188: Scaling Your Content Creation with AI Assistance
Drowning in content deadlines? Feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day to create all the content you need? We've got the productivity boost you've been searching for!
In this episode, we're unveiling the secret weapon that's revolutionizing content creation: AI-powered tools.
Here's a sneak peek of the time-saving tactics you'll discover:
How to use AI to generate content ideas in minutes, not hours
The "1-to-75" content repurposing strategy that squeezes maximum value from every piece you create
AI-driven shortcuts for understanding your audience faster and deeper than ever before
Tips for balancing AI efficiency with your unique brand voice (because we know you're irreplaceable!)
Our guest, content marketing whiz Heather Ritchie, drops this game-changing insight: "I feel like we have to publish more content than ever before, and that's where AI can really come in and do the heavy lifting for you."
Imagine cutting your content creation time in half (or more!) while actually increasing your output. Sound too good to be true? Listen to find out how it's possible!
⏱️ Ready to reclaim your time and supercharge your content strategy? Don't miss this episode!
Bullet points with timestamps:
[00:02:31] Overcoming the challenge of making content work for you and turn listeners into customers
[00:05:12] Using AI and other resources to better understand your audience's challenges
[00:09:57] Streamlining the content creation process for efficiency and high impact
[00:13:46] Standing out in a crowded marketplace while building trust and engagement
[00:21:31] Insights on creating a paid newsletter for recurring revenue
Mentioned in this episode:
Heather's free gift: 50 AI-Powered Prompts for Content Creators
The ContentPreneur Chronicles (Heather's paid newsletter).
Unlocking the Secrets to Content That Captivates and Converts: Insights from Content Marketing Strategist Heather Ritchie
Creating content that truly resonates with your audience can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. With over a million pieces of content published online every day, how can you ensure your voice stands out?
Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Heather Ritchie, a certified content marketing strategist and coach, who shared some game-changing insights on crafting content that not only captivates but also converts.
Understanding Your Audience: The Foundation of Effective Content
One of the key takeaways from our conversation was the critical importance of truly understanding your audience. Heather emphasized that this goes beyond surface-level demographics. It's about diving deep into your audience's challenges, aspirations, and pain points. She suggests creating a content guide or style guide for each brand or business you manage, which can help you stay focused and consistent in your messaging.
But how do you gain these insights if you're just starting out? Heather recommends leveraging various resources:
Join Facebook groups and communities where your target audience hangs out.
Analyze YouTube comments on videos relevant to your niche.
Use AI tools like ChatGPT to help brainstorm potential audience challenges and questions.
Remember, the goal is to create content that addresses what your audience is actively searching for, not just what you want to write about. As Heather puts it, "Don't write about what you wanna write about. If you're creating content, it needs to be on things that people are looking for and they need help with."
Streamlining Content Creation: Efficiency Meets Impact
Creating high-quality content consistently can be time-consuming, but Heather shared some strategies to streamline the process without sacrificing impact:
Develop a content calendar and use project management tools to stay organized.
Embrace batching - create multiple pieces of content in one sitting when you're in the flow.
Leverage AI tools for ideation, outlines, and even first drafts of content.
Heather highlighted how AI can be a game-changer in content creation: "I feel like we have to publish more content than ever before, and that's where AI can really come in and do the heavy lifting for you." However, she cautioned against blindly using AI-generated content, emphasizing the importance of adding your unique voice and insights.
The Power of Content Repurposing
One of the most eye-opening parts of our discussion was about content repurposing. Heather shared that from a single piece of long-form content, you can potentially create up to 75 additional pieces of content for various platforms. This approach not only saves time but also ensures consistency across your content channels.
Here's how you can start repurposing:
Start with one long-form piece of content (e.g., a blog post or podcast episode).
Break it down into smaller sections for social media posts.
Create visual content like infographics or quote images from key points.
Adapt the content for different platforms (e.g., turn a blog post into a video script).
Standing Out in a Crowded Marketplace
With so much content out there, how can you ensure yours stands out? Heather's advice is to focus on creating deeper connections with your audience. This means:
Consistently addressing their specific challenges and needs.
Using storytelling to make your content more relatable and engaging.
Providing clear, actionable advice that your audience can implement immediately.
Engaging with your audience through comments, polls, and questions to make them feel seen and heard.
Exploring New Content Formats: The Case for Paid Newsletters
Interestingly, Heather also shared her recent venture into paid newsletters as a way to provide more value to her audience while creating a recurring revenue stream. This format allows her to dive deeper into topics, provide exclusive resources, and offer more personalized content to her most engaged followers.
If you're considering exploring new content formats, think about what your audience values most and how you can deliver that in a unique, more in-depth way.
Wrapping Up: Your Next Steps
As we concluded our chat, Heather left us with this powerful reminder: "Even if you think you know your audience, I bet you can drill down on them even further." This continuous process of learning about and connecting with your audience is at the heart of creating content that truly captivates and converts.
So, what's your next step? Perhaps it's revisiting your audience research, exploring AI tools to streamline your process, or brainstorming ways to repurpose your existing content. Whatever it is, remember that effective content creation is an ongoing journey of learning, adapting, and connecting.
By focusing on understanding your audience, streamlining your processes, and consistently delivering value, you'll be well on your way to creating content that not only stands out in the crowded digital space but also truly resonates with the people you're trying to reach.
Pin this and save for later
Transcript:
00:00:07
Welcome to the Creators MBA podcast. Your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today.
00:00:37
And my special guest today is Heather Ritchie. Heather is a certified content marketing strategist, a dedicated coach and SEO content writer at Writer's Life for You. With over seven years of experience, she helps women simplify content creation and build profitable online businesses through digital products and courses and Heather, I am super excited to chat with you. We've been chatting for the past few minutes.
00:01:08
I have a ton of questions for you and we're going to be delving into unlocking the secrets to content that captivates and converts. And I have a ton of questions for you. But before we get into all of that, can you tell the audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?
00:01:27
So first of all, thank you for having me. This is super fun. I love doing things like this because I know that content creation could be tricky for a lot of people. So like you said, I'm a certified content marketing strategist over at writer's life for you and I basically help make content creation simpler for female content creators.
00:01:49
People can usually. I do write some SEO content for people still. I do SEO optimized blog posts and then I have a ton of digital products and courses that basically make things a whole lot easier.
00:02:03
And we're going to get into those. I know there is one that you have that I'm super interested in kind of delving into a little bit more. But before we kind of get into all of that, I think one of the biggest questions I have for you, or it's a challenge that I have personally. And whenever I'm talking to somebody who's an expert with content, I always like to kind of pick your brain, if you would.
00:02:27
And I would say one of the biggest challenges I have is making my content work for me, meaning using the content to actually get customers and turn the listeners or the readers into customers. Can you kind of walk us through how we can overcome those type of challenges?
00:02:50
So I feel like we are all spread so thin and it really comes down to really understanding your audience. ChatGPT is really great now for helping people dig deeper into their audiences. Challenges and people say pain points. I've highlighted challenges better because I feel like pain points is like kind of painful but if you just really dig into what keeps them up at night, what stories or what challenges did you face that you could really bring storytelling in to kind of make people relate with you, if that makes sense.
00:03:24
So if I'm telling a story and somebody understands that, like, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what I'm dealing with right now. You increase that know, like and trust factor, I guess I should say so. It really does help to, like, also paint a vivid picture of the benefits of whatever you're trying to sell or even if you're just trying to give something free away, if people understand the benefits. We have such a crowded online space right now.
00:03:50
I think I read something the other day, don't quote me, but I think it was something like, there are 1 million pieces of content published every day online.
00:04:04
Oh, wow.
00:04:04
That's crazy.
00:04:05
It is. Yeah, that is. That is crazy. Now I want to go, like, find that stat and, and include somewhere.
00:04:14
And it just made me think of that. I'm like, oh, this is a really interesting stat. I think it's because I asked ChatGPT to give me fun facts on content creation.
00:04:24
Well, we're going to dig into that and we're going to include that in the show notes there. So let's dig into this a little bit more about using AI to help us dig into those challenges. So let's assume that we're kind of new with our niche and we're not 100% sure what those challenges are. Where can we go to dig into this?
00:04:46
So, and I feel like this is something that we all struggle with because when you're first starting, you need to connect with your audience more than ever what you brand new. So a couple of places before we take that, the AI plunge, but if, if you're not using AI as much, I would become members of the Facebook groups and different communities where your people would hang out. Like if whatever you're teaching or talking about would be interesting to these people. So if you're talking about SEO content or something, like go into those blogging Facebook groups, YouTube comments are another good place.
00:05:24
And I discovered this years ago when I was having problems myself and I started looking at some of my competitors YouTube videos and looking at the contents and people had questions right in there, which is just amazing. And then what I'll do, too, now, especially with you can do custom GPTs or in ChatGPT right now. You could even go in, I don't know if you have to have the paid plan or not, but you can even go in and give ChatGPT some stuff in general that it can kind of customize all of your things, too. So I'll give it a lot of times, like a document or information on what I know on my audience, and it doesn't have to be a lot.
00:06:04
And you can say, can you help me come up with objections or can you come up with, help me come up with how to really use storytelling with this group of people? Or I don't know a lot about them, what are their problems? What are the things that they're facing? And you will be amazed with what a tool like ChatGPT will come back with.
00:06:22
And then you can use that as a springing off point.
00:06:26
I love that. And I think you've given us a ton of options there to kind of dig into that. Well, so let me ask you this. I know when we're, we're creating content and we are hoping that it's going to turn into either sales or maybe it's just content that we want engagement from.
00:06:46
Walk us through some of the mistakes that we make might make, or some of the common pitfalls that we might, you know, run across.
00:06:53
So some of the things that I see. Okay, first of all, we've already talked about understanding your audience. I think that's one of the biggest issues, that when content isn't connecting, or even me, a couple of years ago, I kind of pivoted, like, and I did a lot of talking to specifically freelance writers and freelancers. Well, then, now, I mean, everything I've always done has ever been to content creators.
00:07:15
And so having to pivot, I kind of, like, had that issue myself. So the understanding your audience piece is a big deal. There's also, like, inconsistent messaging where if I, what you're talking about doesn't align with your goals and values because a lot of us tend to stand behind those. So that can be confusing.
00:07:33
There's also not having a call to action, like a clear call to action. And people really need to know what you want them to do next. You know, if you give them too many options, they can just, I think, what is it called decision paralysis, where they're just like, well, I'm just not going to do anything because I'm just so overwhelmed right now, or I don't know what to do. But if you tell those specifically, like, hey, go sign up for this, you know, new freebie that I have, whatever it is, or this will help you do this, that's another thing.
00:08:01
There's also lack of engagement strategies. And so, and this is something I try to do more on Instagram. Use the different features that the platforms that you're on have. For instance, you know, there's the polls and the little stickers and things that you can use in Instagram Stories.
00:08:19
There's asking questions or just being. People want to know that they're seen and heard. And so yes, you can present those stories and things to them, but if you also give them ways to interact with you, like ask questions, and they can come back with things, they like to feel part of the content creation process, too.
00:08:39
I love that. So giving them very specific. Here's what I need you to do, whether it's go here, take this poll or whatever the case may be. Now I want to move in.
00:08:50
I'm switching gears on you a little bit, and I think this is a challenge that a lot of us have. And it really comes down to content creation can take a lot of our time, whether we're doing pillar type content or whether we're just creating a post for social media. Can you walk us through your recommended process on how we can streamline this and really be more efficient, but also making sure that we are producing that high impact content that really gets the results that we're looking for?
00:09:25
So part of what you need, I always talk about systemizing your business where you come up with a project management tool that you like, coming up with a content calendar and things like that, because then you can use time saving techniques like batching. I used to always wonder why batching didn't work for me, and that's because I was drowning in content creation back in the day, like a lot of us are, and I could never get far enough ahead so that I could do some planning things. So that's one thing. But I feel like we have to publish more content than ever before, and that's where AI can really come in and do the heavy lifting for you.
00:10:03
I'm not saying copy exactly what, you know, ChatGPT or something puts out there because it's going to scrape the Internet and you can plagiarize. But I use it for ideas all the time. I even have a custom idea GPT just for that. I also have it do outlines for me.
00:10:22
The one thing I don't have it do, which a lot of people do use it for, is like blog post outlines. I think it would be really good for that, but I'm so like hands on with those things for me. But just using AI while still keeping what is you using it for, that ideation? Use it for writing emails.
00:10:40
You and I were just talking about that. I'm not a copywriter. I'm a great writer, but I'm not a copywriter. So I will put in an email that I've written or I'll have ChatGPT write my sales emails for me and then I'll go in and edit it.
00:10:53
But it just really helps cut down on the time because of this thing. If you email every day like I do, or we're in these bundles and summits that we are in together, and there's a lot of people that do that. You have so many emails and things to write. So if you use AI for that competitive advantage to get things done faster, it's.
00:11:13
I mean, I can tell you right now, I would not get everything I get done essentially as a solopreneur if I did not have AI right now. Like, if AI blew up today, I think I'd be traumatized.
00:11:25
Well, you and me both. But let me ask, which ones are you using? Because there's tons of them out there. I'll tell you my favorites in just a second, but which ones are you using?
00:11:34
So I use a ChatGPT, probably the most, but also marketing magic. So ChatGPT, I like to teach people how to use it because it has the free option. Marketing magic is kind of like ChatGPT on steroids. And I got in M. Stewart, she, I think she released it like a year and a half ago and I jumped in immediately like I was in the first group of people that bought from her.
00:12:02
And that thing, it has I think like 50 or more tools in it now. It writes emails, it'll write your affiliate emails, it'll write blog posts for you, it'll help you create freebies, it'll help you with funnel. It's, it's insane. So those are the two main ones.
00:12:19
I like perplexity for questions and things like that, but pretty much ChatGPT and marketing magic are my main go tos.
00:12:27
Okay. I love that. And I'm using Claude. I have found that yes is really good at writing kind of that conversion copy in a friendly, everyday type tone.
00:12:38
So you gave us some really, really good tips there. Let me ask you this. We talked about a little bit and the fact that we're in a crowded marketplace. How can we as creators get our content so that it stands out in a crowded marketplace, but also still building that trust and engagement with our audience.
00:12:59
So I think the more that you can connect again, I keep going back to the understanding of your audience. And I beat that into people, it sounds like, but it's so incredibly important is you do not understand your audience. You're not going to connect with them. Stuff's going to fall flat.
00:13:15
I mean, it's even hard to get. I'm not a big social media marketer, so I feel I know my audience pretty well, and I'm really versed in all this, and even I sometimes struggle on social media. So it's really, you just really have to know your people. Lean into the problems that they are facing.
00:13:32
Don't write about what you want to write about. Like, yes, we started our businesses to kind of do some of that, but you're creating content. It needs to be on things that people are looking for and they need help with. A lot of times, our avatar is the earlier us.
00:13:46
So if that's you, think of what were some of the struggles that you had. If you're several steps in front of your people, like, try to think backward. Like, what were some of those issues that you had? What did you wish that you had back then that would have helped you just really getting into?
00:14:04
Basically, I think somebody call it, like, get to know your audience. Like a stalker. But the good kind.
00:14:13
I love that. The good time.
00:14:14
Yeah. I mean, if there is a good kind, this would be the good kind because you really want somebody to be like, I have had somebody send me an email and it blew my mind. I'm like, she's inside my head. And that's what you want people to be thinking, because that's when you just really want, okay, I'll buy everything that person has.
00:14:32
Yeah, I love that. Inside. You got to get inside their head.
00:14:37
Yes. Basically, which can be difficult. That's not always easy.
00:14:42
No, I completely agree with you, especially in your audience, and I'm sure you can relate to this. I know in my audience, everybody has such unique businesses or in unique challenges that they're trying to solve, so it's hard to speak to all of those.
00:14:57
Different nuances well, and it's really interesting because I know people get. I know I was this person when I started. When people tell you to create one main avatar, one person to talk to in the beginning is for simplicity reasons, and to make your content creation that much easier, you are going to have more than just Sarah Baker, who makes 35,000 a year, who is a graphic designer and has two kids and a dog, and stresses out because she doesn't know how to manage work life. You're going to have more than that.
00:15:27
But if you're focusing all your content, writing to that person, you're going to draw the people that are like that person to you, but you're naturally going to have other people come in. I talk to female content creators, but I have men in my audience. So you're naturally going to pick up some of those people. And as you go along, you can make it a little more complicated and add in the different people.
00:15:47
But it just really simplifies things when you focus on that one avatar person, basically.
00:15:54
Yeah. So I don't want to, you know, throw, throw a loop at you, but I want to ask this question because I think a lot of us out there, we don't have a lot of time in the day, and we know we need to be creating content. We know we need to be doing it on a consistent basis. If you had to suggest one place that we should focus on creating content, what would you recommend?
00:16:21
So if I understand that correctly and you can steer me around, if I don't, I would say if you're looking for like a platform or something or type of content, I would, a, pick the content that is most popular for your people, and then b, don't try to be on a million platforms at once, especially if you're just starting, you know, where are your people most likely to hang out? For instance, if you speak to DIY crafters, they're probably going to be on Pinterest and Instagram, whereas middle aged men running companies are going to be on LinkedIn. So it's just really knowing where your people are then kind of honing in there. And then you also, yes, adding other types of content in the makes your content more available to a wider range of people.
00:17:11
But if you can only focus in a couple of areas, is your audience mostly moms of young kids? Well, then they might be more likely to listen to podcasts like this. I like blog posts. Not everybody likes blog posts, but I'm not a mom and so it's different.
00:17:26
So I feel like those are some of the areas that like to really focus on.
00:17:30
Now, when you are teaching people that you're a content strategist, you teach them to start with like one pillar type of content, whether that's blog, YouTube, podcast, and then take that content and kind of break it out and maybe post, you know, something on social media like Instagram. What do you generally recommend?
00:17:51
So I actually have a course on content repurposing because it just makes me so happy because that's how you can literally spread your content and get more mileage out of it. So, yeah, I think one of the best ways to do it is to start with one long form piece of content. You can even do this weekly. I've seen other people do this and it just, it's so smart when you think about it.
00:18:14
You can take that one blog post. And I think in my course, the content repurposing formula, I think I demonstrate how you can turn it into like 75 additional pieces of content, like the different things that you can pull out for the different platforms. And then if you have a blog post, you can turn that into several podcast episodes. You could turn it into several YouTube videos, depending on what it is.
00:18:39
Or if you have a really long YouTube video, you can put it into a blog post and you probably turn your podcast episodes into blog post. Probably. I'm just assuming a lot of people do. So that's something people can do.
00:18:52
Yeah, do that. Definitely do that. But I have to go back to what you said, 75 pieces of content from one.
00:18:59
Yeah, I think that's what is either 65 or 75. But I could probably go in. That was just touching. I mean, I could probably go higher than that.
00:19:06
Oh, wow.
00:19:07
Yeah. If you just really write a long term piece of content, I mean, you could pull all kinds of Twitter quotes out of it. You can, if you use each section of your posts, like, you can make each one of those a blog post and that, I mean, a social media post, and then you can multiply that because you can put, you can put it for Pinterest or you can put it for Instagram. And what I, another thing I love to do with ChatGPT is I'll be like, hey, I have this email.
00:19:32
Can you turn it into a bunch of social media posts for me? Or, hey, I've written this Instagram post. Can you tailor it to LinkedIn? And so that's another way that ChatGPT helps because it speeds up that process so much more.
00:19:47
So listening to you, I can tell you I'm definitely not repurposing as much as I should be. So I have got to put that on my action list here. Now, Heather, before we started recording, you and I were chatting and you mentioned that you had a paid newsletter. And I definitely want to jump into this and chat, just learn a little bit more because that's another piece of content, right.
00:20:12
That we could do. And tell us a little bit about what made you start a paid newsletter and tell us about the options that you have and what you're, how you're differentiating your free newsletter with the two paid newsletters that you have.
00:20:28
So I honestly, I wanted some type of recurring revenue and I had a content creation membership for about a year that people really liked. But I'm not saying it's bad to give too much, but I put too much on myself so that the weekly content just got to be such drudgery for me that I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And so I'm like, you know, let me try a paid newsletter. And it's been going about a month now and everybody that bought it the first time, they have re upped for the second month.
00:21:00
And so basically I really go deeper. So I may take something that I would touch on in a newsletter that's free to my audience. I will go much deeper in that. So I'll give quick wins, I will give tips on doing it, I'll explain more how to do it, and then I'll go even deeper into like with my vip newsletter people, and then they'll get like resources with it.
00:21:26
I'll answer questions in the newsletter. So it's also, people seem to be loving it so far. Like I said, it's only been going a month, but it's been really fun to do and it's that recurring revenue without me having to put out. Like I was doing like an hour training more every week and I should not have been doing that.
00:21:44
But I love doing it. I love teaching. So I can go way overboard. So yeah, this is just me able to help people more in a different way in writing.
00:21:53
And I like long form content. So is it recurring revenue without it being so heavy on the community?
00:22:01
I love that. And we'll make sure that the link for that is in the show notes. So people want to check it out and just learn how you are doing that. They can.
00:22:10
Heather, any last minute tips for the audience before we wrap it up here?
00:22:16
No, I just feel like if you take one thing away from this whole episode, it would be to just really, even if you think you know your audience, I bet you can drill down on them even further so you could easily even have ChatGPT help you just really start focusing on doing some understanding your audience better and then try some of the repurposing. Those are quick and easy things that you can do, especially if you're busy and you know, you need social media posts for the week. If you're just writing one big piece of content and then you can break it up for the rest of your stuff for the week, then you're good.
00:22:53
Well, that's been my kind of my key takeaway is I'm definitely not repurposing as much as I should. Now, Heather, can you let folks know where they can find you? And we have, you have a free gift for them also?
00:23:07
I do. So everybody can find me. For the most part, I'm on Instagram, and that's at writers life for you. And then, of course, there's my website, writerslifeforyou.com.
00:23:18
i have a free gift, which is one of my favorite recent ones that I have done. It's 50 AI powered prompts for content creators. So these are prompts that I use myself. I've just kind of taken the guesswork out of if you want to start using AI and you haven't as much, or you're just not as comfortable with it yet, or these just might be new props that you haven't tried yet so you can sit down and start working with ChatGPT to see the magic of it.
00:23:44
Because I think AI is not going anywhere. Like, I think Destini and I could both say it's not going anywhere. And so this is one of the things that you don't want to sleep on. You do want to jump in and use it as much as is comfortable to you, but these prompts can even inspire you to create other prompts because I'm just blown away with what ChatGPT comes back with sometimes.
00:24:06
And I will make sure, Heather, that all of those links are in the show notes, and I want to check that out myself because like, like you said, AI is not going away and I'm using it day in and day out, and we'll continue to kind of, you know, use it in my business and figure out different ways to use it in my business. But Heather, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:24:27
Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun. I always love talking about content creation.
00:24:33
Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.