Small Business Thrive Guide: Content Creation Edition

Good day. So you are contemplating whether it's worth your time to start creating content to help grow your small business. The answer is do it. Do it now. Get started today. I understand the concerns you're thinking. There's already people out there saying the same stuff I'm going to say, or you're thinking, I don't think I'm going to have time to be able to do this, or What the heck should I talk about? I'm going to go over all those things in this video, so stay tuned. I'm going to make it easy for you to get started creating video content to grow your business.

Hi there. Welcome to the G Squared Studio YouTube channel. I'm Garik Goodell, and I help small businesses grow utilizing their websites as well as content creation. Today we're going to be talking about content creation. Just as a general concept, is it something you should invest your time in? I always say yes, especially if you want more business. It is a great tool that can help in many, many ways. So how can it help? You might be asking. Number one, it can greatly increase your website traffic. If you are putting regular content on your website, you are going to be increasing your SEO by talking about subjects that are in your industry, which will then increase your rankings to Google. It'll see that you have more terms around the subjects that are in your industry as well as if people go and consume that content. Then it will greatly increase your SEO as well because Google will see that people are on your website.

The SEO game is changing. It is becoming less about who can find the perfect keywords and infuse them on their site and becoming much more about creating value and providing value for people. So if Google sees people's linger on your website to read an article or watch a video or listen to a podcast, they're much more likely to increase the rankings of your website because it is thinking and assuming accurately. You are providing content for potential people who are interested in purchasing things from your industry. If you're creating videos around subjects that are curiosities and things people are wondering about in your industry and they start consuming your videos or listening to your podcasts or reading your blog posts and see that you are very knowledgeable about what you do, it establishes you as an authority in your industry. It elevates you above other competition.

So it is a great element to then when people come to your site and see that you have all this additional information about things they're curious about in your industry and then can consume it, they're going to know and trust you more, and that is a key to gaining clients and customers is to have them know, like and trust you, and the more they can get to know you, the easier that process is going to be for them. Then on top of that, this also creates great opportunities for more social media posts. So often these days people are hiring people to do their social media and they're just kind of putting out random information and so forth and they're kind of disconnected from it. If you take the time to create some regular content, you can then take pieces from that content that you're putting out and utilize those as social media posts, tips and tricks or a piece from a video and then that can go out on social media and then drive people back to your website to consume that full article or that full video.

And the number one thing that it does is it provides value. So if you are creating regular content, hopefully you're creating content that is valuable for your potential clients or customers and through that, again, they're getting to know and trust you and when they do get to know, like, and trust you, it just makes it so much easier for them to step forward and work with your business or choose your business over another business. So now you're sold, you've decided you want to create content, but you are concerned that it's going to take a ton of time. I'm not going to lie, it does take some time. This is not something you can just use an AI platform and have it run with it for you. You can do that, but you're going to have a very low conversion. You're not going to be putting yourself out there or your business out there to its fullest extent.

There are some ways to utilize some of those AI platforms and I can make a future video about that. Put it down in the comments if you want me to do that. So there's one main thing that really simplifies the process of being able to create regular content for your website and for your business, and that is having an ongoing list of topic ideas. This is where most people get stuck. They're like, I don't know what to talk about. Well, I'll tell you some ways to find out what to talk about, but number one thing you want to do is set up a list. So I have it in my Google Keep on my phone, so it's with me all the time, so I can always be adding to this list and when I sit down to make a video, I go through the list and I pick something to talk about from the list and then I can check it off.

So it's really satisfying too to check it off. This is the number one thing. You can do it on Google Keep. You can do it on some other note taking platform on your phone. You can do it in a handheld book, whatever works for you, pick that route and stick to it, but create that list. How do you create the list? Now you might be wondering what should you talk about? The number one thing I always suggest clients to do is think about the most common questions they're asked. What is the question that everyone asks you when you're in your initial intake meeting? What is a question that everyone asks you in an email when they first reach out to you? Those questions are the best topics to make your first videos on. The other reason this is such a great idea is it will actually save you time.

You make this one video or blog post or podcast about this certain topic or question that's asked, and then when you get asked that question, you can then just direct people to that post on your website where you answer that question. And the beautiful thing is it's going to be much more in depth than if you just respond in an email and it's going to get them to then start engaging with your website. And potentially once they read that, they might go a little bit deeper and find some other subjects you talk about on the website. So this is the best place to start. What are the questions you're always asked? Make videos on that and it actually can save you time in your business moving forward because you'll have this library of resources then you can send your clients. Another beautiful piece to do in that exact same thing is if your clients are asking that potential clients that would maybe reach out to you are going to be curious about the same thing.

So they might be Googling it and your answer might be the one that comes up. And if they're looking for something in your industry, and again, they find that answer you're providing, who are they going to do business with? That's right, it's you. Number two way to find topics to discuss is what's happening in your industry? Are there new things that are changing? Are there seasonal things that are happening in your industry? So you can make a video. Let's say you're a gutter cleaning or a roofing service and it's fall. So it's fall about to turn to winter. It is absolutely time to clean the gutters. If you make a video about simple gutter maintenance or potentially solutions to make it easier to clean gutters in the future or keep them clean, that could be a great piece of content to throw out. Keep it top of mind.

It could be a problem. People are dealing with that day and you're creating the solution and resolution. They're going to reach out to you beyond those two ways to find topics. You can go and you can see what your competitors or people in your industry are talking about. If you are tapped into a newsletter about your industry, what subjects are in there? What can you take a piece out and talk about? So if you're a tax accountant and it's tax season and every year there's changes to tax laws and tax rules, make a video about some of the updates and changes that are happening and what people should be aware of. This is a great thing to do to then again, make sure people get to know, like and trust you and then more likely to do business with you. And then the last resource that's always a good one is going and just doing market research.

Go in Facebook groups, go on Reddit groups that are in your industry. Find out what people are concerned about, find out what questions people are asking and make videos around those subject topics. If there is a topic that is just blowing up, everybody's talking about it. That could be a great video for you to put out or a great blog to put out because if people are talking about it, people are looking it up and researching it, and you could become a great resource for providing information around that. So what are the questions being asked? What are topical things in your industry that are happening right now? What are subjects that your competitors or people in your industry are talking about right now and what questions being asked out there in Facebook groups and Reddit groups that you can then make content around that is the way to go.

It will give you a ridiculously long list of subjects to talk about. Put 'em on that list in your phone or on your notepad and get started. A concern a lot of my clients have when they come to me and they're talking about creating content or just thinking about creating content is they feel that it's already saturated. They feel that there's no reason in them creating videos or blog topics around this because other people are already doing it. I'm sure you were a kid one day and hopefully at one point in time someone gave you a piece of advice and it really, really hit because they gave you that advice. You made some good choices and moved in a good direction in your life. I guarantee you that same advice was probably given to you by someone else before that, but you were in the right place and the right moment and the right mindset for you to really absorb that piece of information.

People say things differently, it comes out cross. Different people use different analogies, so don't be afraid to put out content that is already being put out into the world. The way you say it, the way you present it is going to hit people differently and you're going to find people or people are going to find you and they're going to get value from what you say. Even if it's said a thousand times by a thousand other people, the way you say it will help people, it will provide a difference. So get out there, start creating some content, start building that list of ideas. So now you know where to find the subjects and you're feeling confident you should move forward on this, but you are absolutely concerned it's going to take a lot of time. And again, I'm not going to lie, this is something that does take time and investment, but as you get into it, as you do it, the more you do it, the better it'll get.

When I first started making these YouTube videos a few months ago, it would take me all day to put together a video. Now I'm getting to the point where I can do two videos in a day soon. Hopefully I can do three videos a day. And then the goal for me personally is to spend one day a month, which is pretty economical and be able to do my four to five videos that I'll be putting out that month. That is not that bad. Spend one day doing some of the best marketing you can do for your business a month. That's got a really nice payoff to it. Okay, the last thing to figure out here is how are you going to create that content? There's mainly three different ways to do it. You can do written blog posts, you can do podcasts, or you can do videos.

I suggest videos. Videos are amazing because people get to, especially if you're in a service-based industry, people get to know you and see how you interact and see how goofy you might be on video and decide whether they like that or not. It really shortens that time it for someone to get to know, like, and trust you. There's nothing better than seeing someone on video to decide whether you want to do business with them or not, other than being face-to-face with them. Number two would be podcasts because then they can hear your voice and again, feel like they're getting to know you a little bit better. And number three is written content. But I do not discourage you to pick written over video if that's what you're more comfortable in. Absolutely choose the path that you are going to be most comfortable in and get started and actually start creating content.

So get out there, start writing content, start recording content, whatever it is, and start growing your business. I hope you got great value from this. I hope you take a step into that. And if you know anyone else who might get value from this video, please share it with them. I'd appreciate it. As always, if you click the like button or subscribe if you haven't done that already, I'm still trying to get to one K by May. I don't know if it's going to happen, but I'm working on it and I hope you have a great day in great success. So there's one main element that really simplify the process of creating regular content. Let's try that again without the little bing ding, ding happening in the background.