S2E6 | How To Scale Your Content Creation Process

Everybody understands the struggles of creating unique content with consistency. This episode charts the pains and gains of content creators as they are encouraged to explore new mindsets and approach newer topics that abet success. Whether you’re a learner, explorer, or even an expert, you’ll find something of value to take away after this fun and engaging episode. Tune in to listen to the Damn Good Marketing Podcast hosts Hasita and Subha talk about the intricate process of content creation.

Discussion  Topics: How to scale your content creation process

• Churning out good and meaningful content consistently to get people excited.
• The struggles of making content for ourselves vs for clients.
• The extremities of Personal Bias.
• Using the Expertise and know-how of content creation mindsets for a targeted audience to chart a journey from learning to becoming an expert.
• Decoding the Learner vs Expert Dilemma.
• Journalling notes, planning content calendars and timelines.
• Our Personal Experiences and Learnings.
• Importance of Consistency and continuity in content creation to make interesting content everyday.

Transcript: How to scale your content creation process

Subha: What I really feel sorry about for the guy who is at the top of his gate, is that it must have been a really slow news day all around. I mean, I think he caught everyone on a day when they were just so desperate for content. The calendar had a gap and he filled it just beautifully. And I think that’s the challenge with content calendars, like, how do you just keep on churning, keep on churning at the quality that you need to be churning?

Hasita: Well, if you ask the folks at the Daily Mail, I think Prince Harry is going to keep them busy for a while.

Subha: And he just rides into the sunset already, please.

Hasita: But while the Daily Mail is sorted, the rest of us are not so much. Because yeah, I mean, producing things on a daily basis is not easy. And somehow it feels like the only way to stay in the attention game is to produce things on a daily basis. And somewhere, when we discuss tools like Chat GPT, there is, of course, the promise of being able to churn out more.

But the more I work with the tool, and I try to kind of ping it with different prompts and see what comes out I’m also realising that more is not always better and that’s strange, I think, a weird conundrum that we sometimes find ourselves in, which is on the one hand, you have to keep at it, you have to keep running on the hamster wheel for lack of a better word. But at the same time, you have to keep consistently delivering on that quality. So yeah, big challenges for sure.

Subha: Yeah, let’s dive into this because it’s just Jan, and we can’t feel exhausted so early.

Hasita: Welcome to the ‘Damn Good Marketing Podcast’. Is it a new year already? I still feel like we’re stuck in 2022 because my content calendar doesn’t seem to be taking a break as such. But what really does it take to produce good content consistently and all the time? Now, that’s something that we are finding out, we are very much on the journey just like you and we are also figuring it out. And one thing that comes to mind Subha, is to do things that we are either good at, or we are willing to be good at.

So I know for a fact that there are some domains and industries, which for whatever reasons, I may not find exciting, but there are some like AI & ML, there is detailed SAS there are all these Monday-looking domains and verticals, which I can actually get super excited about because there is something so attention-grabbing about these domains, like how do you scale a product? How do you get people to subscribe at scale?

How do you do things that have not been done before? Like that, I definitely see the excitement. And therefore it’s easier sometimes, I think, to keep talking about things that you know, or you are at least willing to kind of figure out.

Subha: I’m surprised I didn’t hear like life lessons from the Marvel movie that just came out. That’s also on your list I know.

Hasita: This is not releasing soon enough.

Subha: I feel this pain very often, of how to keep putting things out there. And how to keep putting things out there that’s meaningful, because I think a lot of it, like you’re saying, is about the quality of what you put. And that quality comes only when you either have deep expertise, or just deep feelings towards a certain topic or something that’s happening or something that you’re working on. So there has to be some kind of a strong connection for you personally, for you to be able to churn something out, and make it something that a good set of people would want to read or consume.

Hasita: Somewhere when we were kind of doing the content calendar for Motley Crew, and it’s never easy. Like as much as we are able to consult and give advice externally, it’s not always the same when you’re doing it for yourself, because you’re so close to the problem statement. And somewhere, I knew that we didn’t want to be the people who put out the top 10 SEO trends for 2023 or the top 10 copywriting tips that will whatever so that’s not really what we’re going for.

So then it kind of opens up that chasm of what will you go for, like, what’s going to fill that void? And after much deliberation and the two week break that we kind of took really helped clarify I just want everybody in the team to now write about things that are part of their lived experience. And to the extent that we’ve even opened it up saying designers don’t have to necessarily write, they have the flexibility to do videos, do infographics, do reels, do whatever it is that feels like flexing that side of things. And people have come up with some very interesting ideas.

So one of our writers who doesn’t come from the domain or doesn’t come from agency experience, is now writing a blog post on her first 90 days at an agency for the first time in her life, I know it’s going to be a good article, and the next one that I’m going to set out and write is called is 2023, the year that digital marketing dies. So there’s actually a lot of excitement surrounding these topics already, even before they have come to life, because A it’s part of our lived experience, B none of us are assuming that we already know everything, we are curious. So it kind of exercises that muscle as well.

So I would recommend that anybody who’s kind of on that content journey will A have to put in that elbow grease, as we call it, like, don’t outsource from day one, I think and all of us can communicate, it’s not that a content writer is probably doing a slightly better job of articulating and storytelling and all of that. But beyond that, we can all write four sentences, and it becomes something meaningful. So I really think that everybody should write their own content at some point in time.

Subha: Very true. But you know, the challenge that I find Hasita in writing your own content attempt is that a lot of what I’m going through personally, and I’m thinking or the point of view that I have about something comes to the forefront, which is a good thing most of the time. But there are times when I think, Hey, is this what my audience wants to keep hearing about?

Like, if I’m taking three, four months to, let’s say, learn something new, then I’m very charged up and my mind is always about, Hey, I’m learning, Hey, it’s something new here, Hey, I’m challenging myself. But maybe that audience of mine is thinking something else. They’re thinking about growth or scale or performance. So really having a strong sense of who I’m speaking to, perhaps would help clarify it that I should talk about this or not.

Hasita: Actually you’re spot on, and I’m going to take the example of where you said, am I thinking about growth, am I thinking about scale, am I thinking about performance, for example, or whatever else. And that’s where kind of as the creator of that piece of content, I think the onus is on us to consider, do I want to talk about growth? Do I want to talk about scale? Do I want to talk about performance?

Because we cannot cater to everybody, in fact, I would go so far as to say that we shouldn’t be catering to everybody because these are all extremely deep and vast domains and that’s true of anything in life. Like tomorrow, you get curious about microbiology, for example, that in and of itself is a word of knowledge, right? And we see this in academia, where the more people begin to specialise.

And I used to be so jealous of some of my seniors who got their PhDs and I would read the topic title and I feel like, this is so specific, but it’s because they’ve managed to be so specific, they’ve been able to do good in depth work. So kind of coming back to should you then talk about ABC, I would say talk about A maybe to some extent, talk about B, but definitely don’t extend the realm of conversation beyond that, unless it’s really necessary.

Subha: Makes sense that single mindedness about who I’m speaking to has always been helpful in terms of any kind of whether it’s an email I’m sending, or the podcast episodes that we do, or even sometimes conversations, when you truly understand that, Hey, this person is somebody, I kind of want to attract into my world, your pitch itself becomes that much more attractive.

Hasita: So true. In fact, when I was talking to somebody recently, they told me that in a month and a half, they managed to A, design all of their web pages on Figma, which in itself is like a big win in my mind. They’ve also finished templatizing their social media creatives, and they’ve gone ahead and prepared Subha, you will not believe 14 podcast episodes.

The last time we spoke, which was hardly 40 or 45 days ago, none of these things existed. And you can feel that excitement and that energy, and somewhere I had to kind of pull the guy back and say, Hey, are you doing too much? And then I realised, actually, he’s not, he’s just leveraging on the energy he’s got and the passion that he has for that one domain.

And sometimes when we imagine I think that we are talking to this one individual, or we’re talking to this one small group, it’s so much easier to know what to say as well, like, we know that this podcast is meant to empower the small business owners and the startups. So tell them things that I’ve sometimes you know, not really said behind closed doors, so knowing that just makes our process easier as well and more satisfying I think.

Subha: And I’m thinking Hasita like, I mean, we know how much time and energy a podcast episode takes. So if was done 14 of those plus web design plus writing, getting the calendar in place, etc. it must come from a deep level of expertise, like, you have all the information and the know-how, and you’re putting it into different forms and structures. So I think to be able to put out so much, you need to know what you’re talking about.

Hasita: Sure, I mean, so content creation, I think can happen in one of two heads spaces. One headspace is to say, Hey, I am the expert and I’ve accepted that I’m the expert, which is actually very difficult for a lot of us to do. And it reminds me of the Neil Gaiman and Neil Armstrong story of both of them feeling like imposters and that they didn’t belong.

Maybe we should add a link to the show. It is a very sweet story. So sometimes, even for us to come up and say, Hey, I am the expert is very difficult. It’s not an identity that we can own. But once you own it, that’s an extremely strong positioning because it cannot be taken away from you very easily. So even on LinkedIn, there are so many content creators. And there’s one that I discovered, as I was preparing for more brand workshops last year, and hopefully this one as well.

His pseudo name is Baron Savage. I’m really struggling to remember what his actual name is. And he’s got a reason for that name as well, because it’s quick recall, you can’t forget those two, they are called pineapple words, because they’re not easy to forget.

And I have about 30, 40 of his pages bookmarked at all times, because I know that his website is all about resources for a brand strategist. He has the tools, he has the framework, he has examples of where he’s applied it, where he has failed. So it just makes my life so much easier because here is somebody who knows who they are talking to. His audience on the website is another brand strategist.

I saw the same thing, even with Scott Galloway, when he was doing section 4. Having an opinion comes from that place of saying that, Hey, I am the expert and I know what I’m talking about. So that’s one kind. Now, obviously, all of us can’t be experts in everything from day one, it’s pretty much impossible for a lot of us.

So the other kind of thing that I found really works is to say, Hey, I’m on this journey, come along for the ride. So there are creators like Brendan Hufford on LinkedIn, who mostly talk about SEO for SaaS. And his LinkedIn headline itself for a very long time was I learn about the world of SaaS and share what I learned, so it’s a variation of that. So you know who he is and you accept that, Hey, here’s somebody who feels like my peer.

Somebody who doesn’t know everything, but I’m willing to go along on the ride, because he’s sharing a lot of tactical insight and therefore, based on your positioning, again, your content has to show that variance.

Like Baron Savage, for example, when he talks about the balanced scorecard he’s got a very nuanced perspective on how and where to apply it, and therefore you’re like, Okay, I’ve sat in this amazing lecture, and I’ve learned something and therefore, if he were to make blog posts and case studies, I wouldn’t expect to see too much of him on LinkedIn, because in my mind, he’s weigh above in terms of references, but Brendan Hufford is my peer, he’s my classmate, in that sense.

And so he’s on LinkedIn saying, Hey, I found this out, I discovered this. So it’s all very exciting. I think largely content can fall into both those buckets. But I would strongly advise against trying to fall into both at the same time.

Subha: True, I think the second one, you know, the journey story should eventually lead you to the expert story because we all start off not knowing much or being a beginner. And I think putting it together obviously, these guys know their audience, they know exactly who they’re speaking to. And they come from, like you said, one of these two buckets of either being the true voice or being the voice that has an opinion, or being the voice that’s figuring it out.

And you’re right, as a content consumer, the voice that’s figuring out is a lot of joy to kind of go along with because there’s ups and downs, there’s little things that remind you of mistakes you made, there’s little things that tell you Hey, thanks for that I can now avoid this.

Hasita: Yeah, and there’s that the sense of discovery that Hey, I spent my time reading four things so that I could come to one conclusion. So the interesting thing Subha is since I bought a Kindle and I’m finally converted into the software side of things.

The thing I’m reading like a monster is the Clifton Chronicles by Jeffrey Archer of all things and I thought Oh! I’ll read all the strategy books and I will be this fancy brand strategist, but instead I’m reading Jeffrey Archer, but the other day I was thinking and we are preparing for a brand workshop with a company that has six different subunits, and they come from a slightly public unionised kind of setup.

And it’s only in reading the Clifton Chronicles that it suddenly struck me that in companies of that nature, there is also the employee voice, which you have to take into account because there are legal tenets around how those unions are organised as well. So I was saying without Clifton, I would never have found that out. So sometimes it’s good to be the person who’s still on the journey. It’s a very fulfilling place to be.

Subha: I think that’s an opinion that both of us hold very strongly. You don’t know what will trigger in terms of not just what content you consume and what you enjoy, but also because of that what you take up next or do next. And so these journey conversations are equally or if not more valuable because like you said, you feel like you’re with the classmate or you’re in that same boat sailing on.

But now if I’ve kind of got my audience, or I’ve got clarity, let’s say on my audience, and I’ve got some idea of my voice, is it the learner voice, is it the expert voice, and I’ve got that clarity, then comes really the tough part Hasita of just kind of doing the day in and day out, I just feel like so many start with all of these good intentions and then they become their own roadblocks and just give it up, because it just seems too tough. What do we do?

Hasita: You are right Subha in the sense that being on the cusp of something, and being in the middle of something are very different energy levels, and content is creation, and therefore it comes with its own energy barometer, if I could call it that way. Given simple things, sometimes I notice, like a change of place, or the right kind of coffee, or being in the right kind of clothes that make you feel good.

All these things are subconscious influences on how we produce content. Now, I know for a fact that on the days when I’m writing newsletters, I try and go at it very differently. I would have a ritual for how I would prepare myself for a day of that nature. And even with the podcast, we’ve seen that I mean, producing two podcasts simultaneously is a bit of a thing that takes a while. Like it’s an identity that you have to kind of assume. And on days, I think that where we show up, you know, feeling good, knowing what we are talking about getting excited, the energy is so different.

So I think sometimes filling that cup, because you have to firstly accept that, A, you are the creator. And even something as simple as putting out one LinkedIn post a week still makes you a creator. I think that is something that we all need to accept and appreciate for what it means because we live in a world where there is enough and more opportunity to create, and therefore, use that use that framework of saying, Hey, I own this identity, being a creator is part of my job and therefore, this is how I put myself out there. That would be, I think, number one.

Something I learned from one of our guests, that episode is going to come up soon as well, is to really measure the energy levels on any given day. Now, once that’s done, you have to get to the more practical stuff, which is where I think what we discussed so far, is really also helpful because you’re not going at it blind. You’re not saying okay, what do I write about? Okay, who do I talk to, you already know what identity you are assuming and you also know, what is the identity of the person you’re addressing, or the group that you’re hoping to address, which actually becomes a huge resource for generating ideas.

So me as a marketing consultant, talking to you as a small business owner, and that already generates at least 10, 15 different ideas in my head. Journaling, note taking is something that I have found to be very helpful, because sometimes ideas come during the most uncomfortable times. So just having access to that one note taking app where I just put everything down seems to help because I know I can always go back to this when I hit a blog.

Lastly, some amount of preparation, like, going back to the example of our people who produce 14 episodes, they’re not going to release all 14 together. They’re probably going to release two, three, and then they’re going to have a weekly or bi weekly cadence or whatever that is. So some amount of predictability is always good.

That said, in today’s marketing environment, for B2B companies, especially I would not advise planning more than three months, four months ahead, as far as content is concerned, because the channels and media and how people consume content is changing very quickly. A lot of the Twitter audiences are now on LinkedIn; a lot of the Facebook audience has already been on LinkedIn. So a lot of platforms are changing their identities as well as to what they mean to people.

So plan for two, three months and keep at it and I think both of us Subha I have realised that once you do it for two, three months, it has a tendency to kind of become a little simpler. I wouldn’t say it’s just like Cakewalk after that, but it’s definitely easier.

Subha: No, it makes sense. I think in all of this, there’s just this one kind of persona I’m thinking about and folks that we do meet who end of the day keep the narrative is, hey, I have a business to run. I’m not a content creator. This is not my day job or my night job. I’m doing a good job; I’m running a good business. How do I get it out? If I have to do this also, I can’t.

Hasita: Okay, let’s change that narrative, because you have to do it. This is the job, and let’s accept that. And I know it’s easier said probably for somebody whose day job and the creation and kind of overlapping, it’s easier, but for say somebody who’s in a very technical domain, who have all this knowledge, how do I get it out there into the world one of the greatest barriers to doing that is to firstly, tell yourself, that this is not your job, because this is your job or at least train the second in command until they are ready to do the job

And I’ve had, I’ve been lucky to kind of work with people who’ve done that for me. My first longest engagement, of course, is with you Subha, and I hope it continues for a very long time. My second longest engagement was for a retail SaaS company that got acquired about a year, year and a half ago. And I wrote their content for four and a half years.

Now, four and a half years in a freelance capacity is probably a record somewhere in the world, I have a feeling. And the only reason we were able to do that is because for the first six months, seven months, the company CEO would write outlines that went up to five six hundred words, the outline. And I used to think, if this guy can write this, why can’t he just write the blog? I mean, I’m happy to get paid, but why does he want me? And it’s only after those six months, I realised that he didn’t have to give me an outline after that. He just had to give me the topic and I would write.

Now it takes a certain amount of faith, I mean, something that I’m also now trying to practise with the writers that I’m hoping to train, you know, there are so many questions around investing in that resource and whether you want to be doing it, but just know that in doing that, you would have made a difference to somebody’s quality of professional work, and that in itself is enough sometimes, they say, they leave, that’s a conversation probably for another day.

But by investing in that process, and believing that it works, I found even today and every time we come across a retail SaaS project, I send thanks to him in my mind, because he set me up for success for seven, eight years straight, and hopefully for many more.

So sometimes in domains, especially that are challenging, that are difficult to fathom, more technical. In fact, I’ve had another client as well, who’s kind of invested the same amount of the number of product demos he gave me for the cybersecurity, it was insane. I mean, to spend that kind of time, you have to believe that it works.

And he gave me I think, for product demos, two sales calls in which I had a chance to sit, and then of course, I came up with the brand tonality, and we hashed out a few headlines, and we did the content together. But that investment is going to have dividends down the line. So I think, if you find somebody who’s good, firstly, don’t let them go. And keep looking until you find that person. And secondly, keep looking, like, there are extremely good writers, there’s an exceptional quantum of talent out there, I think they’re just waiting to be trained by the right set of hands.

Subha: I think that’s a very fair point that both sides have to be invested in it. So if this is not your gig, and you need the support, and you need help, and you’re going to reach out to somebody, invest in that process, I think is what I’m hearing, like, truly, truly and invest is not that one initial call saying, Hey, this is the work that we do, and you can check it out on our website, etc.

But continuously invest till you are then comfortable, then it may take three months, sometimes it may take six months, sometimes it might just happen in a month. It depends on how complex or niche work is, what kind of output you’re looking for. But I think it’s true, I think as a business owner, also, you have to truly invest in that journey of bringing someone into the fold.

Hasita: Yeah. So either it is your job to actually do the execution and if you have the skill set, by all means, keep at it until you’re ready to scale and make it bigger. If it’s not something you’re feeling comfortable with but still there is that job of you know, that quantum of how do I pass this knowledge on or do you want to find somebody from the industry who also has a bit of writing experience, do you want to train someone from this work which I have personally found to be very fruitful because a lot of people don’t then come with their own impressions and biases, and therefore you’re able to kind of train and hone them into who you want them to be.

So whatever it is, that in itself is a job. So do think about creation, not just in terms of am I creating a blog post, am I creating a piece of content but also in terms of, am I creating the next set of people who can do this for me? Like, I think that is very much part of the job today.

Subha: Awesome. I think quite a bit to give a lot of us clarity because it is a daily hustle just as much as the core work that we do, and some of this can help simplify it, because the need to be out there is still and will continue to be quite important. So I think, topic I kind of writes itself this week. And I’m going to go with content mangoge, viral blog denge.

Hasita: Yeah, I mean, Zomato always knows how to pull the rabbit out of the hat somehow. But it’s interesting how it’s gone viral, and everybody’s kind of getting on the bandwagon. I think it’s just something simple, something to associate with, like, two billboards that are smart God knows in traffic of the nature and variety that we have, sometimes we need that entertainment by the roadside.

So it’s always nice to be able to relate to a piece of content. It’s definitely very exciting. And yeah, I mean, Zomato is one of those brands that seems to be able to do it over and over again, good for them. It just goes to show what kind of culture they have around creativity in that organisation. And I appreciate that so much.

Subha: I think, to consistently have to beat yourself. And I think at this point, that’s what the Swiggy’s and the Zomato’s must be aiming for because their own internal bar must be pretty high.

Hasita: So true, and how do you keep doing that, like, we were talking earlier Subha about the daily news cycle. And there are shows that, you know, like the Daily Show, which we kind of watched for the longest time with Trevor Noah, they go live daily. That’s the whole idea behind the Daily Show, and it’s not easy to kind of do that, and consistent quality every single time you have to be funny, you have to be smart, you may or may not have news every single day.

But as of course, Trevor Noah himself admitted Donald Trump coming to power was just the icing on the cake for his career, at least. But I do remember this episode, you had shared with me a podcast between Adam Grant and Trevor Noah, I think, where he talks about how that culture of creativity runs parallel to a culture of being able to be vulnerable. If you can’t bring your insecurities to the room, then you can’t bring your creativity to the room.

And the interesting thing is, I think we’ve seen this happen with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have to excuse me, I just had to get that in a lot in the last couple of years. They’ve been struggling with phase four, they’ve been hits, they’ve been misses. They’ve tried some meta level stuff, which honestly, it didn’t resonate with a lot of hard-core fans. But somewhere there is still that hope, that they will, you know, pull one out of the hat, so to speak.

Wakanda Forever Black Panther 2 is kind of got mixed reviews. Personally, I didn’t like that movie so much. So we are all still waiting, I think waiting, waiting, waiting for them to pull that one thing that will change the course of the MCU. And somewhere I feel like initially when they were writing the movies that would eventually become Infinity War and Endgame, they were able to let their writers be vulnerable and run free.

So we get a Demi God who’s, you know, very funny, and we get his brother who’s very cunning, and we get all these different layers, but somewhere, they became victims of their own plotline, so to speak. Hopefully now they’re kind of changing that a bit and they’re thinking a little more in terms of how I can let the person writing the story and go crazy. So I mean, what can we really bring into our day to day life is to know that we all have our days, we all have our moments, not every podcast episode is going to be equally bright and vibrant, not every blog post is going to be full of rich and funny insights all the time.

But when that opportunity exists, for the creator to grab it, and for the ecosystem to let them be comfortable doing that, I think these are not jobs you can do if you’re always looking over your shoulder.

Subha: No and while you know the MCU tries to figure it out there will be everything everywhere all at once that walked away with two Golden Globes this morning. So it’s going to happen but you have to just keep trusting the process, the people keep reinvesting in it is what I’m hearing, you know, just keep building that team of people who can support you or the way you do that creative process or the process of bringing things out there yeah, man, it’s a hassle just as much as the main job is.

Hasita: Just to accept that, I think makes a huge difference because then you’re not resisting that process anymore. And do have fun. Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode of the Damn Good Marketing Podcast. Advice mangoge, solution toh denge hi. We hope you had fun listening to this and we’re looking forward to producing so much more for you. Thank you.

Subha: Bye.

Hasita: Oh! God, how many times have I said have fun. You have to be funny, very funny, rich and funny insights. So have fun and I do have fun. I hope you had fun listening to this.

Our Guest : Subha Chandrasekaran