SUMMARY KEYWORDS
content, people, create, video, podcast, high quality content, automate, posts, batching, ai, repurposing, short video clips, content creation, linkedin, writing, delegate, put, talking, authority, interview
Alastair McDermott 00:02
Almost everybody that I talked to knows that they should be creating high quality content in order to become known as The Recognized Authority in their field. Because the link there is really clear: in order to become known as The Recognized Authority, people have to know you, they have to discover you in some way, they have to know of you.
Alastair McDermott 00:20
And in order to do that, you have to share your knowledge, demonstrate your expertise in public, you have to publish in some way. And the big issue is that people who are experts, and business leaders are typically very busy, and don’t have time to create content, and they’ve got very busy schedule. So when you’ve got time constraints, it’s really difficult to to create high quality content. And, you know, we all have high standards, we don’t want to be putting crap out into the world. So that’s the that’s the issue here. We’re, you know, we’re talking about creating high quality content, on limited time. And so how do you do that? So I think that that’s possible, and I’m trying to live that.
Alastair McDermott 01:02
I’m not talking about copy-pasting AI-generated crap. I do think that you should be using AI, because it can, there are certain ways to use it, that are very effective. But using it in a way that it’s not producing rubbish that will embarrass you, because that’s not what we’re about.
Alastair McDermott 01:22
We’re about creating high quality, even “thought leadership” type content. I don’t tend to use that word very often, but that’s what I’m talking about. So if that sounds interesting, if you are interested in producing high quality content on limited time, stick around this episode is for you.
Voiceover 01:37
Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.
Alastair McDermott 01:51
I’ve had several calls lately where I’ve been talking with people and they have remarked on the amount of content that I have been posting on social media. And it’s true, I have been posting quite a lot. And it’s great, because I’m getting feedback from people that they’re seeing. And I’m talking about people who are kind of on the far reaches of my network. And they’re telling me, you know, your stuff is coming up in my feed all the time. And maybe you’ve seen that too. Maybe you’re following me on LinkedIn, or maybe you’re not following me on LinkedIn. But you’re listening to this, because some of my content has come up in your feed. And I’m really happy about that, because that’s very deliberate. I’m trying to get my content into people’s feeds, I’m trying to create high quality content that people are interested in sharing, engaging on commenting on. And just to give you some numbers, I’ve gone back and I’ve looked at my LinkedIn, and scroll back, and they don’t really make it easy to get this information. But just by scrolling back, I have in the past 4 weeks, I’ve posted 8 short video clips. So that’s video clips of around 40 to 60 seconds. I’ve posted a text posts, that’s posts that are have mostly text, there might be an image in there, but it’s not really about the image. It’s about the text of the post. So that’s 16 posts. And then I’ve also posted 4 episodes to the podcast. And then on LinkedIn, and all of the other places because I multichannel, I do live streams, I’ve done 3, 3 by 1, approximately 1 hour live streams. And then I’ve also posted three carousel documents. So that’s those kind of slideshow type documents that you see. So. So that’s 16, 20, 26 posts in around the last 28 days. So it’s in and around 1 post every day.
Alastair McDermott 03:42
And so I was talking to to somebody recently, who is, you know, a regular LinkedIn contributor, he posts up some good stuff. And he was surprised at how long how much I was putting out, but also how long it was taking me to do it. And so this may surprise you, too. So in order to do all of that, it’s taking me around four hours a week. So I don’t know if you thought about how long all of that would take. So that’s a roundup post today. Now I am spending time doing other things like going in and commenting on other people’s posts, talking to people in DMS and things like that. But I’m just talking about the amount of time that it takes me to create the content now, so that four hours a week on content creation is mostly around that one hour of the live stream, and then stuff supporting that. So when I create content, it’s it’s all around the podcast. So the podcast is the kind of the driver of the flywheel. That everything else then comes from and I have set up systems and I outsource and I delegate and I automate as much as possible.
Alastair McDermott 04:56
So all of that is coming from In just that short amount of time, now, sometimes I do two or three, you know, I’ll do two or three live streams in one week. And then I won’t do another one for three weeks. That’s been the case recently, actually. But it does all come from an average of around a half a day a week to create all of that content for the rest of the week. Now, before we go too much into the details, I just want to talk about, you know, there’s two things I really want to talk about about this. The first is, this is not crap content, this is not rubbish, I’d ask you to go check out my LinkedIn profile, and see see if it’s if it’s the kind of high quality content that you would expect to produce yourself. And that’s the that’s the key thing is it’s got to be high quality. It’s it can’t look like stuff that has been turned out by an AI, or has been outsourced to somebody who’s who’s not being paid enough. It’s got to be high quality, thought leadership. Not every post has to be a kind of like a thought leadership piece of content. And there are certain posts and certain pieces of content that are Cornerstone content, that will put a huge amount of time and effort into. But the vast majority doesn’t have to be like that a lot of it is around creating this awareness type content, it still needs to be high quality. If you’re an expert, there’s no point in making people aware of how bad your content is. So you got to be creating good quality content. But the key thing is, it’s not just about numbers, it’s not just about creating content and putting it out and more and more and more content. There’s a direct correlation between posting regularly and posting in as many places as possible. So for example, those short video clips I was talking about, they don’t just go on LinkedIn. In fact, they go on Instagram, Facebook, even on Twitter on as well. TikTok, which I’ve been talking to one of my most recent podcast episodes was with Camille Moore about that. And all of these places, I’m able to kind of multipurpose all of that content, and it’s going up there.
Alastair McDermott 07:12
So but there’s a direct correlation between the amount of content that you’re creating, and the amount of people that you’re reaching. And then there’s a direct correlation between the amount of people that you’re reaching, who are becoming aware of you, and who then come and subscribe to your email list, or even reached out to you. And I have had people like I can see a clear trajectory, there’s more visibility, leading to more email subscriptions and podcast lessons. And that leads to more inquiries. And that’s, that’s a straight line. And so I’ve only been in this at this level of intensity, where I’m posting approximately one post per day, I’m only doing that for the last maybe six to eight weeks. Before that I was posting around once a week, twice a week. So I’ve definitely increased my my production in that sense. So that’s what that’s what it’s about. It’s about creating that content, which leads to that awareness, which leads to an increase in inquiries. And also, it’s like it’s building audience. And it’s building trust people, it’s reminding people of who you are, what your expertise is, and all of that. So that’s what we’re doing. That’s why we’re doing it. And you know, the what, as to the actual how, so, I know you’re busy. And I’m busy too. And there is a way to do this when you’re busy.
Alastair McDermott 08:42
There are general time management principles that we have to follow. And I’ll blast through these really super quick. And, by the way, I’m going to follow this up with a link to where I’ve written a more extensive guide on this, but for the time management principles that you should be following. And I say short because this one really is a should I know we shouldn’t shoot on people. But in this case, I think everybody who’s is in any kind of management position has to follow good time management principles like ruthlessly prioritizing. So focusing on the high value tasks. Time blocking, this one is a hard one, particularly when you time block and then you blow through that time block because you said it yourself. But setting a time block in your calendar for stuff. I use Pomodoro Technique sometimes I find that that those work, I find that I ignore my time block sometimes when I shouldn’t. So I need to get better without when myself being better with scheduling and and milestones and deadlines and things like that. And then delegation and automation.
Alastair McDermott 09:47
And we should not be doing everything by ourselves. Even if we’re independent there are still ways to delegate, outsource and automate. So, you know, automate is dead. allocation to a machine basically. And then reevaluating all of that. So that’s kind of like the basics of time management, but getting really specific talking about the planning. So the key thing is to have some sort of overall high level content strategy. And that comes from having clear goals about what you’re trying to achieve. And understanding your audience, identifying your target audience, understanding that audience understanding their needs, their interests, their pain points, what are the concerns and problems they’re facing. And that will then lead you into what are the core topics that you’re gonna be talking about those pillar topics or themes, or, you know, people have different names for for how you do that. But basically, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to identify the main content topics that you’re gonna be talking about, and categorizing that mapping in a bit. And doing that will help you because it just makes it so much easier when you when you can see on a, you know, on a set of post its or on paper, however you do that. I like to map it out visually, and just see, and then turning that into some sort of content plan, where we’ve picked a content format.
Alastair McDermott 11:14
And I really like to dual purpose, the concept of podcasts, and video podcasts because it forces you to be consistent. And then video, because video is repurpose ssible, in many, many different formats in in a much more powerful way than than any of the other kinds of source formats that we can use. Like we can our source form I can be writing, but you can’t easily turn writing into video, the AI generated stuff, it’s it’s not there, and it’s going to be a long time before that gets there. Audio can turn into text very easily. But it kept going the other way as much harder again, although there is AI to help with that, but it’s really not there yet, either. So I think that there’s two formats there that are really important one is writing. And when it’s video, I think that we must do writing. Because writing helps us to have ideas and helps us to formulate our thinking. And then I think that video is the ultimate in terms of giving us content that we can then repurpose into other things. And so that’s the video was a huge driver in my content creation. And this is why I moved to live streaming. By the way for the podcast episodes. For most of my interviews, now we’re live streamed, because it just forces me to that video. The video then can be repurposed. And that’s what it’s really about. It’s It’s It’s repurposing the content in multiple ways. And that’s why I’m able to create all of that content that I talked about in just a few minutes of time or a few hours of time. Video is absolutely crucial. In fact, it’s like the key step here. And one thing that I think is really important is to have an always ready video setup. So this is where you know that you’re always going to look and sound amazing. When you’re at your desk, like even when you’re on your regular zoom calls and things like that. And the quality of your audio video is far more important than most people realize. Because it will make you appear smarter, more likeable, and appear more competent. And if it’s bad, it will make you appear less smart, less likeable, and less competent. And that’s absolutely crazy. But that’s, that’s what the research shows. And if you want to hear about that research, I did interview Professor Norbert Schwartz from the University of Southern California about this, about the studies that he did an audio and video quality. And those are the findings. So you absolutely have to have high quality audio and video you must have if you want to appear to be an expert and a thought leader and a recognized authority in your field, then you’ve got to have good quality audio and video, I just can’t emphasize that enough.
Alastair McDermott 14:09
And the always ready video, what we’re talking about here is having your high quality camera, the best quality that you can get having high quality camera and microphone, and lighting and backdrop. So make all of those things the best that you can possibly make them. And by the way, I have a free guide on Amazon. It’s a free book you can download. And I’ll put a link in the show notes as well. But it’s got advice on you know, specific tech recommendations, things like that. And I’ve also written about backdrops and things like that as well. But this is this is really crucial stuff. Because if you have it set up so that with the flick of a switch just by hitting record, you have you’re able to produce high quality video content, even when you’re on a regular zoom call or teams call or whatever. What that will do is that will just make it much more efficient. Because there’s no setup time, you don’t have to have a setup to do a video. And that just makes content creation so much easier. In fact, that also means that now all of your internal zoom calls that you record, while your internal team teams calls or whatever those are, all of those can now become content that you can then produce, if the content itself is suitable to repurpose and put out on social media, then, absolutely, you now have, just from your regular calls, you’re gonna have a mountain of video content. And that’s the key thing here. That’s actually what makes it so efficient to produce content for social media, because then you’ve already created the content. And maybe you do it in a different way. So it doesn’t have to be from your regular calls. One thing that I do sometimes is I ask a friend of mine, to interview me, and I take the videos then from that, but and having somebody interview you is is a really great way to do this. In fact, it’s it’s so important, I think that I’m creating a whole service based around that. But that’s that’s something else, you can check in the show notes if you’re interested in learning about that. But I’m not trying to promote that here, I’m just trying to promote the idea of you having an always on video setup. And then delegating the post production. So you’re not doing the post production here, you’re delegating that to a video editor who will do that. Now hopefully, at some point in the future, we’ll have ai do the whole thing. But I know there’s a lot of AI tools out there that say they will do this, but they don’t really do a great job. I’ve tested them all. They don’t do a great job of of that automated editing yet. Of course, right now, the thing I say to people all the time about AI is what it is right now is the worst that’s ever going to be it’s only ever going to improve. But for right now in in in end of July, starting August 2023, the AI tools to do that video automated video editing aren’t quite there yet. And maybe you know, in six months time, if you’re listening to this, they will be or maybe in a year’s time. But for now, I will delegate the editing to a human being who is good at video editing. And there’s loads of people who can do video editing if you don’t have one on staff. And you can find people to take those and turn those into short video clips that are ideal for social media. And that’s where a lot of this content can then come from. Because what I talked about earlier about repurposing video, the video includes the audio, obviously of your words, the audio of your words, can be transcribed. And when we do that, what we’re able to do then is we’re able to turn those words into text, we’re able to take that text and we’re able to rewrite that text. And that text can then become things like carousels, and it can become text posts, when it’s rewritten. It can become blog posts, it can become show notes for a podcast, it can become text notes to go alongside a video.
Alastair McDermott 18:04
And that’s why I think that video is so powerful because all of the rest of it can come from the video. And again, this goes back to how do you spend, you know, two to four hours a week, and create all of this content. And it comes from a recording video and recording video that is done in such a way as to produce the potential for having intelligible, interesting clips. And that’s important. And then the other thing is to have systems in place to automate and delegate in terms of video editing, and then writing. So there’s a couple of little things that are important, I think. So first of all, repurposing does work better, when you know in advance that you’re going to be doing it. Because you can you can talk in such in a certain way, like when you are answering questions, if you can speak in a self contained way, if you can include the question in your answer. So you don’t just say that’s a great point, you repeat the point itself. And you say, I think that the best way to setup video or whatever you’re talking about is that’s a bad example. But you know what I’m talking about you like you include the point that that you’ve been addressed with, you can then use that to make kind of a self encapsulated 62nd video or something like that for social media. By the way, you might be wondering why I’m talking about those 40 to 62nd video clips for social media. And the reason why I think those are important is well, clearly YouTube things are important because YouTube shorts, Instagram and TikTok think they’re bloody important too. So there’s a lot of people out there who think that the short video clips are important, so don’t take my word for it. Look at those And I understand if you’re skeptical about that kind of content if you don’t watch that kind of content yourself, but there are a hell of a lot of people who do. And I’m even now on the vertical video train, I wasn’t there myself personally for a long time. And but I just see, you know, vertical video. You know, that’s, that’s the way that people are editing it. And so that’s the way I’m producing it now, so that it goes out on all the different platforms. If you don’t like it, you can produce your video horizontal in landscape format, that’s absolutely fine. If you really hate the vertical stuff, but I would suggest that you think about how your people or your audience are consuming it, like, are they looking at it on their phone.
Alastair McDermott 20:47
And by the way, LinkedIn, have told us that 80% of people watch video in vertical mode, on LinkedIn. So if you think that your audience are the 20%, and don’t include any of that 80% Okay. Personally, I think that this is the trend, let’s let’s get on. Let’s, let’s just deal with that and move on and accept that vertical video is the way that the things are gonna go in the near future, and it’s not going to change for a long time. So, okay, that’s video, and why I think it’s important and how I use it. So the next thing is, in terms of creating content efficiently, is in batching. And so, I think it’s really important to use batching, and checklists and workflow. And so I tend to do just one thing at a time if I can. So if I’m coming up with content ideas, for example, I’m going to try and come up with 20 content ideas, not just one at a time, because it’s more efficient to do it that way. And particularly with, you know, with with AI tools for brainstorming, and I think you’ve got to use AI for brainstorming, it’s such a great use of the tool, rather than actually producing the content, use it to come up with ideas for the content.
Alastair McDermott 22:16
And then if you are doing, where you’re shooting separate videos, then I would say, definitely batch it. So don’t shoot one video, and then stop. If you’re going to be doing you know, short separate videos, then do tentative time, dedicated a half a day a month to that if you need to have that amount of time for it. Although Now personally, I would prefer if there’s a way to just integrate it into your workflow, and avoid that setup and teardown of equipment and all that kind of thing, then I think that’s even better. And then in batching, I think it’s really important to document a checklist or an SOP, a standard operating procedure, if you can. And that could be as simple as putting some steps into a spreadsheet or something like that. But having a documented also helps you to figure out what you can delegate and what you can automate, or just simply remove because there’s some things you just don’t need to do. And so I when I when I look at the production workflow for my podcast, for example, I invite the guests that’s that’s what kicks off an episode is me inviting the guest. And what I do is I, I send I send them the introduction, the invitation, which is me saying, Hey, I’d like to connect and have you on my podcast, here’s what I’d like to talk about, would you be interested in connecting and that’s how it kicks off from me talking to them on LinkedIn. And then I give them the FAQ link for the podcast, and also the calendar booking. And so the calendar booking is automated. So they’ll book it for whatever suits them. If they don’t book it, I’ll follow up with them again later sometime. But typically, they’ll they’ll book it, and then they’re automatically redirected to an intake form which gathers all the information that we need to create any promotional materials, get their headshot, all of that kind of stuff. And that intake form is then emailed to me and my assistant Aiko by Zapier. And so then, in fact, it also includes some promo text, which is pre written because we have written the intake form under Zapier in such a way, and we can then just drop that into chat GPT.
Alastair McDermott 24:25
And that will actually give us a promo for the live stream that is written nicely. So I don’t do any of any of that. That’s all automated. The next thing is my producer who’s Aiko will create a promotional graphic, and she’ll shedule it. And the next thing that I do is I’ll get on the live interview at the time. We’ll have all of the stuff freedom, and I won’t have been involved in any of that except for the invitation. And once I do the interview that’s automatically gone out. If it’s broadcast live, it goes out on Facebook, YouTube. LinkedIn, I’m not sure if it goes anywhere else. Oh, I think it goes on Twitch. So it goes to a bunch of different places. And so the so once that conversation is finished, I don’t have any more responsibilities with that episode, in terms of getting the podcast episode down or anything like that. So I just have to be there. So I’m doing the guest invitation. And then I’m turning up for the interview. And the rest of it. Any other work that’s that’s that needs to be done is going to be done. Either it’s going to be automated, or it’s going to be done by my producer. And so that’s, that’s what’s really great about having these checklists, and having these automations and delegations. And the other thing about having checklists and SOPs is they’re particularly important for busy people, because you have to make less decisions. It reduces the cognitive load, it reduces the amount of energy that decision making is taking. And it’s saving and freeing up your brain for higher priority things. And so I think that’s really crucial. Okay, so that is, let me let me just recap everything so far. We talked about all the time management stuff at the start, you know, the time management basics, having a content strategy planned out, creating this, using video, and having always ready video, I think that’s really important. And then repurposing the video content. And using batching. You can also use existing content, you probably already have some existing content that you can use. And I use this sometimes, particularly when I need to create something quickly. If I’m, if you know, like, because we batch. What that means is we create a lot of content. And then we let it go out sheduled it and let it go out and don’t worry about it. And then we’ll come to the end of the batching period, sometimes there’ll be a couple of days there where I just need to create something one off. And that’s a great place to go and find existing content. And by the way, you can just take something that you published previously, and just copy paste it and publish it again, that’s okay, that’s allowed, there was no content, police are going to come along and stop you from doing that. It’s your content. If you’ve created it before, a lot of your audience probably didn’t see it. And even those who did might like to be reminded about it. So if you’ve got something that you have already, you can turn that into content into new content. You could take your previous text posts, or blog posts and turn that into a carousel. There’s lots of ways to repurpose the format as well. And yeah, so that’s, that’s a key one.
Alastair McDermott 27:52
And then the other thing is that I think is really important is to just accept the imperfect. So perfectionism is this trap. And we fall into it, because we think this is a kind of like a pursuit of excellence. But perfectionism is procrastination. This is the reason why I forced myself to do video on live stream now, because then I don’t have the option to take it back and edit it. And I’ve done this, this episode that I’m doing with you. Now, I haven’t done it completely on one tape, but I’ve done a lot of it in in a long take. And because I know that like I’ve misspoken as I’ve recorded this episode, I’m just going to accept that. And because I want to put it out. And you know, I don’t want to procrastinate, because I think that I’ve got to have perfect donors better than perfect. So if you don’t feel ready, that’s okay. You to feel ready at you need to start, the only way to feel ready is to have experience. And the only way to get experience is to start. So you know, there’s only so many books that you can read about swimming before you actually have to get in the water. Because the only way to learn to swim is to get in the water. So regularly create content and publish it get feedback and refine it and improve it continuously. And do good research at the start and batch planning and contents. strategy around your ideal target audience. That part is crucial. And that’s where the that’s where the effort will pay off. Don’t worry about little things, except when you do a video you do a take and it’s not absolutely perfect. That’s okay. If it’s you know if it’s 90% if it’s 95%, whatever the number is for you. It’s important to just publish and then delegate and automate absolutely everything you possibly can. Because if you are getting bogged down in execution tasks, it’s not a good use of your time. You should be, if you don’t have a team, you can start to build one just by finding people on a part time basis subcontractors. And they should be doing the editing and repurposing and even the publishing for you. And you know, you need to get to know somebody and trust somebody before you give them the keys to your LinkedIn account and things like that, for delegation, but do as much as you can, and then automate everything you can.
Alastair McDermott 30:27
And so and automate things as well. I like to automate things that I could have somebody else do for me, but I don’t want to waste my team’s time on doing things that a computer can take care of his app can take care of. And so like remember that as a, as a business leader, and as an expert, your job is to direct strategy, and plan and create content. And you should be handing off every other stage of the process. So that you can have brain cycles, and focus on the high value stuff that only you can do. And just to reiterate, come back to content, like why we’re doing this content is an investment. And it’s an investment in creating contents, developing your thinking, building a body of work that people can find you creating awareness. And if you don’t create content, you will remain invisible. And so it’s not a requirement to be an authority in your field. But it’s a requirement to be recognized. And that’s the that’s the thing. If you want to, you know, if you want to do inbound marketing, and have people come to you, which is the route to commanding higher fees, and having more free time and having a better business model and getting away from hourly rates, then that’s the path to authority through content creation and publishing. And so every piece of content is adding to your body of work. It’s a place that you can have this opportunity to engage your people and grow your audience. And every piece of content, you can also republish again. So it’s not just by creating it that first time. And there was a final thing I want to end on is
Alastair McDermott 32:15
I was listening to Alex for Mozi. And I heard him say something really interesting. He said, the content is not the compounding asset, the audience’s the comparing assets, it took me too long to figure that out. So what he’s talking about there is that it’s it’s not just by creating the content, it’s about the audience that you’re reaching through that content is what’s growing and growing over time. And so this is an investment, it’s an investment of time. So I mentioned earlier that I am creating a service based around this. And that’s because I’ve been doing this for quite a while now. And so if you’re interested in learning more about that, it’s called authority accelerator. And the goal is to make content creation completely effortless for you. And the way I do it is I’ll interview you once or twice a month. And my team will create all of the video clips and text posts for your social media. And what we’ll do is we’ll even publish them for you. So that’s something that I’m working on. Now I have a couple of pilot clients come in through the program. And, and it’s working well. So I’m going to be I’m going to be talking more about this on the podcast. It’s it’s one of these things that has kind of grown organically from what I’m doing myself. And some people saw me doing it and said, Hey, that looks interesting. So that’s why I think that it could be useful for a lot of people. So if you think that that sounds interesting to you, check the link to authority accelerator in the show notes. So thanks for listening. If there’s anything that I can do to help you, I have a guide to efficient content creation, how to create consistently create high quality content on a busy schedule. So I do have that it’s a free download. That will be linked in the show notes. And if there’s anything that I can do if you want to pick my brains, but anything, I’m happy to share. There’s nothing, there’s nothing that I want to hide, I’m happily share my entire process with you. So please do engage. If you found this useful, I would appreciate if you can leave a review on your podcast player, whatever that is. So thanks for listening and see you next time. Thanks for listening, I know that you’ve got a choice of podcasts and shows that you can listen to so I really do appreciate your time and your attention. If you did find this episode interesting, I would truly appreciate if you could take 30 seconds to rate the show in your podcast player or even leave a text review. It won’t take you long but it has a huge impact on the growth of the show. And it also helps to motivate me and continuing to do it. So it’s right where you’re listening to the show. You can also find a link in the show notes which will take you to rate and review. Thank you again. See you in the next one.
