Content Creation Revolution: 30 Days of Material in Just 90 Minutes

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr, and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Eric Whitnish. Eric, or, I'm sorry, Erin Whitnish. Erin is the co founder of content only, specializing in the 30 days in 90 minutes content creation system. Aaron has been marketing online since 2008. He built two marketing agencies and has a combined 15,000 plus personal followers across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. In the past, Aaron has collaborated with Grant Cardone and host the content Marketing podcast.

Brandi Starr [00:01:21]:
Erin, welcome to Revenue Rehab. Your session begins now.

Aaron Witnish [00:01:27]:
Thanks, Brandi. I'm really excited to be here.

Brandi Starr [00:01:29]:
Yes, I am excited to have you. I know that there are definitely some things about managing my own socials that I can learn from you, so I'm excited for that discussion. But before we jump in, I like to break the ice with a little Woosa moment I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Aaron Witnish [00:01:53]:
Can we attack algorithm as the buzzword?

Brandi Starr [00:01:59]:
I mean, you mean you want to stop trying to hack the algorithm?

Aaron Witnish [00:02:04]:
Yeah, it comes up in just about every conversation with what I do, and I'm sick of talking about it.

Brandi Starr [00:02:12]:
I am with you. And I think there is so much emphasis placed on trying to figure out the algorithm. And as soon as you think you've got it figured out, it changes. So it's sort of a futile effort.

Aaron Witnish [00:02:27]:
I agree with you. And the end of the day, it's just getting people to watch something and to continue watching it. That's the game plan.

Brandi Starr [00:02:36]:
Yes, I agree completely. So at least for this discussion, we will put algorithm in the box and I promise not to talk about it. And so now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab with anyone in.

Aaron Witnish [00:02:53]:
The executive business entrepreneurial space? One of the things that is extremely challenging is time. And everyone has goals and they have visions for the future. But how do you get done what you need to get done? So what I want to do today is share a way that people can condense time when it comes to building their profile, doing the things that are going to accelerate the pathway to their goals. And hopefully, by the end of this conversation, people can achieve some of the things they want to achieve and still be time rich at the same time.

Brandi Starr [00:03:32]:
Awesome. I mean, the thought of being time rich definitely excites me because that is one of those things that there never seems to be enough of. And I believe in setting intentions. It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. And so what's your best hope for our talk? What would you like people to take away?

Aaron Witnish [00:03:57]:
I would love it if by the end of our conversation, people had tangible steps that they can go implement to create 30 days worth of video and written content in less than 90 minutes a month so they can boost their profiles and move closer to the goals that they've set.

Brandi Starr [00:04:16]:
Okay, perfect. So I often like to start my conversations talking about the naysayers. So I have heard, you know, there's different formulas for like, mass producing, mass scaling the amount of content you're putting out there. You know, with AI, there's a lot more volume that is happening and where I will hear people push back on this concept. And so I'd like to just kind of get it out the way at the beginning of our discussion is there is this notion that trying to create these high volumes of content in short periods of time really just creates a high volume of you saying nothing, you know, that it becomes not impactful, not meaningful, not authentic. It is just more trying to churn out a bunch of stuff in order to post for the sake of posting. So start off being a little bit of a contrarian. And so I'd love to hear your take on how your approach and what you've done for your own personal brand has been able to scale in this, this way that you're going to talk about without it being, you know, just a bunch of the blah, blah, blah.

Aaron Witnish [00:05:34]:
I agree with you. Most content is bad, and it doesn't add a lot of value to other people's lives. So part of fixing that is one knowing who you're actually serving, who are you creating content for? And when you know what questions that audience is asking, what problems are they trying to solve? And you're able to create content that makes their lives better by being the solution to those problems, by giving them a breakthrough, then I think we call it legitimacy content. And when the newsfeed is full of synthetic content, fake news scams, when you can put something out that even if it only reaches a small number of people, but it genuinely makes their lives better, that's the type of content that I'm a big fan of because helpful content is helpful content. Bad content is bad content. And doesn't matter how much bad content you put out, it's not going to have an impact. But even if you put out smaller amounts of great content, you're going to make people's lives better.

Brandi Starr [00:06:42]:
Okay, I love that and it's a great place to start. And so I want to shift to the why. And, you know, if we think about as marketing leaders, you know, content, we know content's king. Content's at the center of things. Like content is something that everybody has to do and we have to do these things on the business level for our organizations. And so for many people, building a personal brand, you know, being able to have large number of followers that, you know, very much falls secondary. And so I'd love to hear your why in terms of why is is something, you know, especially for executives, marketing leaders, I mean, some of the most time poor people that exist because there's always so much to do. Why is this something that they need to focus on?

Aaron Witnish [00:07:36]:
If you look at people's habits, the average person spends two and a half hours a day on social media. So that's where the attention is. If a business owner is looking to hire someone and they get resumes, they're going to go have a look. Okay, can I find anything about this person online? So if you're an executive, a leader, your digital footprint plays a key role in your professional development. And I know personally as a business owner, hiring team members, I go have a look before I accept them in to have an interview. And the same goes with a business. What do you clients and customers do? There's so many options at our fingertips, tips that if they stumble across your brand, your business, they're going to go check you out, they're going to go to Google, they're going to go to social media. So what they find either accelerates their desire to transact or decelerate.

Aaron Witnish [00:08:34]:
So you've got this invisible hand impact that's happening to you as an individual or to the business. And if we don't create content that builds trust, that builds desire towards the company, then they'll tend to go to someone else or they'll hire someone else in the professional sense of okay, so.

Brandi Starr [00:08:52]:
That, I think that helps to lay the foundation. So let's talk about how do we get her done? What are our steps? Like, how do we. Cause I know I'll start by speaking for myself, engaging on social media, building a personal brand that shares my knowledge and my experience is actually a part of my job. It is part of my responsibility, which know a lot of executives that the same is not true. And even with it being an actual expectation and part of my role, I still find it very, very difficult to find the space to, you know, I have lots of knowledge, lots of insight, lots of opinions. You know, I have stuff to say. I know I have plenty to say. But pulling that out of me in a way that I can even get started in, you know, trying to create masses, mass amounts of content in a short period of time, it's a really tough thing to do.

Brandi Starr [00:09:57]:
And so I know it's got to be even tougher for those where it is not a direct expectation. And so that's kind of where I want to start, is like, how do we get over that hurdle of just giving this space and then tell us how we actually do it?

Aaron Witnish [00:10:18]:
Incredibly overwhelming, because what do you talk about? Where do you post it? What format do you use? Easy to get paralyzed into inaction. Step number one is never running out of what to talk about. So having unlimited content ideas for your target audience, and there's a section that a lot of people aren't aware of on Google. So if you take an outcome that you specialize in, let's say it's leadership or management, and you put that into Google, you scroll down to the people also ask section, you're gonna see what questions people are asking about leadership or about management. And if you click the little down arrow, it'll keep showing you more and more queries and questions that people that are interested in that particular topic are asking. So there's unlimited content ideas at your fingertips in a matter of seconds. Now, to put that on steroids, a tool that we use is called Vidiq. This is specifically for video content.

Aaron Witnish [00:11:14]:
If you do the same thing, you put leadership into the keyword section of this tool, you'll get somewhere in the range of 300 questions that people are searching on platforms like YouTube about leadership. And then you can actually sort them from. How many searches are there a month? What is the competition like? So you can find topics to talk about that not many people are creating content on, but lots of people are asking and searching for. So with a combination of just using Google or a more advanced approach like Vidiq, you solve that problem of not knowing what to talk about, and you'll never run out of content ideas again.

Brandi Starr [00:11:49]:
Okay. Yeah, I have. I've definitely seen that. And I think where I have used that before and where I see, people getting stuck is it can kind of be a rabbit hole in which it feels less authentic because we're aiming, you know, we talked about, we're not going to talk about the algorithm, but, you know, staying focused on the search terms almost feels like that strategy of focusing on the a word we'll call it. And so how do you combine doing that research? Because I do think that's really important with making sure that you are staying authentic in, like, your message, your expertise, and not sort of falling victim to. Let me just put a lot of stuff out there because, you know, Google or some other tool says people are searching for it.

Aaron Witnish [00:12:51]:
The way that you stay authentic is the way you approach creating the content. Most people that are trying to tap the search process are being very in their heads about the way they're going about creating the content. So they're deliberately trying to feed that search term into the text or the video that they're writing. They're usually scripted, and that gets content that's forced and very awkward. The way that we've solved that problem is we get a list of questions once a month and we approach it conversationally, just like you and I are doing right now. This is organic. So if I had a list of questions here for you and I just started asking, just like you're doing with me, you're going to get a very natural response, and I'm not going to be in my head trying to come up with the answers. So that's the difference.

Aaron Witnish [00:13:42]:
You take a list of questions and then you also put the personal questions in there about your journey, about things that you're working on, something that might have happened during the week. So you're balancing it out with what do people want to know about leadership or management? With a little bit about my values, my personality, my story. So people get to connect that piece, and when you do it in a interview style, a conversation style, and someone's there just feeding you the questions and you're just answering in your most organic, natural state. That's how you get this authentic content, and it also brings out your personality. So that's how we've overcome the challenge of a lot of people putting content out that isn't the natural version of themselves.

Brandi Starr [00:14:25]:
Okay. I really love that, especially the phrase where you said get out of your head. Because I do think, like, you know, as I've talked to other executives, that is a big, like, being in our heads. And, like, how does this sound? Is my opinion unique? You know, like, all of these sort of thoughts that we think about do kind of keep us in our head. And so I want to get back to your steps. You said the first step is to never run out of stuff to talk about. And, you know, so that's doing that research and finding those questions. And so what's your second step? I think you were kind of alluding to it, but I know a lot of people like to take notes, so I'll make sure to ask directly in what is step two?

Aaron Witnish [00:15:08]:
We call it record. Fancy that. And you set it up like this. You have someone. You have great rapport with, someone that you have great chats over, coffee with, could be a colleague, could be a friend, family member, and they've got the questions once a month. This is how you get this down to 90 minutes. And what we do is we jump on Google Meet, and the reason we do that is it says straight to Google Drive, which makes the third step much easier. And all you do is hit record.

Aaron Witnish [00:15:37]:
The best thing to do is to show up on an iPhone. If you want to get those short form videos, whoever's answering the questions is on their iPhone, and you just go through and you answer the questions that you prepared for the month, and you record the conversation. And that's essentially the. What your part is once a month to create your content for the next 30 days. So it's really that simple.

Brandi Starr [00:16:01]:
Okay. So just, I like to backtrack and think through the steps. So I have a problem that I want to solve or that I want to talk about. I start by googling it or putting it into a tool like Vidiq. I look for what are questions that people are asking. I take that mix in some other questions, kind of that I want to answer. Get a buddy who, you know, I can have good conversation with. Get us on Google Meets or something else using vertical video so we're ready for social media.

Brandi Starr [00:16:36]:
It's kind of what I heard with the iPhone. I was gonna say, I'm team Android, so I like to genericize it, but get that recorded and just go through and have that conversation. And I so love that. Like, you are definitely, you know, I don't know if anybody else is getting anything out of this, but you are helping me, because I do find that when someone asks me a question, whether it's a client, my team, friends, I can just, you know, off the cuff, like, rattle off all the things, and I say some brilliant stuff. But if I go to try to write a post on LinkedIn, it ends up just kind of being, you know, want. Like it is a bit disappointing. And so I love that being able to just not be in your head, not think about how's it going to go out. Just have someone ask the questions and have those organic conversations in a way that you can record and capture that.

Brandi Starr [00:17:38]:
So we got step one, we got step two. What's left?

Aaron Witnish [00:17:42]:
Step number three, which is repurpose. There's many different ways you can go about this step, depending on where you're at in terms of budget time. So there are some AI tools that can repurpose interviews, long form videos into short form clips. Opus clip is one, getmunch is one. So if you don't have any capital that you can invest into someone to cut clips and edit for you, that's a really low barrier to entry. And what that does is it intuitively finds parts of your conversation to turn into videos. It'll put captions on it. You can go edit those captions and fix the videos.

Aaron Witnish [00:18:19]:
The only challenge with that is you do have to get on the tools there and do a little bit of work in the background. So it will take you past 90 minutes a month in most cases. If you're at a stage where you can invest a little bit of money into getting someone to do this for you, there's any freelancing site. Upwork is a really good example. And all you need to do is go and look for a reels editor. And then what you do is you give them the questions that you were targeting in the conversation and say, can you cut one or more clips from this conversation that we can use as a reel and then put your branded captions on them? Because I think it's over 80% of videos start playing without sound. So we need to give someone a reason to watch the video if the sound's not on. And then they can give you the videos on brand, ready to go for the next 30 days to get the text component which you're talking about with the LinkedIn post.

Aaron Witnish [00:19:13]:
We take the Google Drive recording of the interview and we go to rev.com and that'll transcribe it into text in the roughly five minutes. And again, you've got a couple of pathways. You can go, you can prompt, engineer, chat, GPT to rewrite your responses and tidy them up in a structure and post format that you like. Or you can get someone that's a content writer on a platform like upwork and you can give them instructions. These are the frameworks that I like for posts. This is my target audience. This is the voice that I want you to write in the, and they can take that transcription and rewrite it into the post for you, hand it over and then all your written contents ready to go for the next 30 days.

Brandi Starr [00:19:56]:
This almost sounds like magic. It's one of those things that, you know, I'm having one of those aha moments where you hear something that is so simple. You know, it's like nothing that you've said is total rocket science, but it is. It always blows my mind how something so simple we don't do or we don't think to do this way. Because as I think about different tools, we use Cas magic, which is another AI tool that we use for revenue rehab that has the ability to do some of those things, take the transcript, do some other things, and it's got some special prompting things. So that's another tool. And it's like, even with a tool like that at my disposal, we bought it for revenue rehab to help do the transcripts and some of the things that we post. And that's all I use it for.

Brandi Starr [00:20:53]:
And so, you know, it's so simple to have the right things already at your disposal and not really think through how to repurpose the tools, let alone, you know, the content. And we do so much of that, again, at the business level. You know, you write a white paper, you turn that white paper into five blogs posts, and you turn those blog posts into, you know, this other thing, and then you make a webinar from that same white paper like we do that. And so that repurposing content is, you know, fundamental content marketing 101, but doing it for our personal brand, it just, and I don't know, maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but I'm like, how did I never think of that before? And so, yeah, so that is, that is a great way to, to take that video. Now you've got video content, you've got written content, and if you've got, you know, an internal content marketer, which, you know, a lot of, like, a lot of our listeners are, you know, at least mid sized organizations, so many have those, you know, they may not have video editors, but they at least have content marketers who are doing the writing that then enables you to feed them all that they need for the month in that short, you know, giving them that short period of your attention. And so, you know, Erin, you've definitely blown my mind already. Are there other steps? You know, I get so excited about, like, the simplest things because so often the simplest things have the greatest impact. So are there any other steps after repurpose?

Aaron Witnish [00:22:32]:
That's the system for creating the content. The next steps in the process is how you get it in front of the right people. So it's just thinking about where do you consume content on your area of expertise and what time of the day are you doing that? And that gives you a really good framework of when to put your content online. Again, just keep it really simple. People trying to hack, let's use the word we're not supposed to talk about algorithm, just use common sense. When are you watching videos? When are you reading posts? What time of the day? Which platform are you doing it on? And that's the easiest way to work out where to put that content that you've created with those three steps previously. So simplicity is always helpful.

Brandi Starr [00:23:19]:
Awesome. Well, so we've got our three steps. We're going to, we've got our way to never run out of content. We know how we're now going to record in 90 minutes and get all sorts of good stuff and how we can then give that to other people to then repurpose for us something that you said that I want to dig into more. And here, just because I know content marketing is your thing and you started content only. So kind of going off the rails a little bit, but just asking some other questions around content. You talked about framework for your posts and, you know, whether it's getting rev.com to transcribe it and working with chat GPT or if you're writing it yourself. And I've seen, especially with the AI conversations, I've seen that phrasing of, you know, different frameworks for posts.

Brandi Starr [00:24:13]:
And even as I've watched videos of some people talking about AI, they'll say, oh, you know, I want this post a la some person I've never heard of. And so I'm really curious what insight and advice you have around starting to understand what these frameworks are and figuring out what are some of the frameworks that fit your personal style? Because I do think that there's things that people have figured out that work, some of which, you know, may or may not work for each person. But I have not seen anything that's like, here's the list of the frameworks and why they're awesome or how you think about them. So I'd love some of your input, insight, direction on how do we really understand some of these messaging frameworks that work on social media.

Aaron Witnish [00:25:03]:
Take the guesswork out of it and just look at posts or videos that you stop and watch because that's clearly the way they're structured and laid out has got you to consume it. So you don't need to reinvent the wheel or get scientific about it generally. Just look at what you respond to, what you like. If you ever post, get your attention and you stop and it engages you and you read it, you go, well, clearly the way that was laid out and set got you to consume it. So borrow ideas from what works on you if you like that particular structure. Because usually the easiest thing to do is just see what's working really well or you perceive to be working well and just take those clues and adapt it in a way that works for yourself.

Brandi Starr [00:25:53]:
Okay. And that helps because, you know, it always. The way people refer to these post frameworks is as if there is some defined structure that they know about that I don't. And what I'm hearing is it really is just kind of looking at what you're seeing and then reverse engineering that to find your own style.

Aaron Witnish [00:26:16]:
Keep it like with advertising, what ads get your attention? You don't need to have a 50 step process to writing a post. It's like, okay, this ad got me to stop. Why did that happen? Or this post got me to read, what was it that got me to read? Was it the visual? Was it the headline? And you can connect the dots very easily that way.

Brandi Starr [00:26:38]:
Awesome. I really appreciate this. I have definitely enjoyed this conversation. And talking about our challenges is just the first step. And nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework. But here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. And so for those that are listening, who are like me and are excited and have had an aha moment and see this as a potential solution to how they get the content created that they need, what's our one thing? What is our first step that we should take to move in the right direction of being able to build that personal brand and use less time.

Aaron Witnish [00:27:26]:
Most people are fearful around putting themselves out there, particularly on video, and I understand that. So what I would say is it's like running. The first time you go for a run and you haven't run for two years, it's going to suck. You might get 200 meters into it, your whole body's going to be aching, you're going to be out of breath, and you're not going to want to do it again. But you go for another run, you get a little bit further, you feel a little bit better, and the same thing is, with content, you need to get that first video out or that next video. So that one thing for me is always get started because we can sit here, talk about the system, theorize all day long, but until you take action and you move past that fear, nothing's going to happen. So I would say, get your phone out right now. Forget the system.

Aaron Witnish [00:28:13]:
Shoot a video going. I'm being extremely vulnerable right now. I'm going to put this video out there. It's a big step for me. I promise the future videos will get better. And just post that online so you can tick off and see that it's actually not the end of the world when you put something out there. And you'll probably find that people are pretty supportive if you take that step. So get that first video out there and know that you'll get a lot better as you progress with a system like this.

Brandi Starr [00:28:39]:
I love it. So as everybody follows Erin's advice, make sure to tag revenue rehab. I would love to see that you listened to this episode and you took a shot at putting out video. And I'd love to see what you do and make sure that I follow you to help to support additional content that you put out in the future. Erin, I really love that as an action item because I agree wholeheartedly that so many people are uncomfortable putting their thoughts and ideas out there, especially on video. You know, you're worried about what you look like and your background and your lighting and, you know, all the things that at the end of the day, don't really matter. And so I think that that is a really great first step. And so I have really enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today.

Brandi Starr [00:29:31]:
But before we go, how can our audience stay connected with you and definitely give the shameless plug for content only. For those that are struggling beyond that, how do you help?

Aaron Witnish [00:29:44]:
We've got the system. You can download it for free. Just sits on our website. Don't even have to opt in at the moment. So you can download the 30 days in 90 minutes content creation system at contentonly Auverenne. And you can also chat to me directly on that site. So that's the easiest way to get in touch.

Brandi Starr [00:30:01]:
Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to that. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes and you can link to content only and to Erin. And as I said, definitely tag revenue rehab. If you post that first video, I would love to see it. Well, Erin, I appreciate you joining me. I have truly enjoyed the discussion and I've learned some things from you.

Aaron Witnish [00:30:28]:
Thanks, Brandy. It's been a lot of fun.

Brandi Starr [00:30:30]:
Awesome. Well, thanks, everyone, for joining me. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Erin. Until next time. Bye bye.