This month, Simon Chard discusses the key to creating content, and how it will create huge growth for your brand.
We’re back with episode three of Building a Brand. This time we are talking about probably one of the most important things you can do to grow and scale your own brand, and that is content.
We all live in a world of social media, where conversation, engagement and attention are all found, and it can really skyrocket your brand. It certainly has done for me, with my personal brand, communicating with patients, communicating with other members of the profession, getting lecturing gigs, brand partnerships schemes.
And with PÄRLA, social proof and social content has been a core part of developing the community that we have around the brand and the subscribers that are a part of our ecosystem.
Content takes time
Content is so, so important, but do not be under any disillusion that creating content is incredibly difficult. It takes a lot of time, the goalposts are always changing with regards to what sort of content the various platforms support, and the algorithm is always shifting. It is a laborious task, but it’s so so important.
What I would recommend is making sure your calendarising in content creation, at whatever frequency you want to be posting content. So, if you want to be posting five different pieces of content every single day across different platforms, you need to be creating content every single day.
For me, in the clinic, I tend to have one content creation day per month where I have a videographer team come in and we will batch all of that content together in one go. But it’s up to you and what works best into your flow. I know lots of people who have an hour at the end of the day where they do it. It really is up to you and how much you want to dedicate time to this.
But, as I say, it can be really, really powerful.
Substance
When I think about the content that I’m going to create, I try and think about it in what I call the three Ss. These are substance, structure and style.
Starting with substance, you want to create content of substance. And when I say substance, I mean both literally and figuratively. You want the content to be something that is really unique to you. So, focus on content that resonates with your core values, that is interesting, educational, that brings value to the consumer, but is unique and true to yourself.
You might see lots of content done by other content creators online that is doing really well for them. But if you tried to replicate that yourself, because it’s not true to who you are, you may find that it falls a bit flat.
Concentrate on providing value to the viewer, or listener depending on what the medium is that you’re delivering, and do something which is true to you and that you’re passionate about. Then you really will find that actually, it’s not so much of a chore because you’re genuinely really interested in it.
Structure
With structure, I mean the structure of your whole content calendar, so how you’re delivering these pieces of content and the way in which the individual videos are delivered.
One obvious example of this is with video – with Instagram reels or Tiktok videos. The first couple of seconds of that video have to catch the viewers attention. If the if the consumer or the viewer scrolls away and that video doesn’t get traction according to the algorithm, then it’s not going to be successful.
So, the structure of that video and how you start that video is really, really important. Being aware of things like that will really help your content to deliver appropriately.
The other thing that I would say with regards to structure is being a good storyteller. You might have a topic, ie substance, which is very, very relevant. But if you can’t tell the story in a compelling way, then you may lose the interest or the attention of the consumer. Therefore, that piece of content won’t do as well as it could have done otherwise.
So, think about being a good storyteller. Telling stories is something that goes back through our history as human beings. We’ve always told stories, and it’s always been interesting to people. Try to develop your skills of being a good storyteller, and you should find that actually your content resonates with people much more clearly.
Style
The final point is style, so a tone of voice, a style of image, imagery. Try to be aware of this, and try and shape this. Try to be cognisant of it so as to create a style that’s true to you, so that if someone saw a clip of a video in your style, they might automatically recognise it as part of who you are. That will help to develop a brand following over time.
With PÄRLA, we think about a style of image. And when I say style, I mean the brightness, the colour and the composition of the image that is truly ours. So, even if it doesn’t have our brand logo, or even our product on it, it looks like a PÄRLA image. And you can take that into whatever your field is, whether it be for your dental practice or for your personal brand.
Having your own unique style will help to solidify your presence online which I think is really, really important.
‘Huge growth’
To summarise, content creation is something that is very laborious, but very, very important. And it will pay back in spades in my own personal experience.
Follow the three Ss of content – substance, structure and style – and you should find that you get into the swing of creating content at scale. And hopefully, you will then see huge growth in your brand.
I hope you enjoyed this article, if you have any questions, hit me up in the DMs or on the comment section.
Catch up with Simon’s previous Building a Brand columns:
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