Have you struggled with knowing how to create content for your audience?
A poll that I posted on LinkedIn showed that 80% of people said not knowing what to say was their biggest challenge to posting on social media.
You might find that surprising. These are business owners and experts in their field. Why would this be such a huge challenge?
The truth is, it’s a huge challenge because you’re an expert in your field! You have all this knowledge and information in your head but you’re unclear about how to communicate it to someone who doesn’t have the same expertise.
In this blog, I’m going to share with you three steps that will help you figure out what to say in your videos.
Set your intention
To begin with, set your intention and keep this as a guiding principle: the video is not about you, it’s about your audience.
So when planning what you want to say for your video, always keep this guiding principle in mind.
What is helpful right now for your audience? What value can you bring to them in terms of how to solve a particular problem?
Think about the frequently asked questions you get from potential clients and aim to answer those questions in your videos.
Establish your goals
The next step involves figuring out why you want to post your videos.
You may want to educate and inform your audience – to show them how to solve a problem and that you are the person who can help them.
You may want to create a sales video or get people to sign up for a workshop.
You might also want to increase your engagement; people like to watch videos. So then you’ll have more of a presence on social media and can therefore establish yourself as the go-to expert in your field.
It’s so much easier and more effective to explain something in the form of a video rather than text.
Speaking on camera allows your audience to get to know what you’d be like to work with as a coach or a consultant because you share some of who you are and your expertise.
In this way, your videos start attracting your ideal clients and help grow your business.
Brainstorm content ideas
If you’re not sure where to start with your video content, having a brainstorming session can help.
Write down all the ideas that come to mind that are relevant to your business. What areas do you want to educate people about? What questions do you get asked? What are some industry myths that you’d like to dispel? Write everything down without thinking about them too much.
Next, organise all your ideas into categories/topics and sub-topics. For example, three of my content topics are:
- technology basics for video
- confidence and mindset
- presentation skills for speaking on camera
Each also has a list of sub-topics such as how to overcome your fear of speaking on camera.
Your sub-topics could also include what type of content it is, whether it’s educational or an inspirational video of some kind.
Ideally, aim for 5-10 topics and as many sub-topics as you can think of. Use each sub-topic as content for one video.
You’ve just created at least a years’ worth of video content – likely more, as you can repurpose your videos for different social media channels.
Create a strategy
If you already have a marketing strategy, slot your video content into your existing strategy. So if you have a workshop coming up about anxiety then think about posting a weekly video on this topic in the run-up to promoting your workshop. This is just one example – be creative, there’s so much you can do.
Once you have all your video content ideas ready and you know how they fit into your marketing strategy, making videos will be much easier and less time-consuming.
Define your video objectives
Once you know what the video is about and where it fits into your marketing strategy, focus on creating engaging content for each of your videos by deciding what the objective is for each one.
Being clear on your objectives will ensure that your message is delivered with clarity and you’ll avoid waffling. No one likes to watch a video where the speaker starts to go off on a tangent or waffle about something unrelated!
Think about who is your target audience. Who is it that you’re trying to communicate to and what is it that you want to communicate about? What is the purpose of what you say? Is it to inform your audience? Advise them? Persuade them and sell to them? Is it to educate them? Or perhaps you want to inspire your audience? Be clear about your videos’ objectives.
Think about how to structure your video, with a clear beginning, middle and end. What structure works best to make it clear, succinct and memorable?
A good presentation technique to help you structure your video content is to state at the start what the video is about, then talk about your topic and bring it to a close with a summary or call to action.
And finally, where does all this lead? What is your call to action? Make sure your call to action corresponds logically with the objective of your video.
Being clear about your intention, goals and objectives for each video will ensure clarity behind your message every time you speak on camera.
