It’s undeniable: the world is a different place. It’s moving faster and the expectations keep increasing.

You’re different. Your needs & your capacity have shifted.

So how can we harness what’s special, different, and interesting about YOU so you can DO LESS…but create better, more effective content – more efficiently?

That’s what we unpack in Episode 196 of the Content Creation Made Easy Podcast.

Today Jen dives into two areas for focus (USING BABY STEPS!!) that will impact your content, copy, & messaging!

Leverage your words & ideas into content that attracts the right audience so you can make money (and get a return on your time & energy) in your business!

Links Mentioned
www.jenliddy.com/voxer

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Full Transcript

Hey. Hey. Welcome to 2023. And welcome back to the Content Creation Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Jen Liddy, and I really hope your holidays were wonderful.

I hope they were everything you wanted them to be, whether that was restful or whether it was adventurous, whether it was filled with lots and lots of people and travel, or whether it was very quiet and intimate.

I hope that you found time to have fun, to enjoy, enjoy yourself, to rest and replenish.

Because as we jump into 2023, I'm thinking about what's coming up for us and how the world is changing so rapidly in terms of what's happening in content creation today.

I want to bring forth to you two things to consider when we're creating content that will make our content easier and better coming this year. And I am going to offer two kinds of buckets of information as we go along.

This year, I'm going to be unpacking this stuff a lot more.

But I didn't want to overwhelm you with the first week of January, because I know that this week can be like a LET’s GOOOOO kind of vibe, and I'm just not ready for that kind of energy yet.

So if you're ready to dip a toe and think about what's happening in 2023, this is the right podcast episode. So let's get started.

One of the first things to think about when you are creating content in 2023 is to understand more about yourself.

Understanding YOU is a huge crux or a huge foundation.

When you have this down and you know yourself really well, content creation becomes better for two reasons: 

One, there's way less resistance from you because you're not doing stuff you don't like to do. You feel more like yourself and it's just easier.

But the other reason you want to be more you is like you want to attract people to you who get you, who like you, who want to be in your orbit.

And if you have ever seen somebody's content and then started working with them and it feels like a huge disconnect, you understand why that's so important.

We want your content to match up with who you really are when people decide to work with you or buy from you. So what does this mean to understand more about yourself?

Let's start with something really interesting, which is voice.

Your voice is how you use words, how you put them together, how you phrase them, what your tone sounds like, how you style them.

Basically, your voice is who you are when you speak, whether that's verbally or on paper.

A lot of people don't know their voice yet, though, and that's a thing that we're going to dive into later on this year.

But let's start talking about it now, because your voice needs to sound like you, especially in 2023, because AI is here.

And if you’ve played with any of the artificial intelligence tools out there, you've been blown away because you know that you can type in a word or a phrase or a sentence and like a holistic, a whole blog, a whole article, whole social media post can come back to you.

We don't need to be afraid of these tools. They can help us and I'll talk about that later. But we do need to have a strong sense of our voice. I'm going to use my 15-year-old son here as an example. His name is Jack and he is smart, snarky, sarcastic, insightful and funny as hell.

And when he puts words together, the particular way that he puts them together, I know it's him.

Your audience wants the same from you. They want to know that it's you talking. They want to be around you. And if they don't resonate with your voice, then they don't need to be in your audience.

That's a good thing!

We want to repel those people.

So how can you start to name your voice, identify your voice, describe your voice, lean into your voice?

If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that my voice is fairly straightforward. I tend to be pretty grounded.

I can be a little sarcastic, I can be snarky, I like to be a little funny and I'm not really like…

Well, using my voice doesn't include a lot of pop cultural references.

It's not very current or slangy. That's because I'm 52, right? But maybe if I was in my thirties or my twenties, I might have a different vernacular and that's part of my voice too. So consider that!

How can you start to sound more like you?

Be brave and lean more into your voice.

Another aspect of understanding more about yourself that will help your content is to really identify your strengths and your personality and lean into them like it's your job.

Your strengths make you so much more attractive to be around than if you were trying to have a voice and the strength and the personality of some generic kind of internet presence.

You are not a robot and your personality needs to come through.

Now you might be really highly self aware and say like “Oh, these are the features of my personality and I already know them!”

But if this is something that you feel like you have not dived into, knowing more about your personality can really help your content.

Why? Because for example, say you’d say, Oh, I know I'm highly, highly creative, I'm kind of rebellious. I do not like to be told what to do and the idea of thinking four to six weeks in advance makes me want to throw up.

Well that's really important to know because then when you say plan a launch or plan the content for a launch, the idea of planning four to six weeks in advance would really be something that would be a huge piece of resistance for you.

So your strategy would have to be different given your personality.

Now, my personality? I'm a huge nerd. I love planning. I'm very sequential in the way I think I'm fairly concrete.

Like, planning makes me…

Well, it’s like having a party when I'm planning.

It's super nerdy, but that's my personality.

So knowing your personality and your strengths can help you lean into how you're going to show up for your content, how you're going to show up for your audience, and just be more yourself.

Some of my favorite personal inventories (and I actually have a bunch of experts coming on, and I'm really excited about them.)

Some of my favorite personal inventories to figure more about your personality are the Enneagram, Human Design, good old Disc, and good old Myers Briggs from back in the day.

There's so many ways we can know ourselves, and the more we know ourselves, we can apply that to our content.

Believe me, I'm going to be unpacking that for you all the time this year. I'm super excited about that.

The third thing in terms of understanding more about yourself is what are your preferences for processing? Oh, my God, I wish I had understood this whole thing when I was in high school.

I had no idea that I'm a verbal processor. I do best when my thoughts are coming out of my mouth. They're not real to me until they come out of my mouth.

My husband, on the other hand, is literally the opposite of me.

He needs to process internally. He needs to do it by himself, and he will come out with a solution.

I tease him about it, and say, t's like beep, beep, beep, boop.

And then BOOP!!: out comes the answer or the solution for him.

Neither one of these is right or wrong, better or worse. It's just when you understand your own preferences, creating content is going to be much easier for you.

Because I guarantee you, coming up with topics is probably not your biggest content problem.

You probably have a million ideas swirling around your head, and we have to leverage them and get them out into the world. That's the work I help people with!

Understanding how you process information is a really important step for you to take so that you can start to get it down.

For example, if your preference is internal processing with a piece of paper and a pen, or internal processing with some kind of visual aid, you want everything to be pictures.

You want everything to be graphed.

Understanding that about yourself is going to make a big difference versus somebody who, say, needs to verbally process.

A lot of my clients hire me because they need to process their ideas through their mouth.

And so we can do that like, oh, in a zoom call, I'll interview you.

I'll pull things out of your head. We'll go back and forth for like an hour and it's like sparks are flying, notes are being taken, things are being recorded, and then you BOOP! Get it all back to you.

And now you have all of this content, right?

And you verbally process it all and you didn't have to suffer through the blank page blinking cursor syndrome problem!

Or you're a verbal processor who likes to take your time and you need more marinating time, right?

So for you, the Voxer day is a great example. You can verbally process going back and forth with somebody, but there's not the pressure of the face to face, get it done in an hour.

You can take five, 6 hours to pull out an idea, play with it, go back and forth with it, take some time to think, then go back again.

So there's all sorts of ways to use what you know about your preferences for processing and to get a great result.

But until you know them, you're going to be stuck using maybe somebody else's solution or way of doing things or the way that somebody “quote unquote” told you you should be doing it.

Understanding more about yourself is the first thing that we're talking about today!

That's voice strengths and personality and preferences for processing. So start thinking about that.

The second piece is your strategy.

I really need you to understand that you need a content strategy in 2023 because I'm gonna tell you:

If you’ve just been posting and sending emails and recording podcasts for the sake of getting it done and crossing it off your list, you are wasting your time and you're wasting your audience's time.

Your audience needs to be led someplace. So NO MORE doing content just for the sake of doing content. You want your content to be strategic. You want your content to lead people someplace.

That is up to you.

Do you know why you are creating content in the first place?

It could be, “I'm just getting started and I need to develop an audience. So I'm finding those people, I'm finding my voice, I'm finding my messaging!”

That's very valid, especially at the beginning.

Or if you're pivoting, maybe you've been in this for a few years and you know exactly who you're speaking to.

You want them to buy your book or you want them to go into your mastermind: you have a reason that you are speaking to them.

You have to lead them there.

Either way, whether you're developing and building an audience, engaging and nurturing an audience, or converting an audience, you need a strategy.

So have you considered what your content strategy is for 2023?

Why are you creating content in the first place? Where are you leading people?

Over the past few podcast episodes, I talked about this because you need either an offer or a reason that your people are following along with you.

So that's strategic thinking. What's the goal?

What I find a lot of people do in their content is they think tactically.

They'll say to me, I'm on Instagram and I have 7000 people following me and I want to get to 9000 people following me.

My question is: That's a tactic, not a strategy. Why do you want 9000 people? To what end?

What do you want in the end?

Why are you spending all of this time (I was going to say wasting all this time)...

But why are you spending all of this time on a tactic if you don't know why you're doing it?

Being on Instagram is not a strategy, it's a tactic.

Consider, have you really thought about the difference between strategy and tactics? Your tactics help you achieve your strategy.

What is your content strategy?

Consider where you want people to go and why you're creating content in the first place.

Another aspect of your strategy is in your content strategy.

How-To content is important, but it is not everything and it should not be the majority of your content.

However, for a lot of my clients and a lot of people I meet and a lot of people I see online, How-To content is their default.

What does that do? Well, a couple of things.

It exhausts you, creating How-To content.

You’re the oracle on what you do, right? Like you're an expert on it.

So, How-To content is probably easy for you, but it can start to feel after a while like you're churning and churning and churning and churning.

If nobody’s engaging or purchasing, then you’re going to start to be resentful of the content you're putting out there.

What happens when you put too much How-To content out for your audience?

A couple things: they might say stuff like, Oh yeah, she told me about that thing. I just had to do those three steps.

That's great, I'm going to save this for later, I'm going to go back to it.

But you know what happens: they never do.

The other thing is, your How-To content might not be meeting them where they are on their journey.

They might not have enough information or enough self awareness or whatever it is to take action on your How To content.

Sometimes you put How To content out there that might be over their heads or inaccessible to them because they just can't, right?

That's just not serving them either.

Part of your content strategy can be how to content and it doesn't need to be all of it.

If it has been all of it, I want you to think about how you can add something else into your strategic content.

For 2023, these are the things I use Voxer Days to do. Help you develop a content strategy.

Help you develop your voice.

Help you understand your strengths. 

Create a content plan.

This is what I'm really good at. That's why I'm talking about content creation.

What are you talking about in your content? What’s like breathing for you?

How can you talk about it with a stronger, clearer voice that sounds like you,

That attracts people,

Plays on your strengths,

That has you in the places you want to be?

If your strength is not writing, then maybe a blog is not for you, right?

How are you processing all of the millions of ideas in your head so that they're accurate and out there and being implemented and you're not suffering in your processing?

How are you strategically putting your content out there so that it leads your audience with you?

It brings them along and it helps them achieve a goal, a transformation, or have an experience.

Because not everybody's business is about a transformation. Some of us are simply creating a business to give people an experience, and that's really valid too.

So take those things into account.

Understand more about yourself and understand more about your strategy that will make your content easier and better in 2023.

Because you don't necessarily need more.

You don't need to do more to be in more places! Get off that hamster wheel and instead consider exactly what will work for you in 2023.

I'm looking forward to seeing you next week when we're going to dive in even more to the stuff that will help content creation in 2023 be easier and better and get you the results that you want.

We're going to start to take those words and leverage them so that you can grow your audience and make money, because that is why you're in business.

I'll see you next week. Bye, you.