Creating Evergreen Content for Your Business with Rebecca Tracey

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. SUMMARY KEYWORDS Evergreen content, blog posts, seo, writing, content, podcast, rant, creating evergreen content, content creation SPEAKERS Rebecca Tracey, Erin Ollila Erin Ollila 00:04 Hey friends. Welcome to the Talk Copy to Me podcast. Here we empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging. I’m your host, Erin Ollila. Let’s get started and talk coffee. Hello friends today I am here with Rebecca Tracy. And what you might not know about her, if you know her as the founder of the uncaged life, is that she actually started her business while living in a camper van and doing a year long road trip. That is super fun. Tell me everything about this. Where did you go on your road trip? What inspired the business? Rebecca Tracey 00:49 i Yeah, so for a long time, I’d wanted to do the whole work and travel thing, you know, which is so popular now. And it was kind of just, I think, feel like it was blowing up when I started to do that. That was in 2011. This sort of like, freedom lifestyle thing was like becoming a thing. And I had been wanting to start a business. And my partner at the time was like, let’s buy a van and go on a year long rock climbing trip. And I was like, I really need to start this business though. Like I’ve been dragging my heels I was 30 at the time. And I was like, you know, at all and let’s just do them both at the same time. And so we got this like really crappy old 81 Chevy camper van like classic like blue or brown seats. And like a fish on the back that said gone fishing a whole thing. And I started my business. So we would mostly we went around the US and Canada to kind of all the key rock climbing destinations and would climb for two days and then a hole up in a McDonald’s parking lot to try to get some free Wi Fi free Wi Fi by the way, it was not a thing in 2011. Like you just couldn’t go anywhere and get Wi Fi. Yeah, I would not recommend anyone do it that way. Very stressful. It was fun. But it was it was a slow build, which is fine. But Erin Ollila 01:56 yeah. So how would you say would your has your business changed drastically since you started it? Or are you kind of still doing what you set out to do? Rebecca Tracey 02:05 It has changed drastically in terms of how I work now and what I offer now and have a team and all of that. But like the essence of it, I’d say is still the same. Erin Ollila 02:13 When you first started your business, social media was vastly different in 2011. Yeah, it wasn’t really being used for business, it was still more for connection and really kind of more hitting the masses at that point within, you know, maybe a couple of years before that, not just being for college students, young people and all of those things. So how are you actually marketing your business when you started your business without having social media as a crutch to do so. Rebecca Tracey 02:40 So I started blogging, which I think is making a comeback Erin Ollila 02:44 these days. 100% agree. Yeah. Rebecca Tracey 02:47 So I did a lot. I did a lot of writing on my blog, I would publish like two posts a week, and I interviewed other people who already had blogs and successful businesses, and then they shared it with their audience. So that was a really key way, when I first started to get some eyeballs on my business really quickly, was just tapping into other people’s communities that already existed. There was some stuff happening on Facebook. So I did, I was in a couple of business groups and Facebook groups were probably the main thing at that time, that was kind of like the main way of marketing. And so I did make connections in those groups. But it certainly wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t curating a whole bunch of content and captions and hashtags all day long. Like that was never a part of my strategy until I hired someone to do it many years later. Erin Ollila 03:30 So one thing that I hear people say when they’re unsure of whether or not they want to use social media for their business is they’re wanting to potentially leave because they’re feeling frustration about the overwhelm that comes into everything, strategy, content, creation, all that. And when I’ve talked to those people about the idea of moving to a content based business and not relying on social, I feel like the anxiety switches because they’re like, Oh, my goodness, I have to write these things. I have to like, get them in certain categories and buckets and topics. And obviously, I think there’s a lot of ways that we can kind of address that of like, how to calm people’s nerves down and talk about how to make this easy. But when you talk about content as a tool, and you suggest it as a way to market your business and you know, attract people to you and your business. Why do you think it does so well when it comes to like one attracting people and to kind of building that relationship with them? Rebecca Tracey 04:30 In terms of attracting people, I think so I write a lot of like point of view based content so a lot of like rants really awesome. I just think that’s the best kind of content. I know you do SEO so we’ll talk a little bit about that. But um, Erin Ollila 04:45 rant and SEO work really well together. I mean, they get they give people breathing room if you think about it right between like heavily optimized content and like content that’s really just top of mind. I think they work well. Rebecca Tracey 04:56 Yeah, so lots of rant posts, which I think does double duty because they I think they get people interested, like, not necessarily click baity headlines, but things that people are like, Ooh, what is this going to be about, tend to get shared a lot I find. And then once people read them, I find it’s such a great way to connect, because you’re literally speaking to not just the pain points of the people that you’re speaking to, but like the thing that they needed to hear that they didn’t even know they needed to hear that kind of has that little light bulb go off that they’re like, Oh, damn, and they start to follow you, and maybe they go follow your Instagram or whatever. They sign up for your free thing. So I think it just does double duty. And I never, I came into this whole online business with zero idea of how to have an online business. So it’s not like I come from a writing background other than academic writing, or a marketing background or anything like that. I think it just came naturally to me to rant. And I saw how well it worked. And what’s interesting is it’s built up some of that SEO over time, just inadvertently with doing zero SEO work. And so I found that really fascinating as kind of a case study when I was looking back at like, how did I grow my business outside of social media? Erin Ollila 06:03 Yeah, and I think that’s one thing that people should really consider too, especially if they’re SEO averse is the fact that like, create the content, and you can put SEO best practices on old evergreen content. So that way, you know, whatever it’s doing for you at that point in time, like, you know, in your case, it was ranking for some things, but you can adjust what you’re ranking for. Right? Like one of my clients had a term that was bringing in a ton of content to her business. The article itself was great, but it was just kind of positioned a little incorrectly. So we made minor updates, we really targeted a specific keyword that was a lot more niche to what she wanted to do with the article. And then it served her so well, once those changes really started to kick in. But you while of course, I think SEO is great to do from the beginning. It is something you can do later on. So if if content creation is something you’re comfortable with, but like the analytics, and the actual SEO optimization, keyword research is something you’re uncomfortable with, do the content and then come back and do the SEO later. Rebecca Tracey 07:05 Yeah, I would say that we had one, we have one blog post that still gets us probably, I don’t know, we do nothing. We did some SEO work to it like years after it was written because we were looking at our analytics. And we were like, oh, most people are coming into this blog post. And we had no idea. And it just naturally was ranking for things because I was talking about, you know, I was yammering my mouth off about the same topics in this in this rant blog post. And so it sort of naturally started ranking for things. And then we did exactly that. We went back, we did some SEO work on it. And I think still we haven’t touched it in years now. And I think we still get 1000 or 1500 unique visitors on it a month. And it still we still get people opting in through the thing that’s on that page. So yeah, I had no idea. And I still have no idea what I’m doing with SEO. By being very honest, I’ve never, we’ve always like brought someone in to kind of just give it all at once over. And then we’ve forgotten about it promptly after that. But I always found it interesting that we could rank for things without trying. And I think that’s the value of having really niche in your work and sort of knowing your audience really well. Erin Ollila 08:06 Yeah, I love how everything you just said directed me to the next question I wanted to ask you, because we talked about the idea of well, what we will talk about in this episode is the idea of evergreen content, specifically within a niche really being that key to drawing people to you and your business. But But I think the starting place can be a little difficult. You know, we talked about point of view and rent content and how we can use that, and especially when it comes to the content creation. But there is that big strategy piece that has to come before all of this, because we want to make sure that the content we’re creating is strategic, right? Like we don’t want to waste our time creating a bunch of content that’s not going to serve us. So what is your best advice for how the listeners can kind of approach evergreen content when it comes to deciding what to talk about? Rebecca Tracey 08:56 I mean, you just have to be niched in I think for the strategy to work the number of times I’ve you know, looked at people’s websites and kind of scan their blog posts to get an idea of what they do and been like, what are the what, like we’re talking about one thing over here and something totally different over here and totally unrelated. So I’m a, I’m a strong niche proponent. I think it just makes everything easier, especially when it comes to content writing, so really niching in but to me, that also, you know, people have all kinds of thoughts about niching and client avatars. It’s not that so much. It’s just really, really understanding who your clients are, what their pain points are. And for me, the biggest thing is what they’ve tried before and then how your solution is different, or better, one might say better for them than what they’ve tried before. I think that when you know those things, you can write content that’s going to actually speak to people versus just like, you know how to post or five steps to doing whatever, like those posts are fine, but I don’t think it’s the stuff that really gets to the heart of what’s going to actually make people click on something and connect with you over it. So if you can get into the heads of people and really figure out where they’re struggling What they’ve tried what they want instead and what they think the solution is, and why they might be wrong about that, like that is all where I think the juice is in really good content writing. Erin Ollila 10:09 Yeah, I agree. Because I mean, one thing I hear a lot of complaints about is like, well, I wrote this post about XYZ. So when I’m doing an audit of my clients, blogs, or their entire website, what I noticed almost immediately is like, they’re not even talking to the right person. Right. So like, an easy example for anyone is if you are a service provider, in whatever particular niche, and you only serve, like you only have high offers larger offers, right? But you’re only talking to di wires within your content, like you’re not attracting the right people. So the people coming to your site, who are giving you that traffic boost, who are potential clients won’t ever hire you for your like 10,000 Plus package, because the most they would pay for whatever they’re looking for, is like $100, under $500, whatever it is, right? So you’re attracting the wrong people, you can’t convert those people. So I think when it comes to things like voice of client research, and like client research, in general to understand like who they are and what they’re looking for, I think we have to determine what they need based on like social listening, all these different factors and ways that we can do that. And then think like, am I giving that message in the right way. Because if you are not really presenting them with the solution to that need, even if you know that they might need X, Y and Z In addition, or they need to be like reframed somehow, they’re not going to convert. So yes, we can like talk about SEO and how wonderful it is all day. But why would we put all of the time effort and money into SEO, if we’re only attracting people that are not the right person? So I think even before deciding on topics, it really is kind of getting to know who you want to speak with, and what you want them to do once they find you, Jenna Warriner 11:55 Aaron, acclaim so sorry to interrupt. Um, you look amazing. By the way, I love your hat. I just had to stop by because I know your listeners want to be the best copywriters they can be. And since they love listening to this podcast and staying up to date with the science of copywriting and SEO and all of that, I thought they also might like to hear about marketing psychology and how to get clients for their businesses and social media marketing too. So I want to just swing by and invite you all to tune into the shiny new clients podcast, the world’s newest Marketing Podcast hosted by me Hi, I’m Jenna again. I’m so sorry to interrupt. Anyway, it’s available anywhere you get your podcasts, that’s all for me love you. Bye. Erin Ollila 12:40 So when you talk about like, being niched I, the way I heard it was that you’re saying like, you know, within your own business, you kind of have to be niched, do you have any suggestions for kind of how they can start to get their brain around doing that before creating content. Rebecca Tracey 12:57 So this happens a lot with students in our program where we work on niching. And we work with like, people who are brand new to things like coaching and health coaching and wellness and all of that, and they’ll, they’ll be really nice resistant, like, we’ll get the odd, not the odd, many of our clients aren’t really nice resistant. And so sometimes they’ll have like three different audiences. And they’re like, I’m just gonna work with all of them. And we’re like, okay, you this is your business, like we are not here to, we’re just here to guide you. But you can ultimately do what you want. And so we’ll say, Okay, go off, go on to the next module, start reading some content, see how it feels, they’ll almost inevitably come back and be like, I didn’t know what to write. Because how am I supposed to talk to 123 people who have different problems, the way that they’re experiencing this thing that’s going on for them is totally different, whether they’re like working a full time job, or have their own business or doing this other thing. And so, usually, usually, the niche resistance for people who really can’t do it will become very obvious why it’s a problem when they do sit down to write content. So then I usually just tell them, you know, go write a piece of content for each one of those individually and see how that feels. And of course, it’s easier. And usually just through doing one piece of content for three different audiences. Usually there’s one that either flows better or feels like it comes more naturally, then they’re more excited about they get better traction with like, it’s almost like a bit of a jumping into like, sometimes I’ll say like, go work with one person from each audience to and just see what feels best. And it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly. I think just giving people permission that like you don’t have to pick one, you can work with a few but it’s gonna be much easier to pick one. And once they see that when they start diving in, I feel like there was the reluctant reluctance to do it kind of fades away because it’s just so obvious that it’s going to make their life so much easier if they get narrowed in. I also like to think of it as just a niche for now because I think no one’s business stays exactly the same like mine has definitely shifted since I started. And it just takes the pressure off of like everything I’m doing is set in stone. It’s like everything you’re doing is just so you can get some clients and make some money right now in one thing that you’re interested in and like that can shift in so many different ways. Erin Ollila 15:00 Yeah, I love the nice for now comment, right? Because it’s like, especially if you’re starting out if you are neat like your or your niche resistant because you want to serve like a few audiences. Nobody’s watching you and like keeping tabs on you like, like, this isn’t like detective online business society, right? Like, try what works. If you don’t like it, try something else like, of course, we want to be as consistent as possible. So that way people trust us. But adjusting the way that we approach our clients or our services is not inconsistent, so long as we kind of give it a chance to play out, right? So one client that I had in this in a situation like this, we were doing her website, and she had a few different services. And I was like, she wanted them all on the same page. And she wanted like, obviously, the homepage here a section to be, like, exciting, but I was like, Okay, well, if you’re doing three different things, you either need three different websites, or you need to find a way to tie them together, right. So sometimes it could be as simple as two are tied together. So you really kind of go heavy on that for a while, right? Or you mentioned in the instance of your example of the three different types of clients, write one article for each client and see kind of like how that goes, I think the you could also take a different approach of like going heavy on one type for a small period of time. So maybe you commit to like, three or three to six blog posts for one type of client, put them out there, especially if you’re doing SEO in this regard, like, see what the analytics tell you, like, see how its received when you’re sharing it on your email list. Or maybe you have a colleague who’s willing to share it to their audience. In that instance, if you’re getting a lot of great feedback, if you’re feeling excited about it, then stick with it. But if you’re not move on to audience number two, right? As long as you’re kind of like putting in that effort to like showcase your best work, you’re going to present yourself as best as you can. Without it being so muddy that people are wondering like, what what is she doing and or he doing? And why are they doing so many different things at once? Rebecca Tracey 17:11 Yeah, I think people assume they’re gonna get bored of writing about the same topic for the same people for so many years. And I think what’s more boring is being broke. And having nothing work and trying so many things and being like, Why do I suck like, that is so much worse, that feeling of like, nothing is working, I’m doing all the things, I’m trying all these things. And it’s not working, because you’re doing too many things, and you’re trying to talk to too many people. And so I think what I love seeing with the clients that I work with is that shift where like they do, they’re like, Okay, I’m just gonna do a niche for now I’m gonna give it six months, or a year or whatever. And they dive in, and the satisfaction they get from number one, like things actually working and getting traction and getting to actually work with clients. Because when they’re doing everything, they’re not working with any clients, when they start when they pick a niche, they actually get to work with someone because it’s, they start to get clients coming to them and seeing how happy that makes them and seeing how good they also get at what they do. Because they get to get really nuanced with that type of client. No one ever comes back and is like, Oh, I wish I just stay broad. Like, everybody loves it when things start to work and the money is coming in and the businesses feeling good. And they’re like really stoked on the clients they’re working with. So it does, it does pay off. Erin Ollila 18:23 Yeah, and I think momentum is a huge, huge deal. When it comes to everything business, and especially marketing, right? Once you start to see things kind of like going into effect and influencing each other, there’s a lot more motivation to actually do the work because you’re like, wow, that’s performing pretty well. I’m gonna spend some more time here. Because you can see the the ROI and the benefits that you’re getting from the content you’ve created, like we’re talking about in this example. But it’s really the the hard part is that first step of doing the work jumping in writing the content sharing the content, because there’s a lot of anxiety that goes around, like, Is this good enough? Can I share this with people, you know, that’s mindset and its own, right? So you have to work through that. But I absolutely encourage people to do it regardless, because like once you’ve done it, you can start to feel better about it. And you can start to get that momentum and motivation to keep going and keep writing and keep building up a content bank for your business. Yeah, Rebecca Tracey 19:21 and like not every post has to be a home run. I just went and did. It took myself on a bit of a solo writing retreat. So I booked a beautiful Airbnb over on the Sunshine Coast here in BC and I booked it for six days. And my goal was to write enough blog content to get us through a year because I had not written consistently for the past several years and my team was like I think we need some like new stuff and I was like okay, okay, okay, but I’m sort of an all or nothing person so I was like alright, I’m just gonna bang out a year’s worth of content in these I think I was actually there for three and a half days at the end of it with like travel time and all of that. And man if I tried to perfect every post like no way I was like on the How’d your voice memo in things like I was chat GPT. And things, I was like writing ideas in the hot tub. And I think I got 25 blog posts written in three days, which is a lot of writing, like could have been a short book. Not everyone is great, like, I’ll tweak them as I go, I often go back and open up old blog posts and like completely edit them and refresh them. Like Nothing’s set in stone. And not everything has to be the best thing you’ve ever written. I think it’s just getting used to sharing your voice and your content and getting used to speaking to your audience and getting used to like getting stuff out the door, I think is really important when you’re new. Erin Ollila 20:34 Yeah, I think that’s huge. And before we move too much away from here, I think the way that you approach the writing is really important, right? Because you don’t have to sit at a computer and type this all out like people ID in different ways. And people come up with the content that they produce, if they’re being creative in different ways, right? Go on a hike, like literally go on a hike, don’t try to like bring your notepad with you. But like you said, you were tucked into your voice messages of your voice notes on your phone. Absolutely perfect. When I started graduate school, in a creative writing program, I was working about like an hour, sometimes hour and a half away from home, depending on traffic. So I was driving three hours a day, and I’m supposed to be writing an immense amount of content. So I have a book at the end of this program. And I used to just talk to myself, I would put the voice recorder on and talk for as long as I could to just get ideas out. And sure maybe only 10% of the conversation was something I could use. But I wouldn’t have that 10% If I hadn’t done that. The other thing I think that’s really difficult when it comes to content creation is literally starting. I’ve been a writer for a million years at this point, like yes, I know, that makes me a million years old. But I do not like to start on a blank page. Even with all of the experience that I have. It’s hard for me, what I always recommend to people is like start with an outline. And the easiest way to approach that is think about like a high school English class. Or like even younger now. I mean, like elementary school, what is your statement? What’s your introduction? What are you trying to prove? What are your three supporting pet like points to this? The conclusion is pretty much just summing up the introduction. Like if you take your blog post and make it that easy. Let’s say you’re gonna write a post on like, why are goldfish the best, right? So it’s like, the intro is basically I think goldfish are the best and your supporting conclusion is the three reasons why. And then you end it and be like, Yay, aren’t goldfish the best. I mean, literally, like, I know, it’s a silly example. But if you just sit down, like if you’re going to be using your computer, or you know, a pad of paper and a pen, write that down, Intro goldfish are great. Supporting point number one, whatever it is, I don’t know, the best. I don’t know why that came to mind. But if you do that, then you can fill in the blanks. Like, it’s not as hard to look at that and say, what goes in this section. Oh, there was the story of this time that I did that cool at the story in but, but at least having something there that you can jump in do really takes a lot of pressure away from just staring at a blank page and expecting like genius to come out of you. Rebecca Tracey 23:15 This might be opening up a whole other can of worms, I used to check it go for it for some of my posts. And it was an experiment because this was like it was a couple of months ago when it was like every it was everyone was like, Oh my God, have you heard about this? And I was like, I’m just gonna try it. And it wrote me shitty posts. Let’s just get that out there. But yeah, what it did was not was give me not a blank page. And so there was some where I just get, you know, again, voiced into it gave it lots of parameters, and it spit out like very mediocre blog post. And then I just went to town on it like you would have most of the things that it put out there. Were not in my final draft. But it just gave me something to go in and like edit the crap out of and it was so helpful. And it gave me things where I was like, Oh, this actually don’t like that idea. I’m going to change that. Like it just gave me a starting point. Erin Ollila 24:02 I think if you use it for ideation and outlining, it’s one of the most helpful things when it comes to content specifically. I mean, I think I would go toe to toe with anyone who said like it will produce a perfect blog post, it will never, ever, ever, no matter how well we train it, and even if it’s going to take over humans, it’s not going to do be a human blog post. But the idea that like we’re talking about, you know, you know, not taking the high school English class, specifically here, but there are supporting points that happen in blog post, or at least there are sub points that you want to address for whatever topic it is. So if you can get a well outlined article and just jump into that you don’t have let’s say they give you five points. You know, chat GBD says, Here are the five points you need to cover in the blog post and you’re like but actually there’s really eight points. Cool, like add to whatever they said in the outline by adding your three in so I think that That is definitely a good recommendation when it comes to just getting started. You might find it something you do regularly or you might find that’s all you really need to kind of get it flowing. So you can create content on Rebecca Tracey 25:13 writing 25 posts in three days. I was like I needed it. I got to the point where I was like, I don’t know. Yeah, CBT helped me. Erin Ollila 25:20 Yeah, and I think one, one way it will benefit you is if you know very clearly what you’re writing about, which is kind of like where we’re going with the like, how to choose the evergreen content. I asked about the niche first, very specifically, because I kind of wanted people to get their mind frame around the fact that you want to talk about the same topic, but like really from like the business, right? Like, what do you want your clients to do? How would you like to work with them. And that will lead you at least down to like a general idea of the things you should be saying. But you know, evergreen content is really content that is going to just serve you in the long term. It’s not news related, it’s not date related. So when we think of like the way our business is going to run, you know, if you’re a service based business, you’re likely not going to have a vastly different services later on. So pick one of the services and build your content kind of calendar around those things. So when you went on your writing retreat, and before you even use ChaCha GBT to help you did you have an idea of what you wanted to say with the content? Or was strategy kind of built into the writing week, Rebecca Tracey 26:34 I feel like I could have gone into it much differently and probably had more strategy. I have had my business for 12 years. Congratulations. I have been writing blog posts for a long time. I know my audience so well. And so I went in with a Google Doc, with just a smattering of topics that me and my team member had just kind of dumped in there over the last couple months, like, oh, this would be a good post, if somebody asked a question about this. Things that I’d put a note to my phone, like, oh, one day, you should write a blog post about this. So we had kind of a, a bunch of random topics. And at first, I was like, Okay, I should organize these and like, calendar it out. So everything’s strategic. And I was like, You know what? No, I’m just gonna get in there and write, and I can, I could do that, because I’ve just been writing for so long for the same audience. So it was it didn’t feel like I needed too much strategy behind it. But I think I did make sure to have a mix of like, educational how to kind of things and then the ranty posts, because I could, so back in the day when I used to do things like this. And I was like, Okay, well, like, you know, come up with five content buckets. And I’ll just have, you know, a pillar piece of content for these five areas. It always, it never worked that well. For me, I feel like that content, the stuff where I was like, this is pillar content, like never quite hit the mark. And it was always the ones where I was like, fired up. And I was like, no, no, that got the most traction. And so knowing that I was like, Okay, let’s focus on like, we need to have the pillars and the buckets and all of the things and more focus just on like, what are the things that are like, my I feel like my people just need to hear that I’m dying to say, but I made sure to have a little bit of a mix of both. So it wasn’t just me ranting the whole time. Erin Ollila 28:11 I appreciate the disclaimer that you said though, because like you really did make the point that you’ve been in business a long time, you’ve been writing a long time and those two and you know, your clients, so well, those three things really kind of give you the permission to not need to be as organized or as strategic as someone else, right. And that’s also probably why you get a year’s worth of content done in such a short period of time. For other people, especially if they’re one they’re not as comfortable writing to they’re getting to know their audience or they’re new to their own business. I say start small, like start tiny, maybe just three blog posts, like what are the three connected things that you can share, like that, that lights you up that your clients are asking of you that is specifically related to the work that you do or your approach to the work that you’re doing. And then build out like, I could go for days when it comes to content strategy. Like I really enjoy talking about building out strategies. But it goes back to the one thing I say on almost every single episode of this podcast is the strategic approach for each business and for each content campaign is really, quote unquote, it depends for everyone, right? Like your goals for the content you created right now are not the same goals that you created back in 2011. When you were starting your business like things are you need to adjust with what you’re doing. So if you are starting at this point, to build like an evergreen niche content, start small and build out because you’re probably again putting that pressure on yourself to have like a perfect strategic approach to content. Whereas if you can write something either quicker because I would say if you can write something quickly because you’re excited about it or because you have like vast amount of knowledge You’re gonna get it up, like make it live on the internet and like get it out of your brain because it is serving no one if it’s in your brain. Rebecca Tracey 30:08 Yeah, and I think the, the faster I love that point, the faster that you can get stuff out there, the faster you’ll have an array of content in the world, and then the faster you can look and see what’s working and what’s resonating, because if you’re squeezing one post so tightly, and it’s going to take you months and months or months before you get anything out there, you’re, it’s number one, you’re gonna be disappointed because like one post is not going to, you know, make your business right away. But you never know what’s going to work. And I’m thinking of Aaron Foley, she’s the mindset coach that works with me in my program, she has a whole separate life coaching business, she works with women who are in a new job or a new role who are having a confidence crisis. And she does not market her business. Like she has a thriving one on one practice that she’s built up over the years, but she doesn’t really mark it. And a few years ago, I think it was probably five years ago, now. She was like, I’m gonna create some YouTube videos and just, you know, try to get some content out there. So she recorded a bunch. I think if you go to her page, she’s got 10 videos, like it’s not a lot of content. And one of them, I’m trying to remember the title, I think it was called why you’re so overwhelmed in your new job. And it was a five minute long video, five or six minutes. And it was just her talking was like not produced. It was just her talking to the camera. And it was about it was sharing her point of view about how people think that the thing that’s making them so overwhelmed is the circumstance like it’s their boss or coworkers. But other people are in that same company, and they’re not overwhelmed. So it’s not actually your circumstance, it’s your brain. And so we need to like calm down the reactions that your brain is having, did it and she spoke directly to the pain points that her people have in this video. And that video now has I think like over 100,000 views, it has over six or 700 comments and I scroll through the comments because I use this example on a webinar that I gave recently. All of the comments are like holy shit, this woman speaking right to my mind, how did you know did she read my diary? Oh, my God, this is exactly me. And they’re sharing their stories with her. This is a five minute video of something that she it’s not like she had planned, like, I’m gonna write this viral content and this content that’s gonna nail it. She just knew her audience really well spoke to something had them shift their perspective about why they’re struggling. And that that video still brings 80% of the new consultations that she gets her one on one life coaching business. Yeah, so like, she didn’t know that was gonna happen. But she was like, I’m just gonna go and start putting some content out there and like, you just aren’t sure what’s actually going to last until you do it. Erin Ollila 32:34 You’re right, and you’re not in the key also, and this is bringing you back to the SEL lens. But it doesn’t have to be, but you don’t know when it will land. Also, it could be just like seasonality trends, where people will start suddenly start paying attention to your content at a later date. And it will serve you even better at that point, right. So it’s like you you don’t know how it’s going to land and you don’t know when it’s going to land I think is really key. Rebecca Tracey 33:00 Yeah, and just that it builds over time, like this video with Aaron every time I update my webinar, and I go to check on like, oh, it’s gotten another X number of 1000 views. Like it’s just consistent over time. It wasn’t like it blew up overnight. But it just continues to work for her. She has not touched it. She’s kind of afraid to touch it. Yeah, it’s working. Yeah. She hasn’t touched it is a 45 year old video now. Yeah, that’s awesome. And it just keeps bringing her bringing her clients paying clients. Erin Ollila 33:25 I think one more quick thing to say before we end the episode is that, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about like written content. But I also want to encourage you to think about other types of content, right. So if you are not an actual writer, or you are going to struggle through a blog, a blog post, have a podcast, create those YouTube videos, we just did a great episode with Alex minor about video shorts. And like his approach to actually just kind of like ideating and creating short videos without too much pressure on yourself. In addition, one of my favorite episodes of the podcast was with Rachael cook from the CEO collective and she talked about how she went to tick tock with a pre recorded content, all short clips based on questions that her clients asked her, and how low pressure it was for her and how you know, much of a huge impact it had. So those are other options that you can have when it comes to creating evergreen content for you. So long as it’s not time specific or news specific, that content can serve you. Well, you know, using your example with Aaron Foley like it’s YouTube. This you’re listening to a podcast right now, like there is an SEO that is built into your podcast player. So if you’re not a natural born writer, do it the other way. If you do want the written content, though, because you very specifically would like you know the traffic from search engines to your website, create the content in a different form and then translate it to writing you know, so we’re on a podcast today for all of my episodes, I create pretty longer form show notes. So that’s one way you could do it. Additionally, you can have, you can transcribe anything that you do via audio or video. And then use a tool like chat GPT, to analyze the transcription, or to give you a summary of it, take the summary and then transform that into a blog post, hire someone like, obviously, we’re talking about the idea. A lot of this is like if you’re just getting started with content, but if you’re not just getting started, dude, you do not have to do this on your own, like hire someone to do it for you like, you can get great content that is written in your voice is written about what you do from a content writer who is a professional and does this all the time. So I would say if writing is not for you try a different form of media that you can use to get the content out there, or just bring someone in to help you do it. Rebecca Tracey 35:48 Yeah, you can also take one piece of content and smattered out across all of those places, like our social media content, is now my blog post just broken up and shortened. And I read my new blog posts on a private podcast feed for our email subscribers in case they want to listen to it. And then those will get put over on Pinterest like it just gets kind of syndicated across everything. So I think, I don’t know, I feel like I used to write a blog post and a different newsletter and then different content to go on my Facebook page or whatever. I was posting on a different thing. I was like, I had so many new ideas like write one idea, or voice one idea or whatever it is, and then just like smatter it everywhere. Erin Ollila 36:28 Yeah, in that same token, it’s like that’s why we’re doing evergreen content. You can reuse it later, too, right? So it’s like you don’t I one thing I always try to like reframe people’s mind is like, you don’t have to create new content all the time. Like if you’ve already done the content creation, you can potentially spin off of it. So a complimentary blog post or, for example, if you’ve written if you’ve mainly written in the past, maybe you take a blog post that you wrote, and you turn that into a podcast episode, or into a video, you don’t start from scratch, like take what you’ve shared Rebecca Tracey 37:00 again, a year later, because all the new people who have found you since then Erin Ollila 37:03 1,000,000%. Yeah, that’s one thing I I’m always like, why are we not doing that? And 2023 is like continuously re sharing the content you’ve created. If you think I don’t think we do it enough. Oh, gosh, it drives me bananas. Like it’s like, if you think sharing it one time is going to get you clients like new when you keep sharing it. No one is mad at you have you share it like, especially on social platforms, like put it in your Instagram stories, like once a month, right? Like, because I’m not going to remember what blog post do you put in your Instagram story last month, I might not have even seen it. So get that content, like you said, smattered everywhere. And then just keep smattering it everywhere. So Rebecca, one thing that I always do at the end of the episode is asked people if they could share a homework assignment for the listeners based on our conversation, something just tiny and easy that they can jump in and do what would you give them for homework assignment. Rebecca Tracey 38:00 i Since we’re talking about content, I would probably say this is a piece of homework that we give in our programs. So I’ll give you this I would say to to write a rant. So don’t think of it as a piece of content. Don’t think of it as a blog post or anything that you have to like publish anywhere. But like get out whatever your favorite way to write or voice something is and share your point of view on something that you think your clients need to hear. So something that would either help them feel less alone, that would help them feel seen and heard and understood something maybe nobody else is telling them that would help them shift the problem that they’re having something you’re pissed off about in your industry where you think your industry is doing a disservice to people like some that so sometimes I call it a rant. And sometimes we call it a love letter. So it’s either a love letter to your clients of like, here’s why you’re struggling, it doesn’t have to be this way. Or it’s a rant about something going on in your industry. The post that I was talking about was called life coaches don’t quit your day job. So that was that rant. And just do not even care about how many words it is or whether it’s structured. But I think it’s just such a good exercise to be like, Okay, if I could just like Have at it and not think of this as a piece of content, what comes out and you can take that later. and fine tune it to content you can do whatever you want with it. That’s not really the point. But it’s more just about understanding how you can use your point of view and your voice to share your thoughts in a way that’s really going to connect with people outside of like the typical kind of blog post advice on how you should be structuring things like just be messy with it. Erin Ollila 39:32 I love that. Okay, Rebecca, thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah, it’s fun chatting. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Talk Copy to Me. If you enjoyed spending your time with me today. I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review. Want to continue the conversation. Head on over to Instagram and follow me at Erin Ollila. Until next time friends