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Ever feel like you're just going through the motions with your content creation? You're not alone. This week, we're tackling that all-too-familiar feeling of spinning your wheels and sounding like a broken record. Through candid discussions and actionable advice, we'll explore how to shake off the creative cobwebs and realign your content to resonate with your audience.

Strap in as we dissect the perks of podcasting over other long-form content and share the secret sauce to keeping things fresh—rotating through content pillars and strategically managing a content calendar. I get real about my own struggles and the pivotal role of well-being in the content creation process. It's not just about what you create, but how you create it. We'll walk you through the ins and outs of using tools like Asana for smooth sailing and the power of brainstorming sessions to reinvigorate your topics.

And for the grand finale, we're digging deep into content strategy with insights on showcasing your expertise without sounding like a textbook. Whether it's the potential of testimonial episodes or the draw of live coaching sessions, we've got your back. Plus, we'll break down my holistic marketing model in a way that's as engaging as it is educational. If you're ready to give your marketing efforts an edge and captivate your listeners, this episode is your not-to-be-missed guide.

In this episode, we cover:

✨ exactly what it means to be a broken record
✨ why it happens and what you should do about it
✨ tips for making content creation easier
✨ suggestions for approaching your content pillars from new angles

Episode Transcript:

Hello, so if you've been a long time listener, you know that I always used to open the episodes the exact same way and that way is now my intro. So this is actually the third time that I've restarted this recording because I just keep wanting to say My intro but I know that it's I just don't want it to be a duplicate.

So here we are jumping into another episode. It's March, which is super exciting. Uh, I just had my birthday. If you have been listening, I did a bonus ask me anything episode that came out on Thursday and then this one today. So yeah, very exciting. Thank you for being here.

This week we're going to be chatting about what to do if you feel like a broken record. And kind of a little bit along that topic of like, when content creation just feels hard. Because if, quote unquote, you're doing it right, Then you should feel like a broken record is what I was told over and over and over again And I don't know if I agree with that or not.

I also don't love when content creation feels hard That makes it to me feel like there's a misalignment and I'm not saying that it should be super easy and no Hold ups, but it shouldn't feel hard all the time. So, I want to kind of address those two things. What to do if you feel like a broken record, and then what to do if content creation just feels really, really hard.

And we are specifically talking about long form content creation. So, podcasts, blog, video content, which you may be putting on YouTube or could be lives, whatever video version you were choosing, pick one and stick with it. But my personal preference is probably podcasting. For me podcasting just makes the most sense because it does have some editing but it's not very challenging.

For a while I was trying to do video content and I found that it was Between the video and the audio and having to edit both of those plus the lighting and the different clips and this and there's a lot more I find that goes into editing a video.

And so for me, that was just a bit too much. If the editing part of video is not too much for you because you can see and hear the person often the relationships build faster. Connections are formed more easily because we do tend to trust people when we can see them and hear them. I also am a podcast listener and so I know.

What goes into podcasting and what I'm looking for when I'm looking and listening to podcasts So I think that that was a bit of an advantage for me It also I think is the best form of content for my listeners who are probably on the go They have a bunch of different things going on and they want content that they can listen to and consume while they're making dinner or driving their kids to school or doing whatever Chores tasks around the house that they need to.

And so they can just have me on in their earbuds or playing outta their computer. However, they're listening to the podcast while they're also doing other things, and then they can stop and pause and take notes when necessary. But really it's not with a video, I find you have to sit there and watch.

It's more time consuming and it's harder to multitask. So those are my reasons for picking podcasts. Uh, blog is my least favorite because I don't think we consume them the way that we used to and there's so much content on the internet already that it can be really, really hard to rank on Google and to actually be found.

But blogs are the best for hiring someone else to do it. You can't really hire someone else to be your voice or to be your face on the videos if you are the face of your company. Now I have at least a couple of clients who have quote unquote outsourced that piece so someone on their team has become their content creator and has become the face of their business.

So if that's the route you want to go, it's definitely an option. But if you want to still be the face of your business, but you don't want to be the one creating the content, then a blog is the easiest way to do that because there's no voice or face attached to it. Yeah. So can you can have like a ghostwriter.

So, what do I mean when I say broken record? Basically that you're repeating the same thing over and over again. This is, uh, dating me or aging me a little bit. When I was a kid, like really, really young, we did have a record player in our house and sometimes my mom would put on records and where this phrase broken record comes from is if the, the needle thing I was young when this was happening.

So there's going to be people out there who are older than me that are going to correct me on this, but, haha umm I think it's, if the needle, it will start to like not track properly on the record. And basically the same section of the record will play again and again and again. And so when you're repeating yourself, then you sound like a broken record because just like the record being broken, repeated itself over and over again, you're doing the same thing.

And this happens in our business because we are told to pick a couple of different content pillars, buckets, if you will, topics that we talk about over and over and over and over and over and over again. So that people get to know us for like what we offer, who we are, where our expertise is. It's not a bad thing.

It is important for us to be consistent in our messaging. It is important to be consistent in the content that we're putting out and it is important for people to Get to know us for something like if my name is said in a teacher Facebook group Then many people will recognize me as a Facebook ads strategist because they've been doing it for so long I'm in conferences and I do presentations for summit I go into groups and I help people there like and I have this podcast, right?

I'm pretty Well known at this point, uh, going on for years that I've been doing this, that people recognize me for that, right? But outside of the teaching world, it's a different story and that's fine, but it happens because I talk about the same thing over and over and over again. And for four years I've been consistently doing Facebook ads and helping people with Facebook ads and become kind of a guru with Facebook ads in this niche. So, but, but. We do talk about the same things over and over again. And so that's why is that the recommendation to get us known as experts is to repeat ourselves. We start to feel like we're repeating ourselves. Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Yes, it's both. I know that that's probably not what we want to hear.

It's a good thing because of what I just said, that people get to know you and recognize you, but it's also not great because I do listen to a couple of podcasts. Well, actually I stopped listening to these podcasts because they're constantly saying the same thing. Again and again and again in the exact same way.

There's been times when I thought, Wow, I feel like I listened to this exact same episode a couple weeks ago. I go back and I find the episode that I was thinking of. It's not the exact same episode. They've recorded, it wasn't like a recast or one of those like, V. I. P. Very important podcast, if you will or anything like that.

It was a completely new recording of a podcast, but it was just the exact same content, the exact same ideas, the exact same everything. And I understand that if that's going to happen every now and then, then that's fine. But I, one specific podcast that I'm thinking of right now, it happened multiple times to the point where I was like, well, I'm not getting anything new.

I feel like I've listened to all of your ideas and you're not giving me anything new or fresh. So bye, I'm out. Like, just, I'm done. Because I want to, even if I am hearing the same information, but if it's coming from a slightly different angle. or if, uh, there's a, like, it's going deeper or we're focusing on one aspect of it and I can take something new away from it, then that's great.

And also I understand too, there's podcasts that I've been listening to one who, she puts out an episode, two episodes every single week, and she's been doing it for over five years now. So there are. I want, I was going to say thousands, we might not be quite to thousands yet, but there are a lot of episodes, like a lot, a lot of episodes.

And so, There are definitely times because I've gone back and listened to quite quite a lot of the archive So there's times when I'm listening to one of the old episodes and then I listen to one of the new episodes and I go Oh, yeah, I can see the similarities but because it was four or five years ago I can also see the growth and the change and I am fairly confident that Her audience has shifted and changed and grown in that time and I've definitely done this too, where I go back and I look at what are some of the best performing episodes from this podcast from a year or two years ago so that I can do kind of an update on them and what is my, what are my thoughts now?

What are, like, what new information, new growth do I have on those same topics? And like, I'm not saying don't do that, but I'm just saying that to repeat the exact same information in the exact same way every, like once a month, and to do that on three different topics. So you're basically cycling through the exact same content every three weeks doesn't make sense, right? I also understand the message that we're given as online content creators that repeating yourself is a good thing because people aren't listening or maybe they don't understand or they don't fully absorb the information that you're giving especially not the first time and so they need to hear it again and again so that it'll be more meaningful and that they're able to and they're not able to take it in maybe it's just not the right time in their business and, or like they're doing something else they're focused on like getting a summit up and running, but you're talking about lead magnets and then once the summit's done, they're ready to refocus on list growth, right?

So it could be something like that. foundational knowledge isn't there and they're not able to put what you're saying into practice yet. There's so many different reasons and. So I do understand that in that way, it's a good thing. You really want to give people that information. You really want to make sure that when they're ready to hear it.

They, that you're putting it in front of them. And so my recommendation is to strive to go deeper each time. So that even the people who are listening every single time and have been able to absorb the information every single time, that there's something new for them to take away, whether it's something new that you've learned or a different angle or a different, just a different way of looking at the concept each time.

That way it isn't the exact same content presented repeatedly. It really is. Growth and development. And so that over time, people will start to recognize your main points and know what your recommendation are, recommendations are on the topic, but they won't be like, oh, okay, well, I could repeat this same script that she has.

It's also important to rotate through your content pillars. So coming up with a list and deciding whether you're gonna rotate like a different topic each week Or maybe each month you'll focus on something if if you were listening last month I think it was like the end of January beginning of February.

I did a summit series. And so that was a focus on that one specific topic and then will rotate through some others. I do have a master list of kind of what my content pillars are, and then some subtopics under each one of them, which helps me to rotate through my content and to pull ideas from different categories.

I will totally 100 percent admit that I'm not the best at it being intentional, intentional about my rotations and I typically will get on to one topic like I did for the summit and it's not even a series like the summit was the summit series was a series, but I'll get on to a topic and I'll do like two or three episodes on that.

And then I'll go to a different topic. Kind of. I bounce around a little bit like that. So that's just how I do it, uh, content blitzes where you're focusing specifically on something like I did for the summit series can be really great for a launch. Whether you're in the warm up stage before you've been talking about it, or you're more into the launch itself, focusing on that content will get people really excited thinking about the things that you want them thinking about as you're going into that launch so that they're ready and primed to buy whatever it is that you're offering in the launch.

So it is. Even if normally you would be doing a different content pillar each week Leading into a launch you might want to do more of a focus on one pillar Leading yeah to get into that launch. Okay, so sometimes I find that content creation can feel hard Because we feel like a broken record. We feel like we're repeating ourselves and we don't want to I also find that content creation can be hard when You're stuck on topics and you're not really sure, which is why I have that master list where I just add, I just brain dump.

I put, I wrote out my content pillars and then I just brain dumped and then every single time I have another idea or a thought, I just add to it. And I actually have in Asana, the project management tool that I use, a weekly task that pops up to, it's my podcast topic, like my podcast outline brainstorming.

I don't know what to call it because in Asana it's just called March or April or May, right? It's just the month and, but I know what it is. It's my episode outlines that I spend 10 to 20 minutes each time it pops up, just going through the outlines. And so right now we're in February. I'm Brainstorming and outlining March episodes, but April has already started to pop up too.

And so in April, I house that master list of content ideas. And so I spend the first 10 to 15 minutes in March, like the next month, going through the, I have all the titles written out, and then underneath just in point form, what my topics will be, like what my talking points will be, sorry. And then.

After that 10 to 15 minutes, I've gone through all four episodes for the month. Then I flipped to April and I just sit there and I think about what other ideas and topics I can add to for the, like my master list of content pillars and ideas so that it's not hard to come up with topics. It isn't always easy to record the content life gets busy and.

Sitting down and finding quiet time in a quiet space in a house with two very busy, very rambunctious preschool slash kindergarten aged children is is challenging, but it's easier because I don't have to think of a topic. And so taking away that barrier of what am I going to talk about? And also, once I know, like, the topic I want to talk about, what are my talking points, can be really helpful if content creation is feeling hard.

Bringing it down into smaller, more manageable chunks I've found to be very, very helpful. So I'm doing a little bit each week and I never feel like I have to just sit down and do it all in one go. And then, like I said, I like having it broken up by the next month I'm into talking points and then two months from now, I'm still just overarching topic content ideas, and I can always pull that up if I have like a genius idea or whatever. Just add it to that list right away. So, feel free to steal that if you want. And content creation can also feel really hard when life feels hard. Right? Everything. If you're going through a period of extreme busyness, or if there's grief happening, or mental illness is flaring up, or you're just working more hours, or like whatever it might be.

There's so many different reasons. Content creation can feel hard. It can also be a creative outlet. So you might go in that opposite direction. But for me, content creation just gets really, really hard. And so just know that that's normal and trying to find some of those strategies if, if that feels right for you to minimize the challenges, right?

And if you're like, no, not interested, life is too hard right now, then let it go. Consistency is important, but Not at the sacrifice of your mental well being like your your well being at the sacrifice of your family It's content is not worth it at the sacrifice of your health. So Prioritize what I can't even remember who said it But it's like you're juggling a whole bunch of balls and some of them are made of glass your health your family Right?

Those are the glass balls that you can't let drop. Content is not one of them. So when content creation feels hard, if it's because you feel like a broken record, we're going to talk about some ways to reduce your broken record ness. If content creation feels hard because you don't know what to talk about, steal some of my strategies for the brainstorming, having a task that's only 10 minutes each week that you can Sit down and really easily do so that you know what to talk about and that you're not just like leaving it to the Very very last second and if content creation is hard because life is hard then feel free to let it go for a couple weeks For a month, however long you need and know that I'll be there when you're ready to come back Okay, so when you feel like a broken record, how?

Can you? Continue to reinforce your expertise your knowledge While not feeling like a broken record, first of all, most people will not think you're a broken record. It, honestly, it has to be pretty bad and pretty identical copy and like copy pasting of what you're saying for most people to recognize. Uh, but here are some of my tips.

Number one, Look at the idea from your audience's top desire. So what do they want most and how can you help them? And so coming at it from that angle, the second one is to address. The challenge and so these are kind of like opposing points. So their deepest desire and their biggest challenge and if you've listened to me ever before we're talking about like market research and Coming up with angles for your ads and the pain points These are the two things that we talked about the deepest desires their hopes dreams wishes and then their challenges fears obstacles How and so addressing those in a podcast episode is a really, really great way to do it.

You can also talk about how you, how you help solve whatever problem that they're facing. So specifically getting into like your course or program. And this is really great in a launch coming up. Like if you have a launch or usually like more once you're. your doors are open. So if you want to put out a podcast episode or piece of content while your doors are open of like, this is my offer.

This is my solution to your problem. This is how I help. And really going through your offer point by point can be a really great way to showcase your expertise. And also, you know, let people know, like, this is what I sell and how I help people. I also really like, uh, doing testimonial episodes. Now, I personally haven't ever done a testimonial episode on my podcast, but I do like them as an option where you can talk about how, this kind of goes with the, your solution.

So you can get in past people that you've worked with or people who've gone through your program and talk about your solution from their lens and how they were able to implement, implement your offer, your program, whatever it is to solve their problem. What I have done and I really like is live coaching so you can find someone who is, has a, a need or a challenge.

That you can help solve live on the podcast, or if it's video, you could do it that way. And so do some live coaching on the call. Another one is a Q& A. So you can answer all of the questions that you often get. And in like a I don't want to say like in a live panel kind of way. That's not, that's not what I mean.

But where you just Rapid fire answer some of those common questions and it could be about a topic so like lead generation strategy FAQs would be a great one for me because Lead generation it falls under one of my content pillars and helping people to grow their email list And so what are some of those frequently asked questions that I get about lead generation and I can rapid fire Actually, I'm gonna add this to my list.

I'm done recording. This is a good one and then Storytelling is a really, really great one too. And this can kind of be the testimonial one, but it might not be. It just depends. But if you can talk about how your, whatever it is that you have, whatever it is that you offer, whatever it is that your expertise is, instead of saying like, here's 0.

1, 0. 2, 0. 3, and how you can implement them into your business, turn it into a story, share how. What you did, what you were struggling with, or what this person was struggling with, how you implemented these things into your own business, your own life, and tell it as in more of a story format versus a teaching format is another really great option.

And then the last one is to just straight up teach it. And I think that this is probably the one that a lot of us do on the regular. We sit here and we go 1, 2, 3, teach, teach, teach, but it is a really great way and then you can also dissect. So a great example of this is my holistic marketing Theory, I don't really even know what to call it.

But my the four core tenants of holistic marketing content marketing email marketing community building and then relationships And a relationship marketing, I guess is the last one. And so I can do a teaching episode where I talk about all four of them, but I can also do a teaching episode where I only talk about content marketing, or I only talk about email marketing, or I only talk about relationship marketing, or I only talk about community building, right?

So I can do that overall overarching episode, or I can do a more of a zoomed in. One and so coming at it from those different angles is also a really great option so that you can dive in deeper and to really Get to those the nitty gritty details, and then I know I said that was the last one But I thought of one is coming up and talking about the misconceptions Or the biggest mistakes that people are making within that topic.

So again, if we were talking about that holistic marketing strategy, and I wanted to specifically talk about content marketing, I could do the biggest mistakes I see with content marketing or the biggest misconceptions about my content marketing. So I'm still able to talk about my beliefs, my teaching, my expertise in content marketing, but.

Coming at it from a different way and talking more about those misconceptions and how to properly see quote unquote, or the mistakes and how to fix them. Okay, I hope that there were some good ideas there for you, especially if you're feeling like, I hope that this has given you some ideas of what you can do to rectify that and to make content creation feel easier and less of a burden on your, your business and your life.

So I'll be back next week. We're going to talk about, I'm really excited about this one, the impacts of Social media and technology use and kind of like the negative side of it, I guess, and how that impacts your business. So I'll be back in your ear next Saturday with another Saturday strategy session.