019: 4 STEPS FOR CREATING AUTHENTIC ENGAGING CONTENT
Being connected to our content is the one main way that we truly make an impact with the people we are trying to serve.
For those who are making social media a priority for their online brand, for generating an audience, building influence and making an impact, they care about their social media. So when you see somebody who’s disconnected from their content, you don’t get excited to watch them, you don’t want to read their posts or listen to their stories and maybe you just tap away.
But the goal is to make sure that you are doing everything you possibly can to talk to your ideal clients or readers who are potentially going to be signing up for your programmes, buying your courses, whatever you are putting out there in the world right now. We want them to listen to what you have to say and we want them to feel so connected to you.
When it comes to having connected content there are a couple of things that you need to start doing first. My guess is if you hit play on this episode, you want to find out more.
#1 | Get Connected To What You Want To Say
If you don’t know what to say, this is going to be a matter of doing the market research and figuring out what to say. So if you haven’t done so already, you need to do a content brain dump. Here are some questions for you to think about:
What is your niche?
What are you trying to teach people about?
What is exciting?
What are the things you want to share?
What are the topics you want to talk about?
I encourage you to think of this content brain dump as if you were writing out a bunch of headlines for blog posts or YouTube videos. So if you were to start a YouTube channel today and you were to put 50 videos on it, what would the headlines or the titles be for those 50 videos?
Don’t pretend that you have no competitors or that nobody else has ever made the content that you want to make, because that’s going to block you from caring about your content. Everything has already been said and the way you make it original and different is to use your own words, to share your own experiences, and to be you while you’re saying it. For instance, if you’re trying to teach someone how to add keywords into their blog posts or how to grow on social media, you have to find your own way and version of saying it. You can’t let the idea that someone else already shared that topic block you from also sharing that topic. You can share whatever you want.
So again, pretend you have a YouTube channel, pretend you have 50 video slots to fill and come up with those titles. If you feel like you still need more support in getting connected to your content, break it down. Here are a few ideas:
What are stories you have that could be a lesson for somebody else?
What are some opinions you have about your niche or the industry you’re in?
Do you have opinions about what other people are teaching or saying that you don’t agree with?
What do you agree with?
Is there anything you want people to know?
What do you want to stand for?
What are things that you can teach?
What’s your methodology?
For example maybe you’re someone who teaches people how to overcome imposter syndrome. What’s your method? What are some of the things that you would teach someone if they were a client of yours? Those are kind of ideas that you can utilise for content and if you do a brain dump of those ideas, you’ll immediately start feeing more connected to your content. You’ll feel excited to write everything out, to make podcasts, to make videos, to make blog posts. The excitement will come back because you’ll actually have ideas out on the table.
The only thing left for you to do is organise them into a calendar - organise what you’re going to be sharing and on what platform. Systemise your content.
#2 | Get Connected To Your Passion
From what I see, a lot of people are disconnected from their content because it feels like they’re just writing it for the purpose of making sure that it creates a result for them.
Let’s say you’re writing an Instagram caption. If you’re not writing from a heartfelt space and you’re not writing from a place of passion, excitement and joy, then you’re writing from a place of fear and scarcity. Take that in again. When you’re writing out of obligation, you’re writing out of a place of fear and scarcity, and your content is immediately disconnected. Even if you just set the intention to write from a place of love, connection, and energy to the person who’s reading it because you love what you’re saying, that’s going to allow you to feel so much more connected to your content. You must be connected to what you’re saying.
You must first care about what you’re talking about, you must first raise your energy and get excited about what you have to say. Because if you’re not excited about it nobody else is going to be either and half the job of content creation is to get people on board with you and your mission.
Everyone who’s watching on social media is going about their day-to-day lives. They’re scrolling, they’re at their job and it’s so much easier for people to not get inspired and get on board with the mission. It’s so much easier for them to just scroll by. So if you’re writing out of obligation and it feels forces, nobody is going to raise their energy because your energy isn’t raised. If the vibration of the content itself isn’t high and it’s mediocre or moderate, people are going to scroll by and they’re not going to turn the sound on. You want people to turn the sound on. You want to be in your excited zone and if you can do that, it’s going to allow you to feel much more connected to your content.
I’m changing my Blog It Boss It Coaching programme and introducing an exercise that I’m doing for my clients. There are a bunch of questions in this exercise, but one question I ask is: when was a time maybe within this programme, maybe within the last couple of months or maybe an experience you’ve had, that made you feel SO excited, so pumped, and so passionate? That is so powerful and I bet some of you would get emotional because you’d be so connected to what you were saying.
This happened to me and the tears came from feeling like what I was doing was making a difference. This has been the biggest revelation for me because I then connected with an ideal client and thought, yes, I can help you with that. So the excitement comes from when you know exactly what you can help a person with and then you have the confidence in yourself because you’ll know you can actually help them.
There also might be times when someone messages you saying, “wow you’re really inspiring, thank you for showing up every single day.” That will hit you in all the feels because you’ve been showing up consistently. And sometimes it can feel like you’re not talking to anyone. Sometimes it can feel like you’re talking to a wall, you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, you’re thinking “I hope someone resonates with this”. But you’re just constantly creating for the purpose of making sure you get a post out every single day because you’re disconnected. Then you get a message from someone saying thank you.
That excitement and passion comes from understanding that what you’re doing and what you’re doing is making a difference to someone. It’s working and it’s going to work if you keep doing it because that feeling keeps you going.
Figure it out. Get connected to what keeps you going. This is going to raise the vibration, frequency and energy of your whole online presence which is easily going to attract more people. Your aura is going to be so attractive that people will have no choice but to turn on the sound and listen to you and get connected with you.
#3 | Get Connected To Others
This is going to come from a few different things:
Getting connected with your client/customer/subscriber/reader
Doing some research
If you don’t know this person, that’s a huge necessity. Here are some questions to get you started:
What are they struggling with?
What are they doing a day-to-day basis/what does their day look like?
What are the little things that tick them off?
What keeps them up at night?
What are the things they’re thinking in their head but they’re not saying out loud?
You then want to use this information in your copy to make your ideal client think, “wow, that was in my head, you read my mind.” Spending some time doing market research is super valuable.
The other thing that I see people doing who aren’t super connected to their content, is not speaking as if they were speaking to their ideal client. Especially on Stories. They’re talking as if nobody is listening. Pretend that you have hundreds of thousands of your ideal clients listening to you every single day. Set the intention before you start talking that your ideal people are listening to you today. Don’t think that you hope this story will find the person you might be looking for (even though you don’t know who they are). Pretend those people are listening and you’re talking directly to them.
You’ll see this with people who already have an audience, they’ll address their ideal audience member as a word that resonates with that client. They’re not necessarily doing it consciously, they didn’t necessarily pick a word, but it felt good because they understand their ideal audience member.
Market research is really important, whether it’s just asking polls on your Stories using the question feature or actually interviewing people that could be an ideal client for you and asking them a bunch of questions. This will help you get more connected to them.
Something else you can do is have conversations all the time. The excitement I get after I do a call with my clients makes me content so much better because I just communicated with people in an amazing way. If people have already invested in you or are engaging with you, have conversations with them and ask them questions. It’s so powerful to be able to do that.
When you connect with this ideal person, you’re going to make way more sales, and you’re not going to struggle as hard to get people to message you, to DM you, to hop on the phone or to join your challenges.
#4 | Get Connected To Yourself
If you’re disconnected from yourself it’s not going to be as easy to just make a bunch of content and hope that you connect with people. You might be able to pull it off for a couple of months, but if you’re not connected to yourself people pick up on it. If you’re disconnected from yourself, people will pick up on your energy and they’ll pick up on the fact that you maybe don’t want to be there or you don’t know what you’re saying, you don’t really care, and they don’t really know who you are.
People pick up on lack of confidence, scarcity, energy, confusion and lack of clarity on who they are. People pick up on when someone is vanilla and in the middle. So the biggest piece of advice I can give you right now is to find out more of who you are. Because when you get connected with yourself, your values, your passion, your gifts, your strengths and your personality, it’s going to be so much easier for you to create content. You’ll be able to get on stories, to write posts, rto take pictures and to not care what anybody thinks except for you because you know who you are.
And I can tell you right now, seeing someone who knows exactly who they are and is fully representing that is so attractive. It’s attractive in romantic relationships, in client relationships, if you’re looking to hire a coach and if you’re looking to follow somebody. The more you can be yourself the more people will be attracted to you, because you’re just you. And people want permission to be themselves so when you’re fully YOURself, you give people permission to be THEMselves.
When you can get more connected to you, it’s going to be so much easier for people to be attracted to you. It will also be easier for you to build influence, for you to build and audience, and for you to build a clientele base because you’re fully being yourself.
A couple of things that I think are hugely important for being yourself are to do intentional and inspired action on a daily basis. This will help you build up the knowing in your body that your body knows you are confident. Have more self-awareness, so listen to your thoughts and understand that you are not who you think you are. Have you heard of a book called “The Power Of Now” by Eckhart Tolle? He said, “you are not who you think you are. You are who you are, not who you think you are.” What does this mean?
We all have a perceived version of ourselves that we think we are, and a lot of us think we are our emotions, experiences and jobs. For instance, I am sad right now, I am anxious right now, I’m an introverted person. Or I have experience as a teacher so I’m an educational person or I’m a scientific person. Whatever experiences, emotions or thoughts that we have, we attach them to who we are and they might not actually be who we are. They are shaping who we are, but we are not our thoughts and we are not our emotions. Those are things that are separate from our being.
When you can understand that, you can get a little bit more connected with who you actually are and not perceive yourself as someone who’s sad, anxious or not confident. That’s not who you are. Those are things that have come into play and have manifested because of the way the thoughts have been programmed inside of you for so long.
We can create the person that we want to become, we can change our thoughts and we can have different emotions. That’s a huge step towards self-awareness.
LET’S PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:
GRAB MY SEO FREEBIE HERE!
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Want access to a library full of online marketing resources plus weekly bitesize breakthroughs to help you boss your online presence? Find it here.
What did you think of the show? Leave a review on iTunes and become the Breakthrough Blogger of the week!
Subscribe to the show and get notified when a new episode goes live.
Come join my free FB group.
Find out more about working with me here.