot of the. Blogs and the social media and the emails and the podcasting and things like that.

And so I write it for people. Um, and I also do a lot of like strategy work with people. So people that are, you know, willing and able to write it themselves and do it themselves and put it into motion themselves. We sit down and we do a lot of like the strategy pieces with that. So. A lot of that, a lot of brand messaging, uh, things along those lines really like, I, I really wanna help people like, have a well-rounded approach to their marketing and not just think of it as like the email they send out every week or their website and their website's doing all the work.

So it's just like a big kind of picture approach.

So why? Why both? Why didn't you just focus on content writing or copywriting? Why do both?

Wow. That's a great question. Um, and thank you for your...

Hello and welcome to Useful Content today I am your teacher in the Useful Content Classroom.

And this episode is a special episode, not only because I'm doing it solo, But for two other reasons. The first thing is that this is very much a YouTube video. And it was given over to edit to one of the main guys on my team, Nicholas. He doesn't usually edit my videos, but I gave it to him to edit and he treated the video pretty nice, so the version that you're hearing here will get a nice fancy looking YouTube style video. And everyone else who's listening to the audio will not hear any of the sound effects or hear any of the music that goes along with that. So you're missing out if you're only listening to the audio.

So you should go check the. YouTube version out on YouTube.

And the second reason this video is special is because this was never intended to be a podcast episode, as in it was an impromptu video that I did. Almost all of it was done off the top of my head based on my interactions with clients. I just had this burning thought about challenges. Clients were encountering when we did content strategies with them. And I said, you know what, I need to talk about this.

So I turned on the camera and I recorded the video. And about 15 minutes later, this video was done. And so it was almost all done without really scripting out the entire thing. I had to go make a few changes, but it turned out pretty well for what it was. And I know you're going to enjoy this one for sure.

Especially if you're a business owner looking to implement a content strategy.

Now, what is the actual video about? The video is about three things that make a content strategy fail. And of course, what you can do to stop that from happening.

Now I address a very specific part of the process. I'm not addressing the planning stage, which is the part where you're putting the content strategy together. So I'm not addressing the planning stage, which is the part where you're putting the content strategy together. That stage has its own challenges and I'm also not addressing the execution stage where you're taking everything that you planned and you're now implementing it.

I am addressing that kind of funny area in between where you're moving from the plan into execution and the kind of things you need in order for that to happen smoothly.

So this is not a tactical type video, even though there's the actions you have to take. This is more of a systems type video, and it will be very useful if you have a strategy and you've been having difficulty implementing it. You may need to go back to the drawing board and look at these three factors.

So that's the summary. Hope you enjoy the video. Let's make useful content. 

So if you're a business owner attempting to execute on a content strategy, you're always in danger of failure. and for what we've seen from doing content strategies for clients, there are three main things that people tend to lack that cause their content strategy implementation to fail.

So let's talk about that today.

I want you to listen carefully to this because I'm going to share with you what the problem is and I'm going to share with you how to solve it.

So if you're a business owner and you have a core type of business, whether that is accounting, whether that is computing, whether that is a bakery or hardware or whatever it is, creating content is not usually your core thing that you do day to day. So if you're doing a content strategy you're doing to get more of your main business. How it works is that you have the strategy here and you havethe tactics here You have this big plan right here, and then you have the execution on the other side.

The problem with most business...

Now with podcasting, there's no gatekeeper. There's no barrier. There's no one to tell you that you can or can't do something.

There's no one to give you a shot or, or not give you a shot. You have all the keys, on your tool belt to make, a successful podcast. 

This is Paul Stennett, co founder of podcasting agency Listeners to Clients, who has helped his podcasting clients get over 3 million downloads and hundreds of thousands of views On YouTube. in this lesson, we talk with Paul about how he helps his clients who are mainly business owners, succeed with their podcast.

you have to fall in love with the process, and if you don't love the process, get out now, because it's gonna be a very brutal journey 

We learn why podcasts are one of the best ways to build relationship with potential clients, 

find based on what the data is showing us, that podcast listeners are several times more engaged buyers than other forms of media. 

,

why YouTube wants you to create a video podcast. 

YouTube's main goal is to get people to spend time on their platform. And if your podcast gets people to spend two hours or, or three hours, or one hour on their platform, your podcast is gonna get all the views on YouTube. 

Why It's important to test and prove your podcasting tactics before you implement.

It's easy to sell when you know what you're selling actually works for somebody. I'm not the kind of, fake it till you make kind of person. I wanna have a conviction that comes from, I've done something and it works. 

And he shared something that made me say this.

you just described like the most difficult thing to do, 

Let's make useful content. Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast and today we have a new teacher in our useful content classroom. Paul StanNet. Hi Paul. 

Hey, Juma, what's up?

I am good man. I'm good man. It's, it's good to have you on today and, um, you know, I've been trying to get more people from the Caribbean on the podcast, and it's an honor to have someone like you who, who is a podcaster himself, and not just for yourself, but for other people.

So, Paul, could you share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content?

So I am a podcaster and I help my clients who are business owners. To create podcasts that benefit their business, meaning, you know, they're getting their message out there, they're getting the reach with that, and they're also getting clients in the backend from them talking about their business, building a relationship with their listeners, and then selling and with them products and services on the backend.

So you are taking over what part of the process exactly. The entire thing, or do you help people who already have podcasts? I.

So I mainly work with people who have podcasts. We do launch podcasts, but primarily work with people who have podcasts. Usually comes, customers come to us who have been struggling with their podcasts in the past. They haven't been getting the views or maybe the views are not converting into clients. I. So we usually take it at that point, and we do everything from, you know, concepts to all the post-production, to all the, the promotion and publishing across like social media, getting them like viral clips for TikTok, Instagram reels, et cetera. So really kind, kind of like the full gamut from like start to finish of our, of our podcast episode.

And so that means you're actually involved in producing other pieces of content as well, like short form content.

Short form content, um, full length blog posts, uh, videos for YouTube, also the audio that goes on, Spotify, et cetera, everything....

every time I review a video, it's literally comes down to is this good enough for my audience? Like, are they gonna get something from this? There's never been a time in my career. As a video marketer or social media marketer where I've sat and said, I've got this figured out. 

This is Alex B Sheridan, the video creator that gets millions of views on his LinkedIn content every year. And if you know LinkedIn, you'll know that's not an easy thing to do.

Over the past three years, Alex has become synonymous with video edutainment on the platform. And specifically his brand of creative education that leans heavily on humor. Slick editing, excellent video scripting, and deeply educational content. In this lesson we talk with Alex about some of the little known details about his video creation. 

You have to treat every day. Like you're starting from zero. 

He'll teach us how to create a high performing video on LinkedIn. 

Yeah It's about results and inbound leads and clients and, and all that happens. But it's also about, I'm excited for the thrill of getting better. 

We learn what it takes to transition from LinkedIn to YouTube. 

And even though I had, I'd done well on LinkedIn, I'd done well on TikTok, I hadn't done well on YouTube. And that was like, I had to look myself in the mirror and go, dude, you're the, you're a video person. You do video marketing, social media marketing. You're not doing YouTube, like you haven't even tried to figure it out. 

How to overcome your biggest video fears. 

but the mindset shouldn't be, what if I post this and it fails? What if I post this and I get rejected? What if I post this and it performs terribly? If we flip the mindset and say, 

what it takes to stick with video, even when it's challenging, 

I realize that this is not a one month game. Six month game, one year game. 

and we discuss a touchy topic that makes Alex say this. 

That was a big mistake. 

Let's make useful content. 

Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast, and today we have a brand new hold on, a returning teacher in the useful content classroom. Alex b Sheridan. Hi Alex.

Glad to be here Juma. Thanks for having me, man.

Yeah, it's, it's great to have you back. I mean, uh, I, I am constantly amazed by your consistency in putting out video content and the quality of it. And, every time I think about video marketing, especially in the entertainment space, I. Your name is synonymous with that. And your LinkedIn journey has, in my mind, observing it externally has been tremendous.

could you, could you tell the people what you do and how you help your clients create useful content?

Well, the one-liners that we help B2B service-based companies, turn their video content into a 24 7 sales rep for their business. That's kind of the philosophy, but really what we do, if you break it down practically and just the easiest way to explain it is we do video content and social media strategy training and coaching.

Right. And so over the years that you've been doing this now, uh, what has been the thing, the biggest lesson that you've learned with video marketing, 

man. I'll tell you one of the biggest things on video content, and I think that most people may, may not expect me to go here, but I think if you wanna get great on video, one of the most underrated aspects is you have to treat every day. Like you're starting from zero. Like there has never been a time juma, and you followed my journey pretty again, pretty closely, and I've followed yours to pretty closely too. There's never been a time in my career. As a video marketer or...

Hello and welcome useful content creators to our final episode of season one of the useful content podcast So, between August 2023 and February of 2024, we successfully recorded, edited, and posted 21 episodes of the podcast. And interestingly, in that process, the podcast went from being fortnightly or biweekly, however you want to say it. to being a weekly podcast when I realized I could actually manage recording multiple episodes per week and posting those episodes. So that was a good change for the podcast.

I want to thank you useful content creators for all of your support for turning up when the episodes go live. On LinkedIn and on Facebook and on YouTube and for looking at all of the clips that I pull out and share and making that process of just amplifying the podcast so very easy.

You turn up in the comments, you engage, you ask questions, and that's all I could possibly ask for when it comes to making the podcast even more successful as it grows.

So I have some stats I want to share with you just showing you part of the journey and behind the thing. I shared some of this on LinkedIn already and I'm going to share the same thing with you on the podcast. So, here's some of the stats. Let me look at my notes.

So, in terms of the audio downloads for the podcast, we had a hundred and thirty four hours of episode twenty. It's probably more by now and I would say that is a win because we had zero when we started. Uh, I didn't count the views on LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. Because I wasn't able to gather all that information on that data, but I know we have much more multiples of views on those platforms, particularly on Facebook, where it gets very good traction.

Uh, for some reason, it just works really well on Facebook and on LinkedIn too, it gets nice engagement. I was able to repurpose around 78 pieces of content. So that's a lot. And I sent out the entire recorded episodes to the guests and they took it and they repurposed the podcast episodes for their own content. So I was happy about that.

So out of the episodes that were released, six were solo episodes, 14 were interview episodes. I had one turnaround episode and the turnaround episode is basically me being interviewed on somebody else's podcast. I was able to take that and use it on this podcast.

I'm not too sure about these stats because a couple of things have changed over the last few days. I have about nine episodes on released about nine guests booked upcoming guests and seven invitations out that haven't gotten a response as yet. So that's where those things stand at this time. In terms of the guests on the podcast, out of the 15 guests, 10 were invited by me personally. Five of them asked if they could be a guest. Most of my guests came from LinkedIn. Three came from a podcaster's group on Facebook and one came from a podcaster's website.

And I have a few more guests coming from different places in the upcoming season. In terms of the show itself, it got good feedback especially from the people who came onto the show as guest teachers.

They all rated the show 5 stars. And in terms of my hosting skills I got rated five stars as well, which was a very good thing for me. And I think i'm improving in terms of my hosting ability But let's talk about what we're going to do in this final episode today. Today I want to share with you a video I made back in 2022 and it was made specifically for a virtual summit and I was going to teach on short form video content and how to convert with it.

So I taught about TikToks, Reels and Shorts at that time. So in the talk, I share why video content is important, how you can use video content in your business. And I give a general structure for how someone can create their own short form videos.

No admittedly in terms of internet time, this cont...

Hello and welcome Useful Content Creators. My name is Juma Bannister. I am your host and your useful content teacher.

And today in the Useful Content Classroom we have our very first question and answer lesson.

so I asked people who follow me on social media for questions and now I'm going to take the time to answer all of those questions.

I ask for questions specifically surrounding content strategy and also video because that's what we do. 

I've gotten back about 15 responses with some very very good questions and unfortunately I wouldn't be able to get to all of them today.

Some of the questions were so good I had to reserve them for me to do a full episode on getting to those bigger questions in the future. I got questions on podcasting, I got questions on content pillars, and I even got questions asking what are the biggest mistakes digital entrepreneurs make.

And so I think today is going to be a really good session.

and keep your eyes and ears, peeled because someone may even even make a secret guest appearance.

So let's get into those questions and answers right now. Here we go. 

So the very first question I want to tackle from Rory Doon, now Rory I know your name, I'm seeing it in front of me. But I don't know how to properly pronounce it, so I'm not going to take that chance. So let's call you Rory HD. And Rory asks, which is more effective short form or long form content?

And like any responsible content marketer, I'm going to have to answer the most boring answer ever and say, it depends.

And it mostly depends on who you are talking to. And what stage of the customer journey they are at. And not so much who you're talking to from the perspective of the persona you should have developed for your marketing plans. But who you're talking to in this instance really kind of refers to how does your audience like to consume content? Do they prefer short or long form content?

I'm also going to assume that you're referring to video here because of course we could have short or long form audio and short or long form text, but I'm going to assume video here 

And so an important part of knowing which one is more effective is knowing your customer very, very well. And that should be a standard thing in anybody creating any content strategy or creating any marketing is talking to the customers to find out how they consume content, whether they prefer video or text or whatever it is. And then of course, you have a ton of questions you can ask about your products or services for the people who have bought it already. But the main thing is finding out how do your customers consume content?

What are their habits like? And if you discover those things, then you'll know whether you should be using. long form or short form. In addition to that, depending on certain demographics of your audience and specifically their age, that will determine whether or not they're more likely to like short form or long form content. Studies have shown, it's been proven, that younger people tend to want to consume shorter form content and when you're slightly older you go for the longer form content.

So which one is better? You have to do your customer research to find out. I personally like both. I think they're both effective depending on what you want to do. But in your case, it has to be very specific. For any client, it has to be very specific. And each person has a different reason or a different goal.

And you have to know what those goals are and how you're going to navigate to those goals in order to know what type of content that you should make. So the boring answer is it. Depends.

And while we're here, let me just talk a bit about the customer journey and the short form...