How to Create Engaging Content in Less Time

Episode 61: How to Create Engaging Content in Less Time

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Social Media Consultant & emotional intelligence nerd - shares with you...

• three simple strategies you can put in place right now to get the most bang for your buck out of the content you do post
• why now is not the time to go learn a new platform and put your message out everywhere on all the things
• the sneaky methods other content creators and advertisers will use to derail you from your social media goals (and how to not fall for it)

If you like what you've read so far, I’d love it if you’d SUBSCRIBE to the show, and TURN ON your notifications so you don’t miss a future episode.

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WORK WITH HOLLY IN OCTOBER, 2024 //

• Ready to launch your social media brand quickly and finish your 2024 with elevated impact? Hire Holly as your social media strategist and coach! Book a quick call with me here: https://tidycal.com/thehollyhibbard/quick

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Transcript

Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the Holly Hibbard Show.
I am your host, Holly Hibbard.
I am so appreciative for you being here.
And believe me, this episode is going to pay off for you today because I'm going to be talking with you about how to create engaging content, wait for it, in less time, in less time.
Listen, I am I'm currently writing an online course that I'll be putting out in January of 2025.
And part of this process is talking to people, coaches, consultants, service providers, people who are entrepreneurial as a side hustle, but they wanna do more with it.
The one thing that every single person I've talked to in these interviews has in common is, why does social media content creation take so much time?
And the amount of time that we take with it or think that we need to spend on it can make it an even more intimidating process.
Because, for example, if you think that is going to take you 1 hour per day to put up a quality piece of content that will help you to build your social media presence and attract great clients and boost your level of authority and expertise to the general public, who'd want to do that?
Who'd want to do that?
I mean, maybe I would because I like it.
I like that kind of thing.
But even myself, I don't want to spend an hour a day on creating social media content.
So if the amount of time is what's keeping you away from posting in the first place, getting your name out there, getting your ideas and your thoughts and your methodology out there about what you provide to people, the ideas, your services, whatever.
Let's break it down real simple today.
I'm gonna be sharing with you 3 things that you may or may not take action on.
It's really gonna be up to you, but hopefully, my my idea here is hopefully at least one of these are going to give you something to say, alright.
You know what?
For the next week, I'm committed to trying that thing.
Let's see how this goes.
So the first tactic I have for you that can help you make your content that you put out there, engaging and time efficient is to make sure whatever you post that it's easy to post for you and your current skill level.
This is so important.
Case in point, doing those interviews, getting to know the people who are interested perhaps in taking my course in the future and are learning all these new ways to put content out there to do all the things to support their business or their new business.
And one of the things I mentioned to them is video.
I just mention video to them.
Do you make short form videos?
Do you go live on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok even if you have the ability to do so?
And that is so intimidating to the persons, understandably so.
It was for me also when I started many years ago too.
So I'd start by asking them, well, what would make it easy for you?
Or what are you already posting?
Maybe not even for your business, but what are you even posting in your everyday life that feels easy for you to post?
Is it a picture of something you saw out in the world and then you can write a quick little something about it and you post an image with some text on Instagram or over on Facebook.
Do you really love the stories feature?
Are you do you love the little stickers and the, you know, like, the hashtags and the little Giphys and all those things?
Do you like making stories on things and posting that way?
Are you a LinkedIn or blogger aficionado?
Are you really good at writing a long post or a blog?
Or maybe you're somebody that's dabbled with going live or recording a longer video for say, YouTube or a similar platform.
Whatever it is, ask yourself the question, what are you already posting that feels easy for you?
So here's an example.
When I am really busy or have a lot of different plates that I'm spinning in my life and I don't wanna drop one, I even come back to this question because yes, I've created 1,000 of videos, short form, long form.
I have done this for so many years at this point.
I've also created a lot of written content, but when I am strapped for time, I simply think to myself, how can I do something simple?
And 9 times out of 10, it will be maybe a story because that's easy for me to snap a picture and post it.
And I can post it to Instagram, in my case, and it'll go right to Facebook.
You can also do the opposite.
But even simpler than that, go to Facebook and open the post and choose a color block that you like.
That's that little color that sits behind the text and type a thought that you have.
Type a question that you have.
You get a couple of sentences in that color block and just the color block alone captured the attention of your audience more than say the black and white font, on the screen.
So that is something, 2 sentences that you could do in less than a couple of minutes.
Okay?
And only a couple of minutes because you're probably going to second guess the content that you're gonna put out there.
But it could even be something as cool as think about the last client that you worked with and you could even write something like, My clients are so incredible.
They just gave me the sweetest thank you card.
Listen, we don't have to teach everybody with every single post, but invite people into that celebratory space with you.
So whatever you currently post that's easy for you and fits into your time budget, let's call it, now for your personal life, or if you don't post at all and this is a whole stretch for you to begin with, think literally 2 sentences.
Something so small.
But start where you currently are on the platforms.
If you're a person that is posting casually about your personal life or whatever on Facebook, don't take it upon yourself when you're strapped for time and you wanna have engaging content.
This is not the time to go and teach yourself how to create a TikTok.
It's just not.
And I don't so this brings me to point number 2.
Okay?
When it comes to creating engaging content in less time, you have got to set aside the expectations that you have placed upon yourself.
And also the expectations that other social media experts or content creators are placing upon you.
You gotta release those expectations of where the best place is to post in the moment.
Because the worst place to post for your business is nowhere.
Okay?
So let's take that off the table.
Let's take that initiative to put yourself out there in the first place.
But here's here's an example.
I know I have been incredibly active with my business primarily on Facebook for a very, very, very long time.
We're talking easily 10 years, probably much longer at this point.
Well, over the years, I thought to myself, maybe 5 years in, you know, I should try to post to Instagram.
And this is before both of them were owned by Meta and they talked to each other.
And you could post on 1 and it could go to another.
By the way, if you don't know that, like, here you go.
You can post on 1 and it can automatically go to the other when you set it up.
Anyhoo.
Well, I made that decision.
I was going to make a more concerted effort to put a couple things here and there on Instagram.
But even to this day, I don't consume Instagram a whole lot.
I will go I might get sucked into Instagram reels for a little bit and watch a lot of those, but that's the same thing that I can get pulled into with Facebook reels or watching TikToks or Shorts or watching Shorts on YouTube.
It's just the nature of the video.
It's not the platform itself.
I'm not going to my Instagram thinking, oh, I can't wait to scroll my feed.
That's just not me.
I'm I'm not the type of person that looks at a lot of the photos.
And if I do, I might get 10, 10 posts in, and then I'm like, okay.
Next thing.
Like, I'd rather watch short videos.
It's just my it's my thing.
But if you then, for example, are following other content creators and they have built, let's say, a wild and successful following on Instagram.
They love Instagram.
They're also very good at Instagram, or they have a team of people or a person, a virtual assistant, a VA, who's really good at Instagram.
And in this case, yeah, they're going to be a rating fan and an advocate of, if you're a coach or a consultant or a service provider, you have to be posting on Instagram.
And the more you if you even listen to their content or read that content on social media, the algorithm picks up on it.
And next thing you know, you're being inundated with a barrage of creators or ads that are saying, do you wanna learn how to post on Instagram?
Do you wish that you could have reels on Instagram?
Do you wish that you knew how to grow your email list with Instagram?
And in that moment, it can feel like, dang.
Like, am I missing out because I'm not that active on Instagram and I'm on this other platform instead?
And the answer is no.
In this season, as to beginner beginner.
Okay?
You're not missing out.
You're not.
Get active in a platform first and do not let others tell you the platform that you should get started with, especially if you're creating engaging content and you want to do so in less time.
This is not the time to go and learn something totally new to you, even if you just know it a little bit.
Why?
You don't need to go to where you already know how things work or to a platform that you know that you can learn it relatively quickly.
So last example on this.
So when I got started, like I said, very, very involved and engaged on Facebook.
Okay?
Then 5 years in, I thought, well, I should probably get to know Instagram a little bit, which I did a little bit.
I was not serious about it at all.
And then come 2020, and I was invited to participate in a program with TikTok for people who are educators of different subjects.
Okay?
So that was how I got onto TikTok.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I was super intimidated.
I was 40 years old at the time, and you better darn believe I found my 24 year old friend, shout out to Heaven.
Her name is Heaven.
I said, teach me how do I work this thing.
I don't know how to edit my videos.
I had to go find someone that knew, what TikTok was because she had been a consumer of that platform before it was even TikTok.
It was called Muscial.
Ly.
Anyhoo, my point is, as your business evolves, okay, as your confidence in being able to figure it out evolves, you will want to branch out to other platforms.
But when you are just starting or getting going or facing overwhelm already about how do I make content, this is not the time.
This is not the time, and you're gonna hear a lot of people tell you that you need to post on all the things and you don't.
You do not.
There are tons of people on all the platforms.
Okay?
And I'm still, PS, trying to figure out YouTube because, albeit, I have been putting out longer YouTube videos for a very, very inconsistently and very few and far between long form videos, including this video podcast now, which is a whole thing for me now.
I have I'm I've not dove into YouTube because YouTube is its own beast.
It's its own I don't even know.
People who know YouTube really well, I'm like, dang.
You are amazing.
Because it's like, I get lost very easily trying to figure out parts of YouTube.
So anyway, I share that so that you know 10 plus years into this, I still have moments where I'm like, nope.
Don't feel like learning this.
Tell me the bare minimum with certain platforms.
Alright.
The third thing I'll share with you about how to create engaging content with less time is a keyword in that title of today's show is engage.
Posting is wonderful.
But even if you are working up your courage or amount of free time to post your content, to start to build your audience, and have that following, and to attract clients to your coaching, consulting, service providing business.
What you can do in the interim and even after you start posting, you've got to engage with your audience.
You've got to engage with them.
And so you might think, Holly, I don't have an audience, or I have a very small audience, or I do put content out and people don't talk to me about it.
So what I'll say to you is there are ways, and this will be for a different episode, that you can create content that invites them to engage with you.
Meaning, as a quick example, you post that 2 sentences that I said earlier.
Hey, shout out to my client who got me the sweetest thank you gift.
Right?
That's not a post that's typically going to invite your audience or wannabe audience to comment back.
Right?
So there's a little bit of strategy there.
And, again, that's for another time.
But this is key.
Listen.
If you're multitasking, listen.
Come back.
Engage with your audience and know that your audience is not yet following you, so you need to go where they are.
For example, yes, you might have people in your audience that are over on Instagram and they are consuming Instagram a whole bunch, but you're thinking, well, I don't wanna post on Instagram as a beginner.
I wanna start with Facebook.
What do I do?
Go find those people in Facebook.
Look in Facebook groups.
Think to yourself, okay, who are people in my industry that I respect, that I follow?
Let's go look at their content.
More importantly, let's go look at the comments on their content.
What types of questions are people asking in those groups, on those pages for that person who is in the same industry as you?
Your audience doesn't only follow you.
They fall follow a number of people in your industry.
I am not the only coach on the planet.
That is for darn sure.
And then beyond that, now I'm stepping into teaching social media content creation for, like, for people who are new ish, right, new to intermediate, who are coaches and consultants to begin with, service providers to begin with.
Like, that's our forte.
But I wanna teach you how to get yourself out there.
They're following more than just me.
They're, you know, they're following other people who can tell them how to leverage their time with social media.
They're following other people that are gonna teach them how to grow their email list or their following or convert from followers to clients.
And I'm okay with that because there is more than enough to go around, but you've got to engage with your audience.
Now if you're thinking, okay, Holly, that takes time.
Yes.
It does take a little bit of time.
It even takes, in some cases, more time to engage with your audience than it does to post that 2 sentence thing that I mentioned before.
But the important thing with having engaging content is you've got to know your audience.
And even if you go into those groups or into those pages and you read the comments and you're looking at what people are talking about and asking about, you're going to get to know what they are concerned with, what they want to learn about.
And then guess what?
The next day, when you wanna go, post those 2 sentences again, think about what you read in the comments the day before and make a comment about that.
Now you have something that's probably engaging, but you wouldn't even know that that's a topic that your ideal client is thinking about or wondering about or wants to learn about if you had not gone and tried to find, quote, your audience or similar to your audience in other forums.
So it's super important that you stick with it.
And if you are thinking, I'm gonna post on Facebook, I'm making an example, and you're only gonna stick with that one one platform from the beginning, then look for your audience on Facebook.
Because are there people, for example, over on TikTok who are having those same conversations?
Yes.
Are they in the chat or not the chat.
Are they in the comments?
Yes.
Are they asking questions there?
Yes.
But if you're gonna post on Facebook, you've got to know your audience who is engaging on Facebook already because there is a different type of consumer that is focusing a lot of their time on Facebook than there are people who are soaking up a lot of their time with TikTok that are also utilizing their time watching long videos on YouTube.
They are all different types of audiences.
Is there some overlap?
Yes.
But each social media platform, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others, right, they all have their own way of doing things.
They all have their own kind of vibe.
And you've gotta know the vibe of the people where you're going to be.
Okay?
Because I've seen this, and we started to see this last point.
When TikTok came out, right, TikTok blew up short form videos.
Blew TikToks.
Right?
Like, video, video, video.
1st, it was like, get it to under a minute.
Then it was get your video to under 30 seconds.
Then it was get your message to under 15 seconds.
I'm like, this is bananas in order to catch some traction on TikTok.
Well then, Meta, by now, the owners of Facebook and Instagram were like, let's introduce Instagram Reels.
So Reels comes out, and this is a couple of years ago now.
And when Reels comes out, people who were over on TikTok, they'd open their Instagram and see these little short form videos.
And the first thing everybody was talking about, if you were on TikTok in 2020, 2021, you know what I'm talking about.
Everybody on TikTok was like, what is this wannabe TikTok that Instagram is trying to do?
Like, does any any it was like a list movie stars and and b list movie stars, b listers.
People were making comments over on TikTok saying, is Instagram Reels like the b list of short forms?
Like, are we on the b list?
Because the trends that were, like, popping off on TikTok, Instagram Reels would pick up on those trends, like, 2 weeks later.
And it wasn't a trend anymore.
And everyone's like, this is this is just embarrassing.
Now they're they're pretty even, but there's still a culture.
There's still a culture.
TikTok tends to be more raw in nature.
Vulnerability is, like, super important on TikTok.
As compared to Instagram, people like a little bit of that, but they also like the really curated stuff, a lot of my day in the life, blah blah blah, more editing.
So every single one has its own vibe.
So when I say go and engage with your audience, read the comments, see what they're saying, whether you could reply back or not.
Okay?
Just read it.
Get to know it.
Do it on the platform that you plan on posting to because, yeah, every community is different.
Alright.
So let's recap.
How to create engaging content in less time.
Remember, number 1, make sure that wherever you choose to post is a place that's easy for you to post.
This is not the time to go learn something new, a new platform, a new video style, a new not the time.
This is your time to get consistent and put yourself out there.
Number 2, let go of the expectations that you are placing on yourself or that ads keep telling you those expectations of like, this is the hottest platform, and you need to be on this one if you wanna gain track.
Not true.
Not true.
If you wanna make it, you just need to be consistent.
You need to be consistent.
It is not it's not sexy.
It is boring.
It's like but it's it's the truth.
And I say that as a person who has had many seasons of consistency and more seasons of inconsistency.
And I can tell you that the majority of my following, which at this point is across platforms altogether, is somewhere around 40,000 at this point and could be way higher.
You know why it's not way higher?
Because I was inconsistent.
Because I was inconsistent, and I'm still inconsistent in some places.
So do not fall for what they're trying to tell you that you must go learn a new platform right now.
I'm even telling myself that.
I do not need to learn Instagram further right now.
I do not need to learn LinkedIn more right now.
I do not.
I do not.
I do not.
I don't have time for it today, and I will in the future, and today is not that day.
And number 3, remember to engage with your audience.
If you don't have an audience of your own yet, where are they hiding out on the platform of your choosing?
Okay?
So don't again, remember number 1, I just told you, do not think.
Well, I'm mostly on Instagram, but I think my people are really on YouTube, so I'm gonna go peruse YouTube and try no.
Don't do it.
Don't do it because we're not learning YouTube right now, my friend.
Okay?
Alright.
I hope this was supportive.
I am such a fan of one to many and leveraging in every approach.
I want you to have content creation set up in such a way where you get the most bang for your buck, the largest ROI, the return on your investment of your energy, especially of your time, at some point financial, but we're not there yet.
But at the end of the day, you've got to make it so that it works for you, so you can be consistent.
Alright?
Say it with me.
Consistent.
Woo hoo.
Alright.
Thank you so much for listening, and for putting up my dog.
I don't know if you heard my dog go crazy in the background, but, apparently, she was very passionate about number 3 as well.
But I I totally love you.
I mean it.
I'm so appreciative of you being here.
And until next time, I'll talk to you next time.