It’s no secret that media companies run the modern world, but many of us don’t appreciate why. It’s not the byproduct of an evil plot to captivate the masses, or some innate law of the universe. It’s because they have our attention, and they have our attention because they have content.
Last week I laid out the elements that make up a perfect product, with attention and eyeballs 👀 as the foundation. This week I’m gonna give you a tactical playbook on how to create content and use it to run the world get attention for your business.
“Workin’ on the weekend like usual
Way off in the deep end like usual”
– Drake, Life is Good
First, a promise:
If you have a business, an idea for a business, or an interest you want to build into something more: Creating content and building an audience is the single most valuable thing you can do for it. If you run with what I lay out below, you’ll be generously rewarded by the universe with optionality, leverage, fun and currency. I promise.
Let’s go.
Success happens at peak cringe
You’ll have to come to terms with the fact that you’re going to suck at this and that your friends are gonna think it’s cringe. To be fair, it is cringe (for now). Get over it, it’s worth it.
Start with short form video
Your content is going to revolve around short form video, and be reformatted and repurposed into other forms. In a perfect world each piece of content you create would propagate into the world like this:
- Video posted to Reels and TikTok, and then:
- Transcribe and compile into blog post on your website
- Expand or combine concepts into long form videos on YouTube
- Curate highlights in your weekly newsletter
- Pull ideas for text and image posts on LinkedIn and Twitter
FWIW I have 65k followers on Twitter and it’s trash now, thx Elon.
But what content will I do, sir?
Curate > Comment > Create
Malbon, Goop, and Barstool Sports all started by curating content from their worlds, and so can you.
- Curate – Curate products, headlines, trends, whatever from your niche
- Comment – Add commentary, opinions, analysis
- Create – Share value, build in public, vlog, have fun and make friends
Malbon turned an Instagram page into the hottest apparel brand in golf. Goop turned a product picks newsletter into a consumer brand and marketplace worth 9 figures, and Barstool flipped sports and bro culture into a modern media empire. They all started with curation and evolved.
Your goal is to create content that is valuable, entertaining, or both.
Your content should absolutely NOT just be a bunch of ads for your business. Strawberry Milk Mob famously started TikTok just doing promotional content that flopped over and over again. She started prolifically sharing her life, and talking about building her business, and now has 1.2M followers and sells a shitload of bikinis. Take note.
@bonusfootage @Strawberrymilkmob ♬ original sound – Tom
Tools, equipment, workflow
Unless you’re a videographer: iPhone, a ring light, and CapCut. If you are: still probably same.
Record* and edit in CapCut. Export without captions or titles. Add both of those in natively in IG and TT.
You’ll figure out the details with practice. More on that below.
*Unless you’re doing vlog style videos where it makes sense to capture and then import later.
Non negotiable execution
Your leap of faith is accepting you’re gonna suck at this for a while and committing to doing it every single day anyway.
- Post 1 Instagram Reel and 1 TikTok every single day (every fucking day)
- Use relevant keywords in your captions, titles, and descriptions
- Use 3-5 relevant hashtags in the description
- Post in same time frame everyday
- Also post 5-6 Instagram stories every single day
- Engage relentlessly with other content in your niche and the people engaging with yours
- (I am very behind on DMs rn I’m sorry I’ll catch up to yours!!)
- Continually work to be concise, get to the point, and make the videos better
Practice
The everyday piece of this is critical not just because it’s what the algo wants but because it forces you to get better and iterate. You have to post again tomorrow no matter how bad today’s was. This constraint forces you to get more efficient and better, without it you’d post sparingly for a few weeks, not see results, and walk away.
My first TikTok took me 2 hours. I remember thinking “oh my god I don’t have the fucking time for this”. The next one was 90 min. Within a couple weeks I was down to 30m on most and now I get some done in 15. This innovation in your execution (and the content) will simply not happen if you sit down with a goal of a couple per week or some weak shit like that.
If you’re scared of looking like an idiot on Instagram (I was smh), go to TikTok first to practice. It’s got way less of your real friends and the algorithm is very aggressive which means 2 things: It’ll train you to use snappy hooks to hold attention, and it’s a blast when it rips. Then, come back to Instagram and look like an idiot with a little more confidence. It’s inevitable.
Practice by posting full and complete 15 second videos. Hook, share a point/idea or two, then close. 15s is no time at all and most of these will suck but it’ll sharpen the blade and force you to be concise. The shitty 15s videos I created on TikTok several months ago are the reason I can make pretty good 45-60s videos now.
I started making short form video content in September of 2022 and have made 300+ videos since. 😳
Finding your pillars
If you’re waiting to develop the perfect content plan before you start I’d like you to know there is almost no way the content you’re making 6 months from now is is what you think it it will be. I spent 2 years making content about building products on Twitter before I struck a chord with some golf related stuff and decided to go all in on it with video. This journey is about finding the intersection of:
- What you know lots about
- What people enjoy watching from you
- What you can execute consistently
- What adds value to your life
You probably can’t make Mr Beast level productions everyday and you shouldn’t try to. This is simple but it’s not easy. It’s a grind, but it’s potentially the highest ROI activity you can do for your business.
…
Thats it that’s the plan. Do it and it’ll change the fucking game for you, for real.
On another note
This week I launched a project to find the perfect blank rope had and got 100+ responses from you guys across IG and TT. I’m compiling a spreadsheet, ordering samples and will keep you in the loop along the way.
Thanks for joining me on my content journey you guys. I really appreciate it and I’m having a blast.
