#BTS | My content creation process

Today I'm walking you through the behind the scenes of how I actually create content for my business. 

I get a lot of questions about content creation from my clients and I struggled for a really, really, really long time with creating content, so I know cracking the code on this is important. 

Connect with Jordan Schanda King:

• Website: easyscaling.com
• Instagram: @jordanschandaking

Transcript

41# BTS | My content creation process

Hey, hey, welcome. Today I wanna walk you through the behind the scenes of how I actually create content for my business. Partly because I get a lot of questions about content creation from my clients. I struggled for a really, really, really long time with creating content, and in fact, I used to say,

I am not a content marketer. I don't market my business with content because I had such a problem, such a block, such an issue with actually creating content that I felt like made any kind of impact and was helpful to people. And so I, I really struggled with this for a long time, for years. and it's just been within about the last year that I've really found my groove in terms of creating content.

So I wanted to walk you through. A little bit of that evolution and actually run, run through every single type of content that I create and how I do that and how it all hangs together in a way that is quite easy for me to do. some of this relies on being able to outsource and delegate parts of this.

there are ways to get around that I, I. also show up in a lot of places. So even just pairing back the amount of places that you're showing up in can reduce how much you might have to outsource if that's not an option for you. But if it is, do it. Highly recommend it, especially if it's not something that you love doing.

The other thing that gets brought up, from my clients very frequently when we're talking about creating content is , how to actually figure out what structure makes sense for you.

Like the platforms, the frequency, what the content should be about all of that. And I'm not gonna dive really deep into that, because it's just so individualized. W What I more wanna talk through and give some insight around is how you get that, how you get that plan. Like let's say you decide on three posts a week on Instagram and one newsletter a week.

Okay, great. How do you actually create that content? Like what are your routines and . How do you set that up in a way that you actually get from, here's my ideal structure and how much I want to be posting and what I want to be doing to actually having the deliverable, having the content so that you can stick with that framework and that structure, because that seems to be the big gap for me.

Anyone can prescribe to you how much you should be posting, where you should be posting, and what you should be posting about. It's that gap of. Actually doing the thing and having the content to, to post and send that I feel like is the biggest gap that everyone struggles with. So that's what I hope to give you some insight about today.

Okay. I wanna give you a rundown first of the places that I show up. And this has evolved over time. So again, you may be starting with one or two of these. I in particular, Have a podcast, which you're listening to right now, and I do different types of interviews on my podcast, and I can talk more about those in a second.

I have an email list, so I have a newsletter and I also send sales emails out to my email list, and then I show up on Instagram. And so there's a couple different ways to show up on Instagram. There's posts, reels, stories, all the things. So really three main distinct platforms for me. Podcast, email.

Instagram. So those are the three that I'm gonna talk about. And there is a lot of, there is a lot of connectedness between the content that shows up in these different places and there are different people involved in different, different aspects of it. So let's start with a podcast, because for me the podcast is the, the source of the content.

Anything that you're seeing coming through to you via email, anything that you're seeing on Instagram probably. Originated with some type of content that I put out on my podcast, and that is done intentionally because that's what works really well for me. I have a much easier time having a conversation or talking out my thoughts and ideas and opinions and you name it.

So the podcast is my ultimate hack for content creation. So when it comes to the podcast, I like to do solo episodes, which didn't used to be a thing. I used to only do long form interviews. And if you're a long time listener, you probably heard me talk about the fact that I didn't think I was ever gonna do solo episodes because it just didn't sound as fun to me.

I love being in conversation. I love being able to respond to what other people are talking about. if you know anything about human design, I'm a manifesting generator. I, go a lot off of my gut and my strategy is responding.

I can't go in depth about this cuz I don't know enough about human design, but I. I know that what that means for me is that I do best when I have something to respond to. And that means that in a conversation on a podcast, someone else saying something sparks ideas and thoughts and gets me into kind of this like groove that I can't really get into, myself or some as easy to get into myself.

So I love to do conversations on the podcast and I. . also if you've listened for a while, then you know that we started with long form interviews and they were very open interviews. We didn't have a particular topic necessarily that we were gonna cover. I don't do notes, I don't do set interview questions.

I don't do any of that. And I still to this day don't do that for my interviews because I like them to flow like a conversation. I like them to be essentially exactly what you would get. You were recording me, without me knowing , having a conversation with somebody that I wanted to learn something from them, or I wanted to talk through something.

So that's how those interviews are, are structured, and it's the same way that I continue to structure my interviews with Julia, who is my coach. Because she's able to pull out some really interesting stuff for me that I wouldn't even necessarily know to talk about on the podcast without her being there to ask me the right questions.

So, long form interviews will always be a thing cuz I think that they're super fun and they go deeper than than you can get in a short interview. Now we have adjusted the podcast format in. That now we do mini-series interviews on particular topics, which I do think is really cool and allows us to go deeper on a part on like one specific idea or topic in the space.

So like money or finding clients or failure. And we can really go deep and get a lot of different, opinions and experiences and approaches to that one topic and expose you to all of those at one time. So those are short form interviews, 30 minutes. Then we do these solo episodes, which again, didn't ever think I was gonna wanna do, but I actually quite enjoy them partly because they're much easier to batch and they're quicker, and I actually have quite a bit of fun with them.

And what I like to do with my solo episodes, talking about like tangible tips and tools for, for how to make that easier for you is I have a note on my phone. You all know I love notes. It's where I keep my to-do list. It's where I keep everything. I live by my calendar and my notes on my phone, and I have a note called solo episode talking points.

Whenever I think of anything, it's cuz sometimes in the middle of the night I can't sleep and I am like thinking of ideas. I jot down ideas there. Sometimes it's one line, like things in the online space that piss me off, that is an actual thing here on my list that I'm looking at. Not a lot of other contexts there.

Just wanted to make sure that I cover that at some point on a solo episode. sometimes it's a little bit more built out. so I'll put, I'll put a, a topic like how cool is the internet, and then I'll put sub-bullets, and this is probably gonna be an episode at some point about cool things that I experience by being an online business owner and like having the internet and how cool it is.

The internet broadly, not like an internet connection. So I just make notes. I probably have, I don't know, 30 little. Topics that I've put in here in the last couple of months, and I just collect them. I don't worry about going back and building them out into like something more robust. I don't have an outline.

I don't do anything like that. I just use it as a holding space for potential ideas, potential things, things that I might potentially want to explore on the podcast with you in a solo episode so that lives there and then, , I'm very much into cycle syncing. We have a whole episode about it. Julia and I dive into cycle syncing, so go listen to that if you haven't.

but I'm very big into that and I find that I do my best solo episodes and my best visibility work period, but definitely solo episodes when I'm ovulating or right there around ovulation in my cycle. . I sometimes listen back to podcast episodes that I've done, solo episodes, and I'm like, I don't even know who that person is.

Like if I'm in a different part of my cycle and I listen back to a podcast that I've done when I've been ovulating, I can tell like I am like on one, like going off on these topics and I'm like, wow, I don't even remember. Like, I couldn't even put the concept into those words Again, if I tried, it's like something comes over me and I just, I don't know.

It just flows. So since I know that about myself, I can take advantage of that and I can set on my calendar. When I know I'm going to be in that phase of my cycle, but also when I'm gonna feel motivated to do it. So I don't force myself to do podcast batching. That does not work for me. I don't force myself to really do anything in my business because.

Usually if I'm not feeling excited to do it, I'm not going to, I'm not gonna do it well and or it's gonna take me a lot longer to do it than it would have otherwise if I was feeling excited to do it. So a great example of this is today I'm sitting down, I am batching my solo episodes. I was planning to do that a few days ago and I kind of made some arrangements.

I was like, okay, I'm gonna make sure the kids are taken care of. I'm gonna go down, I'm gonna like set up my podcast equipment and I'm gonna record my episodes. I. Did not feel like it that day. So I said, eh, I'm not gonna do it today. It'll come back around at some point and I'll feel motivated to do it.

And lo and behold, here we are. I was feeling motivated and I'm doing it. So just know that if you don't work well with structure, if you don't work well with like forcing yourself to sit down and like batch this stuff, don't make yourself do it because it's not, it's not gonna come across well probably because you're not gonna really be in the mindset, in the zone to be creating content like that.

So when it comes to what I actually talk about when I batch these again, I like to leave it a little. I have my notes. So when I sat down just a few minutes ago to start recording these episodes, I pulled up my solo episode, talking points note on my phone. I read through a couple of them. I was like, eh, no, don't really wanna talk about that.

That sounds interesting. Probably gonna record one about that today. , but then I couldn't get this idea out of my head of talking you through how I actually do this. So I opened up Riverside. I was like, I'm just gonna start talking and see what happens. And that's what you're listening to. So again, leaving room for me to be inspired and excited to talk about one particular topic that just feels exciting to talk about.

So that's my approach. Not very scientific. I leave it very fluid. Other people work better with a lot more structure, but this is what works for me. So just know there's no right or wrong way to do it. You gotta figure out what's gonna actually work for you. 

One other thing that I think can be really helpful for batching. Solo episodes in particular, but also all kinds of other social content, especially video content. educational content in particular is to use what you've already got. Like I guarantee you, you've got educational resources out that you know what you've probably got.

Courses or templates or blog posts or you know, masterclass, webinars, whatever it is, you've already written content that is educational based and that can be a great place to pull from for solo episodes for short, sweet educational reels, any kind of other video content. Super easy to just take that.

That's what I do for a lot of my solo episodes. In addition to like leaving it open and winging it on, on topics that are top of mind for me or really interesting to me, I will just go back to a masterclass or I will go to a blog post that's like top five ways to, you know, create SOPs. And I will just read it.

I will read it and I will leave it flexible and see what pops up for me. but it gives you an outline that you've already created. You don't have to recreate the wheel with a lot of this educational content cause you've already done the work. That's a great way too to do reels. If you're batching reels, is to look at like a blog post that you've written.

do the high level overview as one of the reels. Maybe dive into one or two specific points more deep, for another reel or two. Like there's so many things that you can do and ways that you can repurpose content specifically that's already been written down, and use it for your outline or your script for video content.

So highly recommend doing that.

All right so that's the podcast. Let's switch gears to email.

So with, with my email list, I have committed to sending out an email newsletter every single week. It's called, Hey, hey, Fridays. If you haven't noticed that it does come to your inbox every Friday, with the exception of maybe one week I missed and sent it on a Saturday morning, but for the most part, it's coming to you every single Friday. I send it to absolutely everyone on my list, and it has a very particular structure to it. It's not very structured , it's kind of a long form, opinion-based, value-based, narrative. I guess you could. I actually don't typically write those. So the way that I approach my newsletter is that, again, I have my podcast, I talk about a lot of stuff on my podcast, and.

I work with my amazing content writer Kendall who you've all heard on the podcast. She's been on a couple times, and what she does for me now is she actually, because she knows me so well, we talk in conversation a lot. She has listened to the podcast. She's done a deep dive on understanding the things that I talk about on the podcast.

She actually pulls out content themes for me. From my podcast episodes, from any of the content that I put out regularly. And she takes all of that information and she batch writes my newsletters for an entire quarter. So she wrote all of my Q1 newsletters for me, dropped them to me in Google Docs.

And then I have this database and Airtable where she's put the title, she's put the preview text, she's put like information about what it's. And then the link to the Google Doc. And so sh, it's all batched a quarter at a time, but I don't actually schedule them a quarter at a time. What I do, again, because I like to kinda be in the moment a little bit and send out what is inspiring me and feels exciting for me to talk about, I every single week go into that database that she's built out for me with all of the newsletter content.

And I read through a couple of. See what, sparks some joy for me, when I read it. And then sometimes I send it out as is. Sometimes I start making edits and then I can't help it. And by the end of it I've written a whole new newsletter, which is great cuz now I've got an extra newsletter and I can use the other one that she wrote at another time.

but again, having something res to respond to is really helpful for me and I really like for my content to be. , that is not the case for everyone. You may be able to just, all of it is timely, all of it is evergreen. I don't have to send any of it out at any particular time, but I like it for, I like for it to be something that is resonating with me when I actually send it out to my list.

That feels very important to me. I don't know why. But I like to do it that way. So once a week I sit down, look through the, the options, pick one that I like, make edits if I feel like it, we put it into Kajabi, and then we add in usually one to two to three sections of kind of like highlights. Maybe I've been on a podcast, a guest on a podcast that we wanna highlight that interview.

Maybe we're, you know, promoting something, in particular, maybe we're dropping a link in there to the latest podcast episode. , we highlight a couple different things usually at the end of the newsletter and that stays pretty fluid as well, and also very timely. We don't batch that that stuff ahead of time as either, but it's just done the week of before we send it out, so that's how we do the newsletter.

On the other side of the email is sales emails. I don't do a ton of launching, so my sales content that gets sent out to my list is, again, very fluid and very timely based. What's going on in my business at any given time, if I'm participating in something that I'm promoting or if we've just revised our service guide, we'll send that out.

If we have a spot open for something, we will send that information out. We try to kind of periodically promote the membership because anyone can sign up for the membership at any given time. So we do promote that kind of regularly. but then most of our stuff has caps and spots and limited time situations.

So like our Mastermind, we only open up spots for that once a quarter. So that gets slotted in for sales emails, but everything else is just. We wing it a little bit, which is, I know, kind of ironic because I'm, I'm like outwardly facing against winging things, but, I think there's a lot of room to be able to wing your business when you have a lot of structure in place where everything else.

So, the way that we work with our clients is extremely structured. And then the way that I actually do sales and marketing is very, And that works and that feels really good. I just don't like to do very structured, marketing. That's why I don't really like to do launching because it forces you to do certain things at certain times, which I don't always wanna do in the moment.

So, That's how I approach the sales emails on the Instagram side. I have tried lots of different things. I've tried outsourcing it a couple times. I've tried doing it myself, and I've just started working with a brand new, agency who's managing my Instagram, and they are doing an amazing job. And so we're at the very early, we're very early stages of our engagement together, but the way that they do that is that they batch an entire month's worth of content.

At one time. so we've, we've done all of the month ahead content. They do the graphics, they do the captions, they get me to review everything. I'm a control freak. And luckily they are very forgiving of that. And so they let me have access to the Canva design files so I can go in and tweak little things, as I like to do.

So it's a very collaborative process at the beginning, and then that all gets scheduled out for an entire month in advance, and that is fully taken care of. And that works really, really well for me because Instagram in particular is probably like, like my least favorite place to show up and engage. I don't like consuming in other people's content.

I don't follow anyone on Instagram, because I find that it triggers. Negative, a negative experience in me. Either I'm like experiencing FOMO or I'm feeling bad cuz I haven't like, like made a million dollars yet or whatever. So I really don't like to consume content on Instagram. I do like to have conversations with people on Instagram, in particular in the dms.

I have a lot of friends, and peers and colleagues and people that I collaborate, that I collaborate with, that I have conversations with on Instagram. I have a lot of sales conversations on Instagram, so it's still a very important platform for me, but I don't like to actually create the content for it, in terms of posts and reels and all of that.

So I outsource that to somebody. They take care. , all of it from start to finish. For me, I don't have to tell them what to, you know, post about, we just have like a schedule that says, okay, in February let's probably like prioritize promoting this offer. And then in March let's probably prioritize promoting this offer and then they build everything out, to fit that.

The one place that I do show up is stories. And again, I know you're gonna be like shocked by this. I don't have a structured approach to how I do that. So, . I like to show up in stories. In the moment when I feel like it posts about what's actually happening in my life. I re-share a lot of content. If people tag me in stories, I re-share that.

Usually there's about one thing a day that I'm going in and re-sharing because somebody else has tagged me in something. Maybe a new post has gone live that I'm sharing. I ask a lot of questions. I like to do polls, but, you. Post pictures of my kids, like that kind of stuff. . so it's very flexible, but I actually really, really, really enjoy showing up on Instagram in stories because it feels, it feels very flexible, it feel, feels very low stakes, and I can just do it when I feel like it, and it can be about whatever.

There's not as much, like, there's not as many expectations around what it needs to be. . That's all I got for you. That's all the places that we show up. I hope this is helpful. Really, I'm just trying to give you some behind the scenes insight into how I approach it, because I think there are so many ways that people can approach this stuff, and give you permission to do it in your own way and not make you like, I, I want you to not feel bad if you've been saying that you're gonna post three times on Instagram consistently.

Like if you've been saying that for six months to a year. I see you, I feel you. That was me. And there are ways to, there are ways to hack that and make it work for you. So figure out what works for you. DM me on Instagram if you wanna chat about it. And we can see if we can come up with something that's actually gonna work.

But ultimately, you just gotta try something. But make sure it's something that you actually are feeling motivated to do in the moment because the content's gonna be so much better if you're actually excited to share it when you're sharing it. So hope that helps. I'll see you. I'll see you on the next episode.

Bye.