Personal Branding

Use This One Backward Strategy To Create Content Like the Pros

The mistake most subject-matter experts make is go too long with their content when starting out. Here's why you should do the opposite:

Jun 12, 2022

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Photo by Andrew Draper on Unsplash
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    Beginner creators often start writing long form articles, ebooks, or even entire courses.

    This is the opposite to what successful digital creators do. They start with smaller content that can be validated, fast. From then on, they analyze the data to find the angles that resonate the most with their audience. Those become longer form content. Long form content that performs well, becomes a deep dive, a guide, a mini course or an ebook.

    But it always starts with short feedback loops.

    Why feedback loop speed matters.

    A feedback loop is how quickly you hit “post” and get feedback on your content.

    Your goal is to test new topics and angles often in the shortest feedback loop possible to validate them. As of June 2022, Twitter and LinkedIn are the two platforms that provide the shortest feedback loops for creators. They both pick up on your content’s engagement and amplify its reach –or kill it!– in the first few minutes after publishing it.

    Also, creating content for Twitter or LinkedIn requires much less effort and planning on your end than creating for other platforms like Instagram or TikTok.

    So, where should I start?

    If you’ve dabbled with content creation in the past, chances are you know exactly what I’m talking about.

    The good news is you don’t need to continue doing things the hard way anymore. Below is my exact content flywheel. This is what I’ve been using to cut my content creation time by 80% while growing my audience on multiple platforms. Not only that, I’m now much more aware of what my audience is looking for and how to better serve them.

    Here’s what you do:

    1. Post 1-2 original tweets per day. See what resonates.
    2. Expand on what resonates via atomic essays (like this one). Notice which essays work. I post these here on my blog, on Medium and on LinkedIn.
    3. Expand on the essays that work through twitter threads. Write 1-2 threads per week. See which ones work best.
    4. Use the better ones to create a weekly newsletter. Here is mine.
    5. Newsletters that resonate become a deep dive, a masterclass, or a mini course. Here’s mine on Personal Branding for Doctors.
    💡

    Whenever you get a new idea, a question from a client, etc, it goes back to the top of the flywheel.

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