Summary:
In this episode I give you the rundown on my content creation tips including how I create great, high quality, and unique content starting with just one audio file. Tons of people struggle with it, but it really doesn’t have to be that hard! I’ll walk you through it step-by-step. It’s time to use a content creation workflow that makes your life easier and drives more traffic and sales.
Links:
- First, check out my pages to see how I format my content: ProjectIgnite.com/podcast
- And YouTube.com/DerekGehl.
- Then take a look around at Periscope or Camtasia.com.
- Don’t forget to swing by ezyVA.com to see what Mr. Monty Hooke can offer to assist with your outsourcing
Transcript: Content Creation Tips To Do More With Less
Welcome to the Project Ignite Podcast. This is your host, Derek Gehl, and this week I’m not recording in my usual location – my studio in Vancouver – because I’m actually on the other side of the Pacific Ocean in Melbourne, Australia.
I was in Sydney over the weekend, speaking at a conference, and this weekend I’ll be speaking at a conference at the Melbourne Convention Centre. So what does that mean for this podcast? It means
I’m not in my typical studio where I can control all of the background noise with all of my favourite equipment.
But I’m going to do my best here, and I hope that this audio turns out well and we don’t have any weird interruptions. So, play along with me, and I’ll try to make this worth your while.
In this episode, I want to talk to you about maximizing the effectiveness of your content creation by creating what I call a multi-media content system.
I’m gonna keep this brief, but this is an important strategy – because I watch people work way too hard every single day, trying to create bucketloads of content for their website so they can engage users, get ranked in Google, get out there on socials, and it can be all consuming.
So how do you create content and maximize its value? It’s pretty simple – this multi-media content strategy – and what I’m going to do is just give you an example of how we do this with my podcast.
Now, with the podcast, basically, I sit down and record the podcast – I simply record it into my computer, nothing fancy, you can use free software and all you need is a mic.
You can use something like Audacity, or you can use something more robust, Adobe Edition, or even something like Camtasia.
My point is, when you have content that you want to create, like me, I sit down and record the podcast. What I’m left with is an audio file, which is uploaded to Libsyn, which distributes it to iTunes and other places the podcast appears.
I’ve now created a podcast. A mistake I see people making is that they don’t maximize the value of the content they’ve created, to get as much out of this as possible. So in order to get as much out of this as possible, I’ll submit the podcast to the different hosting services out there, then I’ll also have a player on my website, where I’ll effectively create a blog post where people can play the podcast directly off of my website.
But, that’s just an audio file. On its own, it doesn’t have a lot of benefit from Google or SEO standpoints. So what I do is pay someone to go through and transcribe that podcast.
If you go to Project Ignite.com/podcast, and click on any of the podcast, you’ll see that we’ve created a section on every podcast where we have the tools recommended and shownotes, and underneath is a full transcription of the podcast.
That contains really high quality, unique, keyword rich content. If you go to those podcasts, you’ll see we format it nicely – I had a designer create some very simple styles for us, and we optimize it for a specific word related to that, and now we’ve got a massive piece of content on the website.
Then what we do is take little snippets out of that podcast, little quotes, and create quote graphics to highlight points. So now we have images throughout that podcast, and those can be shared on socials to draw traffic back.
So one simple audio file, and I want you to go look, has turned into this massive piece of content for Google to index. So, very, very powerful. But we’re not done just yet.
The next thing I do is take the audio file and turn it into an mp4 file. So we take the audio, we take the cover art, and turn it effectively into a video.
I upload that to my YouTube channel, and then we optimize the heck out of that listing for keywords as well. Now, from one simple recording, I’ve created a really high quality piece of content on my website, with quotes and images, we’ve turned it into a video, and all I had to do was sit down and record a message.
Some people like writing better, but personally, I like to talk things through. Was I always better at this? No – it takes practice. But here’s what I can tell you.
If you practice recording, whether it be video or audio, you can create content much faster than you can write it. A few tricks here, though, for transcribing, you don’t want to send it out to somebody and tell them to transcribe it verbatim.
What I like to do is hire someone a little higher quality, a writer, who I might pay $15 to $25 to go through – because some of these are pretty long interviews – and have them not only transcribe it but smooth it out.
They will rewrite sections of it so that it reads well. How we talk and how we write don’t always translate – so they smooth it out so that it reads better. Maybe it’s not grammatically perfect, that’s okay, but they take out all of the weird stuff that comes out of our mouths while we talk. So that’s how we create that content.
Then all of the art can be easily outsourced to a graphics designer. I’ve had a ton of luck with designers in the Philippines. Everything here becomes a process.
So maybe you try it yourself the first time, but it takes a ton of time. I’d rather create this recording, hand it off to somebody that knows to edit it, who hands it off to the transcriber, who gives it to the designer to put it on the website.
The fact is – and this is a whole other episode in the podcast – you can outsource this. My interview with Monty Hooke, if you go listen to that podcast, from ezyVA, you could give this to someone like him.
Then, for $20, someone else can do all of that for you. Create the file, hand the file off to someone that knows the process, and they’ll do all of this for you.
You might be thinking, “okay, great, Derek, but I don’t have a podcast.” Well, fair. You don’t have a podcast. But if you don’t have a podcast, the other place you should be doing this, is YouTube videos! Sit down in front of a camera and create a video.
Then get it transcribed, put it on your website, and you’ve got the same high quality content that I get from my podcasts. There’s lots of ways to go about this–I’ve just given an example of how I personally do this to maximize my content.
There’s lots of other ways. Like Periscope, if you do a Periscope, you can download that and use it elsewhere. Or, Blab.IM, you can also use that for webinars – you can turn it into printed stuff and push it out over different channels.
So, in summary, my point is that I see people work way too hard to create different, unique content. But the reality is, if you train yourself to sit down at a mic and talk about something you know about, there you go.
You create a file that can be turned into so much valuable content. It’s that kind of stuff that is easy to outsource.
The process. You don’t need to do all of that yourself.
So if you’ve been struggling to create enough unique content–quit it! Put together a process. Utilize video and audio, turn them into the files we’ve talked about.
Build your own content management team – whether you’re using services like Monty’s ezyVA, or you’re outsourcing yourself and hiring directly, it can be done!
I’ve been doing it for years, and that’s why I don’t stress about content creation. Right now I’m in a hotel room with my mic, and in twenty minutes I will have created a piece of content that will become legacy for me.
I’ll be able to share it across all of my platforms, create graphics and quotes, and share it everywhere. In summary, there’s an easier way.
My process may not be perfect for you, but by all means – create a process to take the content, create it quickly, and utilize these other people to scale it up fast.
Do this once a week and you can create this powerful piece of content very, very quickly.
There you go. Like I said, check it out, ProjectIgnite.com/podcast, see how I format mine. And if you go to YouTube.com/DerekGehl, find my YouTube channel there, and see how I use it. I’m just starting with Periscope, so if you’re curious to see about that, just download the app, search Derek Gehl, and you’ll find me there also.
I hope you’ve taken some value from this episode and I appreciate being here. If you enjoy this podcast, please take a minute and give us a rating on iTunes, make sure you’re subscribed.
This is a brand new podcast but we’ve been climbing the charts very, very quickly on iTunes, the feedback is fantastic.
And I’ve got many great interviews scheduled for you, to help you make more money on the Internet, by simplifying online business.
It doesn’t have to be so damn difficult. This is Derek Gehl signing off, and we’ll see you in the next episode.