How often are you looking for a shortcut when it comes to content creation? The allure of shortcuts is undeniable. In today’s episode Kristen breaks down the four phases of content creation. Her insights serve as a reality check, emphasizing the importance of building upon each phase. It’s time to align our expectations and mindset to ensure you’re on the right track in this significant aspect of building your business.
Let’s look at a few highlights:
- Building a solid content strategy requires a commitment to consistency. Consistency is the bridge that connects you with your audience.
- Comparing your progress to others in the industry is a dangerous game; instead, focus on refining your own content.
- The key is to build a value vault—working smarter, not harder.
- Transitioning from a consumer to a content creator mindset is essential.
- You need to be comfortable with the initial silence, acknowledging that everyone starts with “crickets” before building momentum.
- The grit and hard work invested in the initial phases lay the foundation for long-term success.
In our race for success, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to overlook the basics of content creation, enticed by the allure of quick success. Crafting compelling content demands grit, perseverance, and a willingness to embrace discomfort. The question isn’t about avoiding hard work but rather about being ready to invest your time, effort, and energy.
Success in content creation leaves clues – pay attention, adapt, and enjoy the journey of building a strong and lasting connection with your audience.
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Every single component of this in-person event will help you grow your audience, your team, and your paycheck THIS YEAR. In this industry, we rise and grow the most when we have someone doing it alongside us…
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Transcripts for Episode #205: Phases of Content Creation
Kristen Boss (00:19): You are listening to the Kristen Boss podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning.
Kristen Boss (00:56): Hey, bosses. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about something. I think that’s going to serve a lot of you, especially in regards to any confusion or judgements you have around your content creation. And maybe help adjust your expectations a little bit so that you can know if you’re on the right track with your content or if you even have the right mindset around content creation. Because if you haven’t figured it out yet, you’ve learned that content creation is a huge part of your job description as a social seller. So we’re going to dive right into that today. So you may not know this, but there’s actually four phases of content creation and the phases go in order. You build upon the foundation. You can’t go out of order, but a lot of people like to be at step four and they like to skip all the hard parts at step one, two, and three.
Kristen Boss (01:46): And I’m going to share with you a little bit of why people get stuck and confused or lost or they give up when actually things are going the way they should. But because they don’t have the right mindset or expectations around it, they make a judgment or they don’t know about the phases of content creation. They assume something’s gone terribly wrong. I’m terrible at this and therefore I need to quit and do something else. So rest assured, if you have thought that or if you have felt that we’re going to address that all today. Okay, before I get into that though, we still have rise Up Summit tickets available. We also have decided to do a lower ticket virtual admission for only $29. Friends, this is for live access only. So it doesn’t give you access to all of our behind the scenes perks or replays or recordings, but it gives you access to be a part of the live streaming event.
Kristen Boss (02:39): We know that sometimes you can’t always make it. You might have logistics or you might have a baby on the way or whatever it is. You might not be able to hop on a plane and join us in Denver. So we now have made it accessible. We have had virtual all along. If you want the replays and all of that, you’re going to want to be sure to grab our VIP virtual ticket. It comes with a bunch of really amazing bonuses as well as one year access to replays. But if you’re like, Hey, I just want to get my team there, I want to get them excited, I want it to be accessible, $29 for live streaming access only. You can check the details in the show notes, but if you can make it a priority to be there in person, we are going to be delivering an unbelievable event for you with live workshops in-person coaching amazing speakers.
Kristen Boss (03:23): And we’re going to take you from dreaming to doing, you’re going to go home with a plan of action and you’re going to be someone who takes action, not just somebody who thinks about it, plans has this grandiose ideas only to kind of fall on their face a couple months later. We’ve designed an event so that you can have massive success. I will also be making a really cool special announcement at the event. So you’re going to want to be a part of that. So head to the link in the show notes. Alright, so let’s dive right into the phases of content creation. Okay, this phase one, and you cannot skip this phase, people don’t like this phase and this is when most people quit. You ready? This is the consistency and quantity phase. What does that mean? It means that when you are starting as somebody who’s selling and marketing in the online space, if you haven’t done this before, you’re in a new job, you’re in a new role, you may have been a content consumer before you decided to have a business.
Kristen Boss (04:18): You were someone that kind of scrolled or maybe posted the occasional picture of what your family’s doing on vacation. Or maybe you shared a picture of like, Hey, look at my kids at this sporting event. But you haven’t really stepped into the identity of being a content creator, somebody who regularly creates content for the consumer. So you really have to make the identity shift from consumer to creator. I’ve talked about this in one of my other podcast episodes, but we’re going to dive into this a little bit more. So when you become a creator, the first thing you actually have to develop is the consistency of creation. You have to be somebody who posts content consistently at least five days a week. Now, some of you might be like, well, hey, now that seems like a lot. But I would say, well, if you are wanting to make money at this, you really need to see this as part of your job description.
Kristen Boss (05:03): I sell, I market, I talk about products. I help people feel better. I have customer care and I create content. It’s just part of what you do. So it’s really important you adopt this mindset early in the game, and this is when I think a lot of people, I was talking to a friend of mine and she was saying that she noticed that she has people join her team and she’s like, what’s interesting, Kristen is like she has very consistent study enrollment because she’s a content creator and because she’s regularly posting value for her audience. And so what happens is somebody sees her drop a picture of her wellness box that arrives on her front porch once a month or whatever. She takes a picture of that and somebody’s like, oh, I’m interested. I want to do that. But what often happens is when somebody joins the business, they often think of the last action or the last post that they looked at that helped them take the leap.
Kristen Boss (05:53): So somebody who decides to join, they think, oh, well her post her wellness box on her front porch, and that’s what made me join. Well, that’s not a complete picture. That’s actually not what made you join. That’s actually what made you push you over the edge and you’re like, all right, I’m finally ready to buy or join or whatever it is. What they tend to not take into account is like we have to ask, okay, how long have you been following this person? How many posts do you think you’ve consumed from this person before you decided to click purchase? We tend to discount or not think of our own customer journey before we decided to make a purchase so that it kind of creates this blind spot to where when you step into be a business owner, all you can think of is like, well, what made me join was my friend posted a picture of a wellness box and that’s what did it.
Kristen Boss (06:40): But we don’t take into account, well, what was my customer journey? How did my friend earn my trust? Why did I finally decide to purchase with her? What was it about her posts that really resonated with me? And why was that meaningful and why was that helpful? So we tend to discount our own customer journey, and then we come with total blind spots when we’re finally on the other side and we’re the business owner and we just think I’ll just post a picture of my wellness box on my front porch. And then we’re surprised when people don’t come running and we think, oh no, I’m terrible at this. I’m not good at this business. I knew something was wrong or Nobody wants this. And we’re forgetting that, hey, there’s a customer journey that happens before somebody actually becomes a customer. I’m going to be talking about this in depth at my rise up summit, but we tend to think like, all right, I’m just going to put a post out there and then people are going to come running.
Kristen Boss (07:25): That only works if you’ve been somebody who already has been consistently adding value of some kind in the online space, especially around your warm market, people who have a context about you. And you might be like, well, what qualifies as my warm market? I would say people that know you outside of your business where they have a context of you as a person where they’re like, oh, yeah, I interact with her with, or maybe this is your hot market. I interact with her with we’re in book club together, or our kids are on the same soccer team because they have context about you as a person. There’s already trust built in when you’re talking about your product, right? And a war market might be somebody who doesn’t have context of you outside of your business, but they’ve been exposed to your content long enough where they feel like they know you, they know you as a person, they know you as an individual.
Kristen Boss (08:15): They kind of understand your sense of humor. There’s a relationship built there so that there’s enough trust built for them to actually make a purchase. But here’s the thing, you have to bear in mind. You have to bear in mind that trust is not built without consistent exposure. Think about that. Am I going to trust somebody who’s open every once in a while, somebody who posts once a month? If you want to accelerate trust with your audience, accelerate the consistency and quantity of your content. So phase one is you actually have to build your consistency muscle. But this is where people get tripped up is they bring perfectionism into their consistency and they’re like, oh, I have to do it right. It has to be a good post. It has to bring in all these people. It has to. Now there is the minimum viable product, as I like to call it, like, Hey, what’s a post that just helps you get out of your comfort zone and just kind of condition yourself for this is what it feels like to create a post.
Kristen Boss (09:12): And so we have to lower our expectations, especially when you are brand new to this game. If you are just in your first 90 days as a social seller, listen, you have just got to be used to posting content online. I don’t care if it is pictures of your crockpot or your dog or whatever else is going on in your life. Just don’t be consistent. And people take this the wrong way. They’re like, I’m going to post consistently in the online space. And then their idea of consistency is they’re posting pictures of their product every single post they do, and it’s like, no, it’s consistency in the wrong area. Now, people just see you as a product junkie and you’re not building rapport with them. You’re not building relationship. So the first part is consistency and quantity. Why quantity? You actually have to put a lot out there to see what sticks.
Kristen Boss (10:03): What you’re doing is you’re doing market research. Does my audience, do they resonate with the witty things I post? Do they resonate with my freezer meals? Do they resonate with mom humor or my healing story with, or when I talk about gentle parenting or when I talk about my sports schedule with my kids, you have to put a lot out there to see, okay, what’s landing with my audience? But you’re not going to be able to get that feedback unless you have enough data out there. So if you only post 10 times in a month, you’re not going to get nearly enough data to be like, okay, my audience really resonated with this. I got a lot of engagement with that. I didn’t get much engagement there. I’m going to say this right now. Your posts about your product or your business will always get the lowest amount of engagement because it’s a straight sales post.
(10:54):
That’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up about it. But the stuff that’s going to get the most engagement is going to be the stuff that is about attracting or nurturing your audience, bringing in people new, building a relationship, building rapport or nurturing them, giving them something of value. So you actually have to learn a learn just how to write content. How do I make a post? How do I do a well-lit photo, and how do I make sure I am capturing someone’s attention? So you have to build your consistency muscle, literally switching from being a consumer to a content creator and just being somebody who’s like, all right, it may be a terrible job and I may not be doing a good job at it, but at least I’m building the muscle of somebody who posts consistently in the online space, and you have to take perfectionism out of it.
Kristen Boss (11:38): You’re also putting it a lot out there to see what sticks. So I know in the past I’ve knocked a lot of the idea of spaghetti strategy, but I would say in the beginning you kind of do need to do that just to collect data to see what my audience, what are they not like? What’s resonating? So that when you look at the data, you have enough information in front of you to make an educated decision about where you’re going to take your content next. When you think, oh man, people love that. Now I’m going to double down. So the beginning is about consistency and quantity, and you are learning about your audience, and you’re learning about yourself too. You’re learning, wow, I actually really enjoy talking about my sourdough recipes, or I really enjoy talking about my daily habits, or I really enjoy talking about parenthood, or whatever it is you’re learning about yourself.
Kristen Boss (12:25): And then your audience is also going to give you feedback saying, we like it when you talk about these things, this doesn’t really resonate with us. Ooh, can you tell us more about that? Okay. And I always say, you need at least 60 days to put enough out there so that you can get accurate data. Where you read your insights where it says, here’s the amount of posts you did. And a lot of you like, it’s important you don’t use your insights to beat yourself up and be like, here’s evidence of why I’m a sucky business owner or why I’m not good at content. You have to look at it not for performance, but as feedback. You’re not judging the outcomes in the sense of like, well, how much money did I make with my posts? You’re like, what I’m doing is I’m putting out data to tell me where I need to put more of my effort behind so that I can monetize this better.
Kristen Boss (13:12): So 60 days. So what typically happens in this phase one is people make a post because again, they’re thinking about their customer experience and they’re like, well, my friend posted a wellness box, and so that’s surely going to work for me. They don’t take into account their own customer journey before they actually decided, oh, I trust this person enough to make a purchase. So I see people say, alright, I’m going to do this business. They get all excited, they make a post on social media and they don’t take into context, okay, were you posting consistently on social media prior to this or were you just resharing pictures of resharing news articles or memes or you posted semi consistently, okay, your platform, your profile or your Facebook profile or your Instagram profile hasn’t even been warmed up. So no eyeballs are going to see that, but this is when people are like, I’m going to put a post up.
Kristen Boss (13:59): They freak out, their nervous system is on fire and they’re like, oh my gosh, I did the scary thing. And then crickets. And this is when people are like, oh no, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. And then they judge themselves because they see somebody else put out a similar post about starting their business or starting the product, and they’re like, wait, why is that person getting 50 comments and all that engagement and they’re getting customers and I’m not getting any, what’s wrong? Well, it’s because they may have been talking to their audience more consistently than you were before they put a post out. What they had was they had stored value that they had given their audience ahead of time before they made an offer. So it just tells me, if you haven’t been consistently creating in the online space, you have no stored value with your audience to make an ask of them.
Kristen Boss (14:43): So what does that mean? It might mean that your path forward to actually start making money off of your audience or from your leads. It might be a longer path because haven’t been somebody who’s been adding value in the online space yet. This is why phase one, consistency and quantity, okay, that’s why it’s so important. But this is when people give up and they say it’s hard and it’s terrible and nothing’s working, but this is business 1 0 1, you are doing market research friends, you cannot skip this step. If you want content to feel easy for you in the future, you have to do this market research step. Okay? Step number two is for the phases of content creation. So we’ve gotten consistency, we’ve gotten quantity. Now it’s about consistency plus quality. So once you look at your data, you’re going to be like, okay, this landed, this didn’t, people really like this?
Kristen Boss (15:32): And then you decide to double down on what was resonating with your audience. You get more clear, you dig that up, you’re like, alright, everyone kept responding really well to when I talk about my habits or my sleep routines or my workout routines. So I’m going to find the highest performing post and then I’m going to expand on that post. Or if somebody asked a question in the comments, I’m going to answer that question with another post because my audience has told me this is valuable. So then you’re doubling down on the content that resonates and you’re making it better. You’re refining your messaging. So now we’re taking the content that we know resonates, that your audience that says, we like it, and you’re like, all right, I’m going to double down. I’m going to make more of it, but I’m going to do it better.
Kristen Boss (16:17): So this is where it’s consistency and quality. Now we’re working on our quality. This is also the phase because you’re doubling down and now you’re getting a little more clear with your quality and you’re improving your content strategy. This is when you actually get more clear on how to better serve your audience on how to answer their questions or things that they’re Googling online or things that they’re searching YouTube for. You’re like, okay, how can I save them a Google search? How can I save them a YouTube search? How can I help them in this way? And so when you do that, when you are the person that’s constantly one step ahead of them, or saving them a Google search or saving them a template or any of those things, they see you as more valuable. So you actually get more clear on how to better serve your audience.
Kristen Boss (17:03): And when you know how to better serve your audience, then you actually know how to like, Ooh, this is what people really like. What do we need to create to attract more people that have the same thought or the same problem or desire the same thing. Now you’re refining your nurturing. You’re like, I know how to nurture people to earn trust and earn relational equity, and I now know how to take this content and package it in a way to say, Hey, if you also struggle with this, I can help you over here to attract new people in. So phase one, consistency and quantity. Step two is consistency and quality. You stay consistent, but now it’s about refining your quality with what’s working. Phase three steps, it’s quality. So now you’ve got your quality increasing the quantity of the quality and staying and consistently doing that.
Kristen Boss (17:55): So now it’s about adding our volume of the high quality content and doing so consistently. That’s where you’re like, alright, now I’ve figured this out. How do I create more of this content? Can I do it in an email? Can I do it? Can I repurpose this over on Instagram or on TikTok or on a YouTube or with podcasts? Now we’re taking the same message, high quality, and we’re like, okay, how do I get more of it out there so that I can attract more people? Then we’re looking at the volume. So it’s now quantity, quality, consistency. We’re looking at volume now and then the final phase. It’s the sweetest phase because now that you have all this volume of really great content that resonates, that people like that people ask for, well, because new people are always coming into your ecosystem and they didn’t follow you three years ago, guess what still resonates for them from three years ago?
Kristen Boss (18:54): The content that everybody else liked, the high performing content. So you could take a piece of content from two years ago and put it in front of them and they’re like, this is amazing. And you didn’t have to exert yourself to come up with something new because I think when people get burnt out, they’re like, I always have to think of something new, something new, something new. It’s like not always. Sometimes it’s just like, how can I take this one thing that everyone really loved, but how can I say it better? Or how can I say it differently? You’re repurposing the same things. I’m often looking through my podcast episodes and being like, okay, where’s our highest amount of downloads? What’s the ones that are getting the most shares? Okay, this really resonates with my audience. Is there more I could say on this topic?
Kristen Boss (19:33): Is there more I can say on this? Is there a different take I have on this now? So again, you’re kind of, you’re repurposing, you’re recycling, you’re reusing, and you’re conserving your own energy and you’re still serving your audience. So I love the concept of the repurpose and recycle. So now that you have this value vault, because you’ve created a lot of high quality content, there’s a lot of volume of it, now you have this bank that you could just go in there, grab some content, repurpose it, and put it out there, and now you can leverage all that hard work so that you can work smarter, not harder, and prevent content burnout. But this is where I think people want to be. People want to be in the, I just want to make posts and have it live forever and attract a bunch of people and get a ton of opt-ins and get a ton of leads.
Kristen Boss (20:20): We forget the necessary grunt work of content creation on the front end where you have to do market research, you have to figure out what’s resonating with my audience. You have to figure out, how do I refine my messaging? You might be like, okay, Kristen, what does it mean to refine messaging? It’s more so how do I communicate with my audience better than I have been? How do I explain their problem better than they can? You want to know who’s the best at sales and marketing. Somebody who explains the problem better than they can. They can tell the consumer, oh, here’s your problem. And not only that, but I’ll bet you deal with A, B, C, and D and you also feel E, F, and G, and I’ll bet you probably do this. And then they’re like, well, how did you know this about me?
Kristen Boss (21:02): It’s like, I make it my job to be intimately acquainted with your problems so that I am always creating the best solution so that at the end of the day, I’m the only solution that you’re interested in. This is being a good content creator, and I see this as my job. I’m constantly, I consider myself, I am a sleuth at all things. I’m constantly investigating like, Ooh, what’s going on now? What are people feeling now? What’s the source of contention in their business today? And I’m always thinking seasonally like, alright, we’re coming up on spring break. Where might people be in their mindset in their business? We’re not quite 90 days out from the beginning of the year. What do they need to hear? Where are they frustrated? What are they probably Googling? What do I need to remind them of? Again, we make it our job to understand our customer’s problems as intimately as possible so that we can become the best at communicating the solution that they need.
Kristen Boss (21:59): And you cannot do that without doing your consistency and quantity at the very beginning, the very humbling work of putting stuff out there and people being and feeling like you’re posting to crickets. Don’t think I didn’t go through that phase. Friends, I did. There was a season when I was like, I made the pivot. I was like, all right, I’m going to talk about mindset coaching. I’m going to speak to the social selling industry. And even so pivoting to the social selling industry and not just being generalized, I knew that I was like, oh man, some people are going to fall off because this no longer resonates with them. But I have to be, even in order for me to be more clear in my messaging with who I want to serve, it means I got to stop talking to other people and I just got to talk to my people in a way that best resonates with them.
Kristen Boss (22:43): So these are the phases of content creation. You can’t skip it, you can’t shortcut it. I will say the best way to shortcut this, if there’s, how do I not make this a long and painful and terrible process? You could, I would say quantity and consistency, like that first part. Put as much content out as possible. Put as much out as possible instead of doing the bare minimum. And I think that’s what people are always asking me, like, Kristen, what’s the bare minimum I need to do in order to get by in my business? And I would say, bare minimum is one post a day. Some of you’re going to have a meltdown just hearing me say that. But I’m like, that will give you some insight. But the more you do the better. And you might be like, well, what about the algorithm? Are we spamming our feeds?
Kristen Boss (23:28): I mean, you got to put it out in multiple places. And I would say, if it were me, I would say, if you’re doing one reel a day, do two reels a day, do a morning and an evening. And I will tell you, even if one of my reels is low performing, the other one will be high performing. And I’m like, okay, why is that one more high performing? What is going on here? We have to learn to be data analysts and data nerds with the feedback our audience gives us instead of emotionally spiraling and being like, oh my gosh, nobody’s engaging with me. It must be me. I’m the problem. I’m boring. I have nothing valuable to offer. People don’t want me, I’m never going to have success in this business. I should just close up shop and I should just work for somebody else.
Kristen Boss (24:09): You guys don’t think I know what goes on in your head in the first 60 days. It is the grittiest part, and this is when everybody quits because nobody wants to do the hard work. Nobody wants to do the market research. You guys do. You know that companies like startups, they spend millions of dollars in research and development before they can even create a product to put it in the field and make money. But we’re not willing to do this in our own businesses and be like, am I willing to spend money or spend my time and my effort, my energy? You might not be spending money, but if I’m, am I willing to put in the necessary effort to do the market research so that I can make myself as valuable as possible in the marketplace? And not enough people do that because they’re like, no, because I need to make money right this second.
Kristen Boss (24:50): So they want to shortcut it and they’re like, well, I’m just going to blast out content and people better pay me. I’m like, not in today’s economy. Because right now, people, their perception of value and them wanting to buy things is very much on like, well, what’s the exchange of value? If I spend X amount of dollars on this product, what am I getting in return? And have you given them enough value to justify the purchase? Think about this. Have you given someone enough value to justify the purchase? So they’re like, wow, they’ve helped me so much. I want to give them my money. I want to support them. I really want to buy this product from them, or whatever it is. But you have to earn that, and you cannot skip phase one friends. And it is a gritty phase. It is a hard phase, and it’s a phase that everybody want to skips, but if you want to be successful, you got to go through these phases.
Kristen Boss (25:37): Alright, friends, I hope you found this super valuable. If you have a friend or a sideline or downline or business bestie that needs to hear this, share it with three people. Share it with them, because more people need to know and have realistic expectations of content creation. So we have less people quitting in the first part of it being like, oh, it’s not working. No, no, no, no. It is working at the beginning. You’re getting information, you’re getting data and information is powerful because as we say, success leaves clues. So when you have high performing posts, you have to look at that and be like, all right, how can I make this better? There’s so much more available for you, friends, I’m so excited. We’ll catch you guys in the next episode. And by the way, we have something new. We have the Monday mindset email drop that we do to my email list.
Kristen Boss (26:21): Every Monday. We give you a mindset email. We call it the Monday mindset drop, where I give you, I ask you kind of three questions to get, you get your brain thinking of like, oh, how do I think about this differently? Three things to think about differently with your business, two quotes from others. And I give you a question to ponder for your day. And this was inspired by the James Clear Newsletter of Atomic Habits. I loved it. I’m like, well, how do I make one of these for my audience? And people are going bananas for it. So if you want to opt in, make sure you get that. You want to head to the link in the show notes, and be sure to join us in Denver at the Rise Up Summit, whether it’s virtual or in person, we’ll see you there. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to kristenboss.com.
