[Transcript starts at 1:55]
Hello, my podcast people. And thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. I'm laughing right now because as I went to start recording my guy, Rupert, if you're new to the podcast, that's my cat. He was scratching the door and I was like, all right, I'm going to let you in, but you got to stay in.
You can't be in and out. It's gonna be one or the other. And so he was, he came in and I was like, dude, you got to, you got to be quiet. And he just literally threw himself on the floor. Like, like I just offended him. Like this guy, he's too much. You can't see him. I know, but trust that's, he's still on the floor being a thick dude, just looking like water.
So today we are talking about the process that I use for content creation. I think I'm just going to continue to lean into that way of saying process because it's just a big process. better way. So I actually was inspired to create this episode by a question that popped up in the mafia, uh, actually by a question from E Web.
She's just like my favorite, right? She inspired last week's, not last week, Monday's episode with a specific question. And then this was a question that she put general to the, the whole entire mafia. And. It surrounds this idea of content creation. She didn't specifically ask what's, you know, my content creation routine, but she was asking about where people put their attention as it relates to content creation.
And a lot of what I see out there are suggestions on how to take one piece of content and repurpose it into a bunch of different pieces of content, which in theory is phenomenal, but has never really worked that well for me. Like I said, in the intro, I. Consider myself a creator through and through. I have lots of ideas.
I don't love saying the same thing in the exact same way a ton of times. I can say snippets, but I really do enjoy repurposing ideas and sharing ideas in different ways and sharing the same ideas in different ways, but sharing the exact same thing and just taking one thing and putting on another platform.
It's, it's tough for me to do that. So. I don't do that. And what I want to share with you today is how I create content. So yesterday, and by yesterday, I mean, what day? Tuesday, I guess. Yeah, I'm recording something a little bit late, but it'll still go out on time. But Tuesday was the eight year anniversary of me joining Twitter.
And I only know this because Twitter sends you a little alert thing. Not an alert. When you go to sign on to Twitter, when you go to make a tweet, it like prompts you and says, do you want to celebrate your anniversary? So it was my eight year anniversary of being on Twitter, which means that the day that this episode drops should be the eight year anniversary of me joining Instagram because it was either September 22nd or September 24th.
I can't remember. So it's close either way, super close to the eight year anniversary of me joining Instagram. Instagram. And so just for some perspective, I actually did a post on this. If you could link that, that'd be awesome. I did like a tweet series post on this and compared the two. So on Twitter, I have 22, 970 tweets and 788 followers versus Instagram.
I have 400, excuse me, I have 4, 330 posts and 63. 9 thousand. followers, right? So I got about 3, 000 tweets, 800 followers on Twitter, almost 4, 500, we'll say 4, 300 posts on Instagram, and almost 64, 000 followers, Insta homies on Instagram. The lesson here, and the lesson that I shared in that post, is to me, focus on one thing.
platform. And then you can look to diversify. So I am finding myself now in a period of content creation proliferation, we'll call it. And I'm just really enjoying creating a ton of content. And I'm seeing some ways that I can repurpose ideas a little bit faster and how things can lend themselves to multiple platforms.
And the type of stuff that goes on different platforms. But this is largely after eight years of having done this. This is not to say that it's going to take you that long, but I do think that there is value in, in sharing the fact that a lot of the times these, these, uh, systems for creating content, I think they are.
More easily employed and more easily utilized by folks who have been in the game for a minute. And I think part of that is that you have more confidence, you have more confidence saying punchier things, shorter things, and being like, yeah, I said that, you know, what you want to be talking about, people know what to expect because you've been doing it for so long when you first start out.
A lot of the time, you're just trying to find your voice, trying to figure out what you want to talk about. You're trying to establish and share your expertise. And it's just not the same as when you're. four, five, six, seven, eight years into the game. So focusing on one platform, which was Instagram for eight years is what allowed me to find my voice.
It allowed me to keep showing up because I enjoyed creating in that way. And I wasn't worried about how can I put this on a million different platforms and how can I repurpose this thing? It was literally, I like this, I'm going to do it in this way. It took me, I want to say four years. using Instagram to then start a podcast.
And that to me is a bit of a different style of there's similarities. If you're looking at the video component of Instagram, but it's still, it's a different medium. It's not like the same as I'm going to a Tik TOK or another social media platform. So there was enough difference for that difference with that, because it's a longer form platform as well, where you go to make a podcast and you have really, however long you want to talk.
Now, I don't think people necessarily want to listen to a podcast. You know, I, I know for people listening to Joe Rogan, I can't do it, but you have more room there. So it's a little bit different in that regards. And I had my email list going. I want to say I probably got serious around, serious with it around that same time because I had my girl Lex.
Add the names and the names came from my in person tours and the in person tour started in 2015. So we'll say that it was like two years after starting Instagram. Either way, nothing, they didn't start everything at the same time. I allowed myself to build that habit, established a habit, and then I could do habit stacking, right?
And I could add something on top of it. I see people right now, they're starting out and they're like trying to be on all the platforms at once and be on YouTube and be on Instagram and be on Twitter. And it's not sustainable. I definitely took the handles, my handle, my Instagram, my, my movement, my show handle on as many platforms as I could.
Uh, so I have them, I had it on YouTube at that time. I couldn't have it on Twitter cause it's just too long. So I'm the MVMT maestro. I got it on Instagram. And I had my domain. Uh, I did have some stuff that I was putting on YouTube at the same time. And the reality is that stuff fell to the wayside because I was like, I cannot do this and do the other things and do all the things at once.
So if you know, you need to experience that for yourself and try it and realize that you can't really do all the things at once, that's fine, but make sure that you then pick one thing and stick with it. Now, eight years later, I am doing it. Diversifying my platforms and I wanna share how I'm doing this and some of the ways that I have, you know, I'm organizing things just in case maybe you're there or you wanna know, or perhaps, you know, even if you're just, just starting out, I think this could have, would help, would have been helpful for me to hear as well.
So, like I said, a lot of systems that I, that I hear out there, I don't think that they're necessarily, um, I'll say appropriate for beginners. It's difficult for beginners to implement. Largely because you don't have the confidence, the experience to say these punchier things, to have these definitive declarative really short statements.
We know it's, it's more difficult to be brief with things. It's much easier to just keep talking, keep trying to explain yourself, to, you know, really try to impart the gray area there so that people don't get mad at you. So what I do now is I largely separate content out of And organized content based on the length of the idea.
If it's a simple statement that's in my head and I'm like, yeah, that's a sentence and it stands on its own. Then I will put that on Twitter and I'm not so much necessarily trying to grow a Twitter following over there. And the reason being that you have to be there. I'm dabbling a little bit more, but it's mainly because Instagram has moved away from written content and is more so video content, and I really enjoy in consuming written content.
So I'm over there just because it's a little bit more the way that I like to consume content. But in order to grow a following, grow a community, you have to be present and actually be interacting with people. So that's another reason why my follower count on Twitter is. So much lower. I probably should have explained a little bit more in the beginning, but like I said, 3000, 3000 tweets, 788 followers, people with big accounts on Twitter, they have like upwards of 20, 30, 40, 000 tweets, right?
So they're there. They're prolific with content creation. Whereas I'm just throwing things up there because I want to use it for Instagram. So now when I have a short. statement, a short thought, simple idea, a shorter idea, I will put that into Twitter. Now this is something that actually Jill Coleman, you know, it's funny calling her Jill Coleman, Jill Fit, my best friends, she's been doing this for years.
And Hormozy talks about it, that instead of like, he used to email himself ideas. I still put the ideas into my notes section of my phone, but I will now also just push them right to Twitter. And it is nice because you can kind of see what. What gets some traction and by traction that for me over there is like eight likes if it gets eight likes I'm like, oh we're getting traction versus zero and it's not, you know guaranteed to do well on Another platform, but it does lend itself to me like, all right Well, I'm not the only one who thinks like this and cool So if you like that external validation Twitter can be a nice place to start off with those simple thoughts But we see that those simple shorter thoughts That takes confidence to put that out there.
And so it's typically not the most beginner approach to things, but as it stands right now, where I'm at eight years in, I will put these shorter ideas directly onto Twitter and see how it goes. I will then from there, you know, with this idea, the explanation of how, right? So a lot of time with. the shorter statements, it's more of a, uh, I don't want to say philosophical, but more of a theoretical approach to things, more of like an overarching theme.
If I want to explain the how, so if I'm talking about the value of posting every day, cool, I can put that as a very simple statement. And then if I want to give tips on here's how to build that habit so that you can post every day, here's some posting ideas or post ideas, then that kind of content lends itself to you.
Instagram posts and Instagram posts. I was going to say a real, because that is largely what Instagram is pushing, but I do think Instagram is pulling back a little bit and starting to promote more of the static posts. And so that content could be as a carousel as well. Either way, I'm trying to say here is the short snippet idea.
I will put as a tweet, which I could take that direct tweet and put it directly over to Instagram as well. No, you cannot put it directly over to Instagram. What I mean is I can copy it, I'll do a screenshot, I'll resize it, and then put it up. Because people do ask me this, they ask like, is there like a button that shoots it from Twitter to Instagram?
No. You take a screenshot and then you resize it and then upload it. So I can take that and make it directly into a post or I can say, all right, how does one accomplish what I'm talking about theoretically in this, uh, Tweet and I'll use that to create a real or an Instagram post. For podcasts, those typically come from ideas that are just a bit longer and largely can stand on their own.
Things that I want to go a bit more in depth in, things that I've thought about a bit more, things that aren't just a punchy statement, and to things that require more space. So like I said earlier, you know, it took me about four years of being on Instagram to then start my podcast, but it was, you know, I was more easily able to habit stack it because it was different enough for me.
Again, I don't love just taking the same exact thing and putting it somewhere else. I do like to be able to expand and riff on things. And the podcast allowed for that because it's a longer format, right? You just have more talking space. As it relates to emails, I tend to use my emails more as a connection point with my audience.
I will sell in an email. If you're on my email list, you know, I will sell from time to time, but I typically use it more so to share the lessons that I've learned and use that as a way of connecting. So it's typically things that I've recently done, uh, you know, experiences I've recently had, things that lend themselves to having pictures in them and then explaining, here's a lesson that I took from this.
So I'm typically drawing more on life, recent life events. Which I think inherently provides a sense of connection with my audience. Cause they're like, Oh, I know what you're doing. Yes. I share some of these things on Instagram as well, but not to the same depth, not to the same extent, and oftentimes it's kind of briefly in stories and, you know, those disappear after 24 hours.
Whereas with an email you have, well, you can write as long as you want and you can link other things in there and people can read them as well. When they're ready, so they could see it come into their inbox and be like, Oh, I want to save this. I'm gonna read it later. And when I can actually like really sit with it.
And that's typically how I will use the emails. I also provide a monthly wrap up, which is going to be more information based. And that's when I'm pulling in the podcast episodes and like my top four posts for the past month. But in general, I'm using emails to stay connected with my audience and share lessons that I have gleaned from recent life events.
I have this year, I'll say this year, I'm like the past month or so, uh, recently we'll say, began a journey into YouTube. I hired Joe Orbachevsky. It's a fun last name. He's in my mafia. He is pure drive physio. There's an underscore in there somewhere. We will drop that in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney.
Uh, I hired him to run my YouTube channel. So as it relates to what I put on there, honestly, I just have him tell me what videos to make and then I speak. Now, this is something that I will say definitely is possible because of how long I've been doing this and how long I've been talking and how long I've, not just in this episode, but how long I've been talking in general and saying the same things over and over again and teaching and spreading my message and showing up and establishing my brand.
Because of this, you know, Joe has been in my ecosystem for quite some time and he knows what, you know, it means to maestrify something. He knows what I'm looking for. He knows what I talk about. He knows what I stand for. He knows my values. And so he can say, Hey, create this thing. And I just go and create that thing.
It can be pulled from, you know, a, um, Instagram post that I've done. And he's like, all right, expand on this. And, you know, you can think of the main points, but here's the topic that I want you to be talking about. Again, this is something that. I'm able to do because I've been talking for so long and teaching and sharing my message for so long.
This is definitely not something that I would have the proficiency to be able to do if I was just starting out. This is not to say that you will not have or do not have that proficiency, but this is where I see holes and what I found holes in the suggestions that other people have given in terms of like, take this one piece of content, then expand into this.
And then repurpose it for this and then take it for that. It doesn't work like that for me. I am also now able to take that YouTube video. Joe is doing the editing for it. I just get to record it, which is awesome. And maybe I'll do an episode on this just in terms of expectation management, how long things take.
Like it will take me an hour to record a five minute video that then becomes like a less than five minute video with the edits that Joe does. Why does it take that long? Because I'm just learning how to do everything. And the setup, I'm, this is like in, in, with everything I have to like set up a camera and another monitor and make sure I can check the sound.
It's a whole thing. The actual recording process isn't that long, but there's, there's a lot of things around it. But just in terms of expectation management, yeah, this thing is new. It's a new craft. It's going to take some time. But bringing it back to the point of this, uh, the strategies that I hear people typically talking about repurposing, things like that, they didn't work for me.
And they still don't work as much because of. You know, how I operate, but in having Joe edit for me, he can pull certain parts. And then, yeah, I can repurpose them for, uh, Instagram. And I don't know if there's, it's because I'm able to pull myself back a little bit, or I'm a bit divorced from the, the, from the situation, but.
It's almost like seeing it through new eyes. So I create this video for YouTube. Joe will then edit it, cut it up. And then from there he can pull certain parts out, smaller parts out that I can share on Instagram. And I feel really good about that. Mainly because I think I'm not just taking one single thing and just putting it somewhere else.
It's part of it. There's a win in and of itself. And then people can go somewhere else and find more about that, which I understand is what the, you know, most other, you know, other content creators that provide strategy are telling you to do, but. For whatever reason, it is now something that is a bit more feasible for me and really largely only accessible when somebody else is doing it for me and helping me out in that capacity and allowing me to remove myself from it.
I think, you know, I'm really channeling Rachel Strickland here. And just when you are a creator, you're just so into this thing and you love it so much and you feel some kind of way about it that you want, you know, you feel the value it has in and of itself. And I don't know, you feel some kind of way about just like, Chopping it and just, we're just taking the exact same thing and putting it in front of what you think is going to be your own audience.
So, you know, an example of this would be taking a caption from your Instagram post and then just copying it and sending it to your email list. For me, I wouldn't want to do that. I, there's something about it. It doesn't make me feel good. And it's like, maybe because I know there's a lot of the same people, even though there are different people, I just don't feel good about doing it.
Am I okay with taking some of those ideas and even, you know, promoting that post within the email and being like, Hey, go check out the post. Yes. I do it on the podcast. Absolutely. But to just be like, Oh, I'm going to just basically read the caption and call that a podcast episode. For me, it just doesn't sit well.
So that's why I've never felt good about doing it and why I don't do it, but presently I am finding, uh, more ease and more comfort in creating this longer form thing and having someone else chop it up. And we do go back and forth to this, like it's a team effort and I'm like, Oh, I see how that could sit on its own and be a post.
And then it would, we can ideally look to invite people to go to a different platform and if they so choose. Which I don't know how many people do, but we can still invite them to go to a different platform and check it out and get more wins over there as opposed to getting the exact same wins I don't love.
So, yeah, that is the process that we are seeing, that I am using. Currently, it's more so one that is based on separating and categorizing my ideas based on their length. If I have a short, and literally these ideas just, they come to me and that sounds maybe weird in saying that, but I think many of you understand what I'm talking about.
Cause again, we attract what we are, not what we want. And in seeing. excuse me, in creating and having created so many things. And this is again why I really encourage people to be posting every day because it allows you to see the world in terms of content. So in having created so much stuff and really largely just seeing everything in my life now in terms of content that I can share, that I want to share, that I'm excited about sharing.
That allows me to have these ideas and some of them are shorter ideas. Some of them are a bit longer. Some of them aren't fully formed. And I say this sometimes within an episode. I already did it once where I was like, maybe I'll make an episode about that. Cause it's not fully formed yet. So I just write it down and that's it.
I'll write it down and come back to it later. But ideals will pop into my head. This is why I want all of you using note section of your phone. Use things like Aqua notes. If you find that you get a lot of ideas in the shower, Uh, I have it in my, uh, what is it called? My Amazon store. Courtney, if you want to link that, thank you.
Uh, you can go check it out there. Aqua notes are phenomenal. This way, if you get a little idea when you're in the shower, you can write it down because you know, you'll be out for a run. Voice notes are great. Then talk to text notes are great. Then you get ideas when you're out doing things. I have whiteboards all over my apartment and I just write things down and then I can come back to them later, more often than not, writing it down helps me to just kind of, Talk it out a little bit to flesh it out a little bit and almost like solidify it in my head.
So it doesn't just go out into the ether, but these ideas will come to me. And if it's a shorter idea, it's a punchier idea. It's a statement that I'm going to put that on Twitter from there. I can think about, okay, the, how, how do we actually achieve that punchy statement or the outcome of that punchy statement?
Cool. I can make that into an Instagram post, longer ideas that come to me, things that I need to kind of talk through a little bit. Those are typically going to be a podcast life lessons. And kind of updates, if you will, I'm typically going to write those out and I'm going to share them with my email list.
I think part of that with email, I do want to say this is because it's a little bit harder for me to write things. I enjoy writing and I consider myself a fairly decent writer, but it's definitely easier for me to speak and easier for me to record videos than it is for me to write things out and really be succinct with things and feel that I'm getting my message across the way that I want to.
So, uh, I am not as prolific with my writing content creation and I'm okay with that and this is also why I think that I share very specific things there because I'm going to share the things that come the easiest and allow more so for the storytelling to be easy and I relate it to You know, a recent life experience.
So works for me, not saying you got to do it that way, but just sharing what works for me. And then lastly, uh, is going to be YouTube. I am very much just doing what my guide Joe tells me to do. And again, this is something that I think is possible. Largely because I have been creating things for so long, and it has allowed Joe and other people in my ecosystem to be like, okay, I know what you stand for.
I know what your values are. I know how you want to say this. I know what you talk about. Here's the topic. Now go riff on it. And then from there, he can chop that up even further and say, okay, here's a singular idea from this larger piece and we can share that on a different platform as it relates to TikTok.
I'm realizing right now that I didn't talk about TikTok because I am trying some stuff there. As it relates to TikTok, I am just literally going off the cuff there. There's no strategy with it. It is just me kind of enjoying the platform, quote unquote, enjoying it and just sharing kind of my musings. So musings that I would typically share as Instagram stories.
So it's not a quick punchy statement. It doesn't necessarily warrant a full how to. It's more of like, here's a longer, uh, theory, kind of, you know, comment statement, I will put that onto, onto TikTok, mainly because it's a different platform, right? I think it's really important to understand that every platform has a different language, every platform is being utilized for a different, uh, And so just saying, I'm going to take this information, this, this piece of content, and just put it over there.
That typically doesn't work. People are on Tik TOK to be entertained. And so for me to take one of those how to posts that do well on Instagram, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to do well on TikTok. TikTok. So I'm really leaning into the let me talk, let me have a talking head, which I'm good at doing and share my thoughts and more of that as opposed to here's how to do things.
To me right now TikTok really feels like a place people go to for entertainment and they go to for connection. They're not really going there to buy things. I don't know if they're going there to specifically Or first and foremost, learn things where that definitely is a bit more of a reason that people show up on Instagram, at least people in my ecosystem and probably you, if you're listening to this platform, so they have different uses, which is why I'm showing up differently on there.
But as it relates to kind of all of the teaching content. The content that you consume from me, that is how I break it down. Short ideas I'm putting out onto Twitter and also saving in my phone. The how to regarding those short ideas I'm going to make into reels. I'm going to make into Instagram content, longer ideas that come to me that need more fleshing out, that lend themselves to more of a discussion.
I'm going to make a podcast episode about that. And then ideas that lend themselves, or rather ideas that come from. Recent life events and really allow for storytelling and connection. I'm gonna share those for sure as emails YouTube videos Those are coming from the brain of my guy Joe and then getting caught up and we can repurpose some of those for Instagram if You know you have your system that you love amazing stay with it But if you are like me, especially you're you know Consider yourself a content creator and you found that like, I can't just take this one thing and turn it into 19, 000 pieces of content.
That's, that's, that's totally fine, right? People's systems are people's systems. And so if you're like me, perhaps this is a system, quote unquote, that will help you. And considering leaning into separating systematizing your content based on idea length as opposed to Something else, right? I do believe that's it for today.
I'm looking at the clock. We're running a little bit longer, but this was a fun episode. I, you know, I really enjoy talking about content and content creation. So thank you for tuning in. I don't have any asks, any announcements. I guess the ask, they always, they ask the perpetual ask. I said, ask like a million times there.
The perpetual ask is if you find a value in this, if it's helping you, do me a solid and share it with somebody or review it or do both. The way that the podcast gets found is through ratings and reviews that bump it up and also through direct sharing. So if you like it, you love it, this is helpful, do me a solid and share it.
That it really does mean the world to me. And it's really cool when I see you folks listening and you're sharing it on socials. Like that's, that is my favorite. So thank you if you've already done that. Uh, thank you if you're about to do that and just thank you as always for tuning in. I know you could have been doing anything and you chose to listen to me, and for that, I am super, super grateful.
Until next time, friends, Maestro, out.
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