236: Create Content Like A Pro

Melissa [: 00:00:00

Hey, hey, hey, I hope you guys enjoy these what I'm calling podcast shorts for my burnout to all out community. This is just a little peek behind the curtain of the coaching that goes on inside of my programs. We're bringing to you some of the best nuggets and coaching I'm giving, within hot seats of all of our different programs, whether it's our LinkedIn Method Academy, our Mini Mastermind, Business Basics, all the way up to our higher level Mastermind. If you're hearing some of these questions, and you're like, man, I wish I could get my burning question answered by Melissa. Hey, guess what? You could be featured on my podcast. If you've got a question that you want answered and you submit it to my team and we pick it, we will bring you here to the podcast for our podcast shorts and, do a hot seat with you. Where can you submit your questions? Send them to team burnout to all out.co. We'll make sure we drop that in the show notes for our podcast shorts.

Melissa [: 00:01:02

And I hope that you guys find as much value in the shorts as our clients do inside the program. Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business, and you're listening to the Burnout to All Out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice, and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur. Let's dive in. Next, we have Maggie, and then we have Cynthia after that. Hi.

Melissa [: 00:02:20

Hi. Hi.

Maggie [: 00:02:21

Okay. I wanna clarify something real quick. Did you say those that were getting top voice were ranking on Google?

Melissa [: 00:02:28

Well, so the actual top voice itself isn't necessarily driving the Google visibility. So where I wanna go with this story is it was the SEO and optimization of the keyword search that she was using on LinkedIn that made her discoverable on Google. And then when people were finding her, like the first thing that shows up is her LinkedIn profile, which shows up as a top voice in the industry. So it's just like layered credibility. Does that make sense?

Maggie [: 00:02:59

Yeah. That's really cool. I never would have thought about that. Okay. So a couple things, I feel like maybe I'm being a little bit too black and white in my thinking. I'm a portrait photographer, and I work with women. I do business branding headshots. I do beauty, and I also do boudoir.

Maggie [: 00:03:15

And so when I came to LinkedIn I'm mostly on Facebook and Instagram. When I came to LinkedIn, I thought I could only talk about traditional headshots and branding. This is my thinking. So I started creating the content for that, and it felt not really contrived, but I felt like I was too big in a box. And so I reevaluated lately, and I thought, I think I'm missing that element of the at least the way I was talking to the people in my post. So when I work with my women, it's more about helping them see their own beauty to step into more confidence and really reconnect with their feminine side, and I felt like I was hiding that on LinkedIn. So do you think is it okay you said maybe talk to 2 different people? Because I do wanna do some more. I would love to be able to go into a corporate environment and be able to do headshots for an entire business, but most of my work is revolved around focusing on women, especially older women.

Maggie [: 00:04:12

So I feel like I'm kind of stuck on what I'm supposed to do or what's the right thing to do. I know there's not really a right and a wrong, but I'm definitely feeling black and white in that. Does that make sense? Is there a question there that makes sense to you?

Melissa [: 00:04:25

Okay. So this is your brand and all of your offers. So this is your headshots. This is your boudoir. This is your personal branding. These are all the different offers that you have. Okay? And then, altogether, this is Maggie's brand. This is your personal brand.

Maggie [: 00:04:45

Okay.

Melissa [: 00:04:46

Your social content, I want you to see them as spokes to your brand. This could be brand photography. And then, this is another spoke, which is headshots. And you could even say, like, corporate headshots, and then you have another spoke that's individual headshots.

Maggie [: 00:05:07

Mhmm.

Melissa [: 00:05:07

And what happens is instead of thinking I think sometimes that's forgot the h. I think sometimes you guys are thinking of content pillars as, like, them being completely separate. I want you to envision those pillars turning into spokes that all lead to the personal brand. So you can have content on a weekly basis, that's one content pillar that's a spoke leading to your personal brand that speaks to branding, the value of branding. K. On a different day, you can talk about the value of the right headshot personally. Versus on a different day, it's really speaking to the value of a corporate project, of the professional headshots that end up on their web pages and represent the company and whatever your marketing strategy is there. But, obviously, like, their needs, wants, and challenges to getting that are gonna be different than the individual.

Melissa [: 00:06:04

So all these spokes for all of your offers, they're just different spokes that all lead to the wheelhouse, the hub of your personal brand. It's getting into the DMs and having conversations to then triage what the actual right offer is for that person.

Maggie [: 00:06:23

Okay.

Melissa [: 00:06:24

I don't want you to worry about the person who's doing the corporate contracts for group pictures. I don't want you to feel like, gosh, if I create content on that, am I committed to that a 100% that's all I can do on LinkedIn? No. The person who's in charge of that is gonna see your content and not they're gonna scroll right past the branding stuff that you do because it's not relevant to anything they're interested in.

Maggie [: 00:06:48

Okay.

Melissa [: 00:06:48

But for the average consumer, to me, it all makes sense. It's not confusing me. You're in the photography space. It's all one umbrella. You're not confusing me. I'm just seeing what I want to see when I need to see it. My brand photographer, actually, Jody Brim, she does, like, high ticket brand packages that are high ticket, full turnkey hair, makeup, styling. Then she also has a team that does look and shoot headshot.

Melissa [: 00:07:20

She also get this. She has a completely different business where she teaches other brand photographers. And so I'll put, like, program. And she's actually loves styling. She's playing with the idea of even just offering some styling services that all wrap into her personal brand around branding. And so when she creates content where she's the subject matter expert speaking on angles and the right way to get the shot for the client for x y z. You then join my upcoming workshop if you're a photographer and you wanna learn blah blah blah, like that photographer is gonna click on that. But the person who's paying the high ticket 10 k fee for a half day with her, they're gonna scroll past that.

Melissa [: 00:08:06

It's not of interest to them, but it is a validation check as I'm scrolling past it of, wow, she's such an expert at what she does that she's actually teaching other people how to do it. It's not confusing me as the consumer. It's just validating to me that she's in her zone of genius.

Maggie [: 00:08:24

That makes sense. Okay. And then just to clarify just a tiny bit more. So let's just say if I'm following exactly your roles, so I've got authority, I've got relatability. We got sell blah blah blah. So is it on day let's just say Mondays is authority. Do I rotate through one day, 1 week is branding, 1 week is headshots, 1 week is corporate? Is that how you do it? Okay. Right.

Maggie [: 00:08:49

I was just complicating it for myself. And then my second question is, so my connections have been a little bit slower and I'm watching the things that I'm doing and I think part of it was because when I came here, I had the idea, okay, I'm gonna go after high performing realtors because I know that they're gonna invest in brand photography, and I know that they're going to come in maybe more than once a year. And so I spent all my focus on that, but when I was doing the searches so I'd follow them to find the the program. I'd follow them and see if they were a good fit, and then I'd try and connect, but I only had 5 records in 5 messages a month because I think I'm well, right now, I'm at a 180 connections. So then I just started sending connections, but I didn't find that I was at least making the right like, they weren't always connecting. I'm like, oh, I really wanted to connect with them, but I just sent them a connection and they didn't reply. Even though I was going in and commenting and being active on their feeds, I found that the people that in the beginning, like, all the people that I connected with me or asked to connect have been guys, and I haven't even put out there that I work with guys. Everything I put out there is I worked with women, but they were in the building industry.

Maggie [: 00:10:03

They were in sales, so they were doing their networking. But okay. So with that, I was trying to do, like, more high profile groups, but then I realized maybe instead of the big influencers, I need to be more local. So in Austin local groups. So I'm looking for better ways to grow my network. I wanna have a really good network, so I want that 500 people to be really amazing on my ideal client, but I'm struggling getting there. I've probably gained 50. Well, I didn't do my connections, but I did do my followers.

Maggie [: 00:10:34

So I have 50 followers since April, and I would say probably maybe 30 new connections since April.

Melissa [: 00:10:42

Mhmm.

Maggie [: 00:10:42

So I feel like that's slow, and I'm looking for what am I missing on making those connections a little bit faster.

Melissa [: 00:10:49

How many connections are you putting out a month or a week? Do you know?

Maggie [: 00:10:54

So I do the follow for a week, and then I would probably say, like, maybe I connect with about 5 new followers a day, like, after I go through and see everybody. And the connections, well, I would say I do like my 5 that I could actually send a message to, and then maybe probably not enough because I would say maybe another 5, maybe on average of 5 per week or does that sound right? Maybe 5 to 10 after I've followed and gone through the content. I feel like I'm doing something not quite

Melissa [: 00:11:29

right. I think that when you have a very foundational network and you're trying to expand, I think that in order to expedite the network growth strategy, you need to just stop the follow piece. It just slows the progress and the momentum. When you're starting from ground 0, growing a network. I can see how later on, you can be a little bit more judicious and work your way through who you wanna be connected to. Okay. But in the beginning, we're not gonna get any momentum and any engagement and virility with what you put out, moving that slowly with doing the follow and then waiting a week and then requesting to connect. I would really try to maximize as many connections as you can on a daily basis.

Maggie [: 00:12:12

Okay.

Melissa [: 00:12:12

Because that's what's gonna help get you some momentum. And so, yeah, that will be my 2¢ on that.

Maggie [: 00:12:18

Okay. Okay. Alright. So do you think, like, 10 or 20 a day is where I wanna, like, a speed that okay. Alright. So I'm just going way too slow. Alright. So it's time to pick up the pace and not be so follow the rules.

Maggie [: 00:12:31

Right? Yeah. I was trying to follow the rules, but I'm like, this is really slow.

Melissa [: 00:12:35

Yeah. No. Pick up the pace.

Maggie [: 00:12:37

Pick up

Melissa [: 00:12:37

the pace. Okay. Yep.

Maggie [: 00:12:38

Alright. Well, thank you for that permission. But I think that was really it. I was hung up. I will say that I was scheduling my posts, and I was very consistent. I'm doing the 5 days week in newsletter, and I went back to know. They said, don't schedule your post and go in and interact, and then I fell off the wagon for 2 weeks. And I'm like, I gotta go back to scheduling.

Melissa [: 00:12:56

That's right. Manually posting and engaging before you post is only good if you can actually do it. And if you're not committed to doing it or hiring someone for 15 dollars an hour to do it for you, then just go back to scheduling.

Maggie [: 00:13:08

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I would love to hire somebody. I'm not there yet. But yeah. So alright. I appreciate it.

Maggie [: 00:13:14

Thank you so much. Absolutely.

Melissa [: 00:13:20

Thanks guys so much for listening in on today's podcast episode. And I can't wait for you to see my upcoming guest in the next episode. You are going to love this keynote speaker. Hey, here's the deal. If you like this, please subscribe and leave a review. And you want the latest online business growth strategies and exclusive LinkedIn pro tips sent straight to your phone? Text the word update to 704-318-2285. That is text the word update to 704-318-2285. Can't wait to see you guys.

Melissa [: 00:14:00

Come find me over on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you like to hang. Cannot wait to hear how you are enjoying and applying what you're learning. You guys reach out to me over on social because I love hearing what's resonating with you. When you reach out to me and you send me those personal DMs, they really do impact the content I continue to bring forward to you. So again, come find me melissa_henault over on Instagram. Melissahenault over on LinkedIn and Facebook. Can't wait to see you guys over there.