Small Business Content Series: How To Create Content Part 1
So now that you know what content is it’s time to get started making some. If you missed it, check out the post ‘What Is Content?’ from a few weeks back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to catch up…
The best way to understand how to make content is to take a journey with me through a couple of examples to show you how. We will start with one in this post to keep it simple and easy to follow.
In my first example I am an HVAC business owner during the winter months in New England. How do I use the season and my expertise to create content that will resonate with my audience? I will show you how to get started.
New England HVAC Business Part 1
I'm in New Hampshire and it's snowing out today - beautiful but an annoyance for many. It's not sticking but in some places you have a couple of inches. The first sign of snow up in New England is our “Oh, crap winter is here” moment and when winter comes, that means things are going to slow down, road conditions will be worse, there's a higher chance of accidents and people are going to get sick more (I mean, as if we already need it). People start switching into “winter mode” to get through.
So let’s say I am an HVAC specialist, I install heating systems, water boilers - all the things you would need to keep your family warm and safe during the winter cold. So as an HVAC specialist, the first thing that I would want to do because of the sheer power of the channel, is I would make a video. My video would be about how you can save money during the winter as you turn on your heat or how to make sure your heat is working properly. It might be something about how you need to check certain areas of your home or call me and to check certain equipment so that we can make sure that your heating system doesn't fry and other preventive measures.
The Content Idea
Let’s say this video would be titled something like “5 Tips To Think About As You're Starting Up Your Heating System.” Five tips, one of them could be considered calling me, the HVAC specialist, to come in and check your system.
So what I'm doing right there is I'm creating a piece of content. Let's go with this “5 Tips To Think About As You're Starting Up Your Heating System” video idea. Within those tips, I'm giving value. It's not all just about me, it's not about my HVAC company. It's about you and how my knowledge, my expertise and running my company, whether it be three years or 30 years, I'm sharing it with you so that you can have a better quality of life.
Right now, everybody's looking to enhance their quality of life. So when we're talking about content, we're also thinking about things that we can put out that do represent our business, but that focuses on giving value to those who need our services or products. I want you to really reread that sentence again. You should see that it is important for us to continue concentrating on adding value.
Now in this video we have five tips and let's say each tip takes 20 seconds. That's 100 seconds - just over a minute and a half long. Perfect and easy! You could do it yourself. You could be in front of the camera or you could have a slide show and just do a voiceover.
So now you have that video you're going to publish it up on YouTube. Now what? We are going to take that video and we're going to turn it into all different kinds of content. We can turn it into blog content. We could then use that blog on different social channels and our website or in email blasts. We could create social posts and take clips from that blog or video and share them out. There's a lot we can do from this one video.
Join me on the next post when we talk more about how to take one piece of content and turn it into many!