Today, I want to get into how I have personally developed my content process.
After being in this online space since 2015, I’m going to take you through my eras and what I learned in each one. We’re going to talk about why I’ve consistently invested in learning about content and why that’s been really important to my growth and success.
The Network Marketing Era
When I first started out in the online space, I was in network marketing. I was a Beachbody Coach. I had used Facebook for fun, obviously, since I was in college, but I had never used it really for anything besides posting 100 photos in 3 different albums at the end of a party weekend!
In those early days of business, I was definitely learning everything that I could. I was mostly learning from my upline (which is the person I signed up under as a coach).
She would always say:
“Success leaves clues”
Which really is true – so at the time, I was making my content super similar to what she was doing, really just following the path that she had laid out for those of us that were on her team. I was super consistent. These were the days (you’ll have to DM me and tell me if you remember this), where you were supposed to post three times a day, first thing in the morning, around lunchtime, and in the evening.
There was a lot of content that was being put out, but it really wasn’t quality content.
Since there weren’t as many people online – you didn’t have to be as strategic, you just had to be consistent and have a way for people to like you.
During this era, I would be getting a lot of comments & messages:
“you’re so inspiring”
“so proud of you”
“Love watching you do this”
It was great and it fed my ego, but it wasn’t really enough for me to build my Beachbody business where I wanted to go.
The Tips Girl Era
Then I started to build a fitness, healthy lifestyle business alongside my Beachbody business. I really became “the tips” and “the how to” girl.
Even in the early days of this business that I’m in now, three ways to do X, Y, and Z, how to do X, Y, and Z.
I had Tuesday tips with G. I would do lives where we would sit down and eat lunch together and I would share a recipe or I would talk through steps to do something.
I did start to become the person that people were coming to when they needed the solution that I had. It still wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t really bringing new people into my world. It wasn’t really establishing me the way I wanted it to.
The Investing Era
I started investing in two really big things. I invested in other things before this, but two really, really big pieces that were super honed in and specific to what I needed help with.
One of them was an email course with Tarzan Kay, who is the email guru of all time. Her email course was all about learning how to send emails that people will actually open. It was a really great course because it was a combination of both the execution and also the meat and potatoes of content. I learned so much from that course that I still use today.
The other thing that I invested in was with a coach one on one, it was a pack of 3 calls to really get better at my storytelling, because I was the tip girl and I could pull tips out for everything.
The way that my brain works is I’m so process driven and I needed help pulling out more of the storytelling that would really be directly related to my business.
Those are the two things that I invested in all in the same year, I think it was 2020, maybe it was the beginning of 2021, that were super niche and specific that really helped me grow in my content.
They changed the way I looked at my brand online and gave me confidence to step further into who I am.
The Story Era
After doing that, I started to skew toward telling a lot more stories and not as many tips. I was telling both personal stories and business stories. A lot of my captions and my reels were really, really long and I got away from the tips. Yet, I still wasn’t getting the traction that I really wanted. In my gut, I still felt that I’m just not there yet. There’s just more that needs to be done.
In the meantime, I was working with clients on their content planning and their consistency.
Then, I took a break. I took a break from social media, left Instagram for 30 days.
I needed to take a step back and just soak everything in.
Putting It All Together Era
What I realized is, and this is what I teach in my signature course, Content Consistency Code, is that there are three types of content that you really have to combine in order to reach your audience where they’re at. In order to have visibility and to reach the people that are also more process-driven and want more of the tips. Reach the people that want to connect with you and reach the people that need examples in storytelling and in case studies.
So that’s when I really started to develop these three pieces; connection, authenticity, and authority.
Your people want to connect with you both on a business and on a personal level. It’s important to create content that connects with them. That’s the storytelling and the lifestyle side of things.
Authenticity is important. This is something that I do see a lot of people struggle with, and the more you use AI to help with your content, the more you’re going to struggle with it. Authenticity is really about showing up as you are, speaking in your language.
I have a client, she’s from Tennessee, and when you read her content, you read it in a Southern drawl. She uses her slang. It feels like when you read her content that you are speaking directly to her. It feels authentic. It stands out. It’s different from what everybody else is doing. Everybody else is using the same type of words. So that’s where the authenticity piece comes in.
The final piece of this is authority. That’s where the how to’s, the tips, the experience, what sets you apart, that’s where that fits in.
When you learn and plan to include these three pieces in your ongoing content strategy, that’s when you really start to get good traction because you’re hitting people with different types of content for different people that think in different ways and need to be spoken to in different ways, right?
It’s just like your kids. I cannot talk to Dom the same way as I speak to Celeste. They learn differently. They act differently. They need different things from me. So just like our kids, we have to treat our kids differently, right?
We have to, what’s the saying? You have to raise the kid you got. It’s the same way with your audience. You have to speak to them in different ways, share and show different types of content so that they will become ready and excited to buy from you based on how their brain works best.
So that’s really where I’ve come. I share this with you because eight years in, I know the impact that I can have on people’s content.
I’ve learned a lot and I have messed up a lot.
I have had times in my content journey where I was getting crickets and I had to pivot and I had to invest.
Just recently, I did an intensive with a coach because I was feeling really stuck and honestly, just bored with the type of content that I was creating. I needed help to shake it up. Even experts need help.
If you are feeling stuck and you are feeling like, I am consistent, I am putting in the work, I feel like I’m showing up, and yet I’m not getting the momentum that I want. I’m not getting the DMs and the engagement that I want, then it really is up to you to do something to change that.
It’s up to you to invest or have conversations. Sometimes it just comes down to figuring out where you need to invest and what support that you need. Depending on the level that you’re at in your business, sometimes that really does mean one on one support or it means some really targeted piece of learning or a course.
You don’t have to stay stuck.
It’s okay to take a break for a little bit and regroup.
I’ve done all of the above.
That’s why I’m still here eight years later.
If you’re feeling stuck and you want a place to at least start, my Create Better Content workshop walks you through the things we talked about, how to create connection content, how to create authentic content, how to create authoritative content, and really how to tie it all together.
Grab it, go through those questions, watch those videos, at least get your wheels turning. Then make sure you go find me on Instagram. Let me know what other questions you have about your content.
I can’t wait to see what you create because you are good at what you do. You really, really are.
Sometimes you just need help translating that to the rest of the world.
Helpful links:
Purchase my signature course, Content Consistency Code HERE
Snag my free workshop, Create Better Content HERE
Follow me on Instagram HERE
Listen to this podcast episode HERE
