Featuring Christopher Hensley
Content creation is not just producing videos or images and posting them on Social Media Platforms. Businesses and budding Digital marketers know that, to create content, there should be a laid down strategy to follow or adhere to. It is for this reason that Enoch invited Christopher Hensley, the host of the Money Matters podcast, a show dedicated to promoting financial literacy on today's episode of Colours of Social Media Podcast. Not only is Christopher an expert in Finance, but he is also a guru in creating strategies for Content meant for Social Media. This episode will guide you as a business owner or a digital marketer on the overall strategy to implement, including audience mapping, social media platforms, and last but not least, the ultimate KPI to measure when it comes to Content Creation.
[0:00] Welcome to Colours of Social Media podcast, the digital marketing podcast, offering insights, tips, and inspiration for small business owners and violent digital marketers.
[0:09] In this episode, I'm thrilled to have Christopher Hensley, a host of Money Matters, who is a live radio broadcast on KPFT HD3 in Houston, and not only does he know his way around finance, but he is a seasoned content strategist, and creator is not new.
[0:26] What really sets Christopher apart is his ability to communicate. For a decade, he has been the voice behind the podcast show Money Matters on KPFT Houston, where he demystifies complex financial concepts for a broad audience.
[0:42] His insights have been sought after by platforms like Wall Street Journal Radio and 1110 KTEK Business Builder's Network Radio, and he has provided expert commentary on market trends in renowned publications.
[0:58] In this episode, we unravel the art and science of content creation, where we explore strategies that not only grab attention, but also stand the test of time.
[1:08] Christopher brings a wealth of experience, having navigated the dynamic landscape of digital content creation. Now, what most people surely forget is that, as a business owner, you should be able to create your own content.
[1:24] The least you can do when it comes to content creation is to guide creatives in producing the right content for your business. Whether you are a seasoned content creator looking to refine your approach, or a newcomer eager to embark on the content creation journey, this episode is packed with actionable advice and real-world examples, from honing your creative process to leveraging their latest trends.
[1:50] Christopher shares his expertise to help you elevate your content gain. Now get ready for a deep dive into the strategies that make content clean, and a rainy monarch in the digital realm.
[2:03] Let's jump into this insightful conversation on content creation strategies with the one and only, Christopher Hensley. Hello, Christopher. Hi, Enoch.
[2:17] How are you doing? I'm great. How about you? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. First of all, I want to thank you for doing this. Welcome to Colours of Social Media Podcast.
[2:28] Absolutely. I appreciate you inviting me on the show, and I'm excited to be here. What do you expect from this episode? Yes, I know that one of the topics was content creation, so I really want to be able to share some of the experiences I've had over the past 20 years as a financial advisor, but also that I have a podcast as well.
[2:50] We're celebrating the 10-year anniversary. So I think I have some stuff that I can share from that area as well with the listeners and hope that they get a lot out of it.
[2:58] Tell me about your podcast. What did you talk about? Absolutely. So my podcast is Money Matters Podcast. So we're on the URL, www.MoneyMattersPodcast.com.
[3:11] I have to say the podcast part of it because I thought I was being unique when I picked Money Matters as the title. Really every financial advisor who puts a finance show together has picked the title Money Matters, so we're lucky enough to say that we're the one that has the podcast part of it on there, but we talk about finance, financial literacy, really anything that has to do with money, a lot of storytelling.
[3:40] We like to take it away from the talking heads where it's just about investments and focus really in on day-to-day regular people, retirement.
[3:50] How do we be successful with our finances and our money? So we are talking about content creation strategies for social media money, right? Right.
[4:00] Awesome. So Chris, can you tell us a bit about your background and experience in content creation and strategy? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when it comes to content creation, I wear a couple of different hats, right?
[4:14] I just shared with you about the podcast that I've been doing for the last 10 years. I also have my for-profit financial planning practice called Houston First Financial Group.
[4:26] I have experience with marketing really for the past 20 years in digital and creating content in both of these platforms, right? So the biggest experience, the podcast probably leads the way with, you know, we're on episode 300 and, you know, it started out as a live radio show at KPFT here in Houston.
[4:52] The terrestrial radio that's kind of going the way of the dinosaur, right? The podcast version was just a byproduct of that live recording. So we were in the studios.
[5:04] I would run the switchboard myself. And they had a digital channel, HD3, where they were also recording the MP3. And we just, you say, okay, well, let's do that as the podcast.
[5:18] Now fast forward 10 years into the future and, you know, the radio station in Houston, we get more listens out internationally than we do locally here in Houston.
[5:29] And the podcast is just the beginning because when we put that MP3 file out into the air and people get it on their podcatcher, it's being reposted on Facebook.
[5:39] It's being reposted on LinkedIn. It's being reposted on Twitter and Instagram, right? So there's all these different arms to just the one platform.
[5:50] And it's kind of that way with my for-profit business as well. So when I do webinars or I do seminars, I do a lot of public speaking. We have to market them.
[5:59] Each one of them's got a different marketing channel, right? For instance, if I want to get people to come to a webinar or seminar, I use email marketing, right?
[6:08] I know a lot of entrepreneurs are interested in how to use that, how to unlock email marketing. But with the social media stuff, you know, it's different.
[6:17] And I tell people that they have to be patient. It is. It does work. And it's something that if you're persistent and consistent with it, you'll see results.
[6:28] Right. One of the biggest tips I would give people when it comes to creating content, right, is going to be about understanding your audience.
[6:38] So I'm going to give you a very real example. I'm going to give you my what I call buyer persona, right? I don't think they call it that. This is 20 years ago we came up with this, but it's the idea of, you know, who is your listener or who is the person that you're trying to give the the content to that you're giving them the call to action?
[6:57] Right. For my business, it's a very specific niche, right? It's going to be people that are 55 and up. They're about one to two years away from retirement.
[7:07] They're all state employees and they have a pension. Right. So that's a very narrow niche. Right. But what that does is it allows me to filter out all of the noise, the people that won't necessarily like what I have to put in front of them.
[7:23] Right. It allows me to kind of drill down with a laser focus on who I want to reach. Right. And so that's really important. Another thing when we talk about content creation, going a little bit further on my audience, right, digital literacy for retirees.
[7:42] Right. So we've got a lot of younger people who we, you know, are tick tocking and instagramming and they don't have any problem with it. They they've consumed digital media their entire lives.
[7:52] But we've got an a much older generation that when we are writing content for social media, we have to take into consideration what level of digital literacy they have.
[8:03] Where are they most comfortable being met at? Is it tick tock? Nope. Is it Facebook? Probably. Is it LinkedIn where it's more professional? Most likely, yes.
[8:13] So that's that's my thoughts on some of the social media stuff right off the bat. All right. Thanks, Chris, for that. Now, let's circle around your target audience, because in your submission, you made mention of your target audience.
[8:28] Right. Now I want to know how do you approach defining and understanding your target audience when it comes to content creation? Yes. So this is I'm going to give you a sophisticated answer at the end, but I'm going to give you one very basic at the beginning.
[8:43] At the very beginning, when you're an entrepreneur and you're getting your business started, you're trying to be a generalist. You're trying to be kind of an answer to all things. Right.
[8:54] And in my business as a financial advisor, you have to be a generalist. You have to know a little bit about everything. But then you have to kind of move the needle forward and you have to be a specialist. Right.
[9:06] And part of knowing what your specialist, what you're going to be a specialist at is defining that niche. Right. And so it kind of makes you have to choose a side.
[9:16] Who am I going to be putting my business? You know, who am I trying to reach? Right. So understanding your audience, that buyer persona, I literally have to put myself into those shoes of that person. Right.
[9:32] So I mean, this is a little extreme, but I have to eat, drink, breathe, read everything that a person of that age who is about to retire. What are their worries?
[9:43] What are their concerns? What keeps them up at night and what's going to make them feel better to be on the other side of that journey? Right. To know that they can retire. Right.
[9:55] You have to steep yourself into that information. Right. So for me, when I was getting started in the business, you know, before this, it's now a mature practice.
[10:05] I'm 20 years into it. Right. But when I first got started, you kind of don't even know who that is. And so you'll start getting a kind of a cluster or a group of clients.
[10:14] And that's going to help shape who you are putting your message together for. Now, I'm going to give you that sophisticated answer because the buyer persona is kind of a thing, right?
[10:26] We're just talking about and I'm thinking about it. But I'm going to fast forward now and we've brought in technology, AI on board. Right. So, you know, the most current version of the buyer persona for me is a chat GPTS where we've uploaded everything about our company and who that that same person that I just described it to you.
[10:49] Right. So if I'm going to put a piece of social media out there, if I'm going to put a piece of email marketing together, I run that through my chat GPTS that I created myself.
[11:00] And it gives me a shape for that. It says that, you know, your buyer persona would like this because this, that or the other. Or it may say you've forgotten the digital literacy rating of your of your buyer persona.
[11:14] You need to add this, that or the other. So I do want, you know, it can be as simple as just knowing your market personalization, right? Or it can be as complex as building something like that down the road when you have enough information to feed it and you know who you're really going after. Right.
[11:32] Let's talk about the elements of content strategy. Right. What do you believe are the key elements of a successful content strategy? Yes. So that is going to be individual per campaign.
[11:46] Right. So you really kind of got to break that down into what you're doing and what your end result is. Right. I can give you a use case for me.
[11:56] One of the biggest things I was on a podcast yesterday and we talked about email marketing. So some of the same some of the same principles will apply, whether it's email or whether it's digital content that we're putting out in social media.
[12:11] But, you know, what is your what is your call to action? What is your purpose? What are you trying to get them to do? My use case is, you know, I do a lot of public speaking.
[12:20] I do a lot of webinars. That's since the pandemic. We've gone from doing in-person dinner seminars to webinars. And we went from Houston all the way to Ohio and California.
[12:32] And so we were able to kind of clone what we were doing. Right. But the end result is when I send an email out, I want that person to sign up for my webinar. Right.
[12:42] So you don't want to give them. I'm a big fan of long form, which you won't hear a lot of people say that. But in this use case, I'm giving you you kind of need a short form. Right.
[12:53] You don't want to give them too much information. You want to give them exact you want to target it. You want to personalize it. You want to make sure that it answers.
[13:01] It's a solution to their problem and it answers the questions that they have. But you don't you want to give them one very specific thing. You know, for for somebody who's trying to sell a product, it would be buy this product.
[13:12] For me, I'm just trying to get them to come to a webinar for educational information towards, you know, eventually down the road, possibly hiring me to work, work for them. Right.
[13:23] But this is the beginning of that sales funnel. Right. If you want to sound salesy about it. That's the very beginning of the sales funnel. I do like to make an argument for long form, though.
[13:35] And let me tell you why, because of the age group that I work with, you know, we don't we don't ever sit down and write letters to each other anymore.
[13:44] Right. We used to, you know. And so now, even when you're hiring somebody, right, if you get an assistant or if you're hiring somebody to work for you, do not discount the ability to just put your words into thoughts on paper.
[14:01] Right. The ability to communicate a long form email. Right. And so my target market or audience is an older age group. And for for that type of information, often they appreciate a little bit longer.
[14:16] Right. So maybe a newsletter, maybe something that's educational content. That's going to get them engaged. And if they're interested, they'll keep coming back. Right.
[14:25] So that's that's a couple of different things there on some strategies towards good content creation. I'm going to stop there and let you ask me some questions.
[14:37] Right. I feel like I can just keep going. I know. Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't know whether to catch you or because I have a bunch of questions to ask you.
[14:46] And it seems you are just spinning it out without me asking. So, Chris, take your time. Let me ask you the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right.
[14:55] So many businesses struggle with, you know, consistently creating content. Now, what advice do you have for maintaining a consistent content?
[15:05] Production schedule. OK, yeah, yeah, yep. So, you know, after 10 years of doing podcasts that, you know, and 20 years of having the business, this is a real thing, right?
[15:17] This is the hustle. This is the grind. This is the part where, you know, you're actually doing the work. So, you know, step one, you have to do the work.
[15:26] You have to do it if you're not. Podfade is a thing, right? We know a lot of podcasts that have started and then they've just kind of disappeared, right?
[15:38] You know, that's the the one extreme. And then there's the other extreme. I had some unrealistic goals where I was doing a podcast every year.
[15:47] Let's see. I was doing a live radio show every single week for the first two or three years of the show. Right. I'm now at a point where if I do one or two a month, we're not on a schedule because I'm not doing it live.
[16:02] You know, it's not we can do post production stuff right with technology. But before we were live radio shows. So it was, you know, you're right on target on the time and all of that stuff.
[16:14] This is a little bit more comfortable for me, right? And so that's important with anything that somebody shows up and signs up to do. You got to be realistic and make sure that it fits within your your guardrails of time, right? Good time management.
[16:29] But on the other hand, make sure that you're if you're going to sign up for it, if you're going to do it, you have to do it consistently. You have to be persistent about it.
[16:40] The whole idea is that, you know, these kinds of strategies, it's a long patient game, right? So it will pay off, but you have to be doing it for quite some time in order for it to get you to get the biggest reward. Right.
[16:56] I can give you some some real life examples of people that I've sent emails for for right. I've sent them out. They never even attended one of my webinars or they never went to one of my dinner seminars.
[17:08] And then three or four years later, I get an email from them and saying, you know, Chris, I'm ready to retire. I want to come see you. I was like, oh, did you go to my TRS talk or my Social Security talk?
[17:19] And they're like, no, I've just gotten your emails for the past three years. And I knew whenever I was ready, you were there. And that that that stuff happens, you know, so it's about being patient.
[17:31] It's about consistency, you know, being real when you feel that that burnout or that you're kind of going to grinding too much, right? You got to be realistic and make sure you have the bandwidth to do that.
[17:45] I think this advice actually goes to me. I actually will keep this. Yeah, because it's really important to maintain a schedule, especially if you decide to take it upon yourself to educate the whole masses about digital marketing.
[18:00] OK, let's settle in storytelling here. Do you have any storytelling techniques that have proven successful for you or even your clients or even a storytelling important in content creation?
[18:14] Heck, yeah, so storytelling is probably one of the most important things that you can do, whether you're on a podcast, whether you're doing a pub, you're doing public speaking webinar, right?
[18:30] Let me give you an example. The kind of stuff that I talk about, Social Security pensions. You can literally have people falling asleep in the audience, right?
[18:38] If you're not excited, you know, and I get a big break because I'm I'm working with higher education. So these are professors that are kind of used to the academia and the lecture approach.
[18:50] So I feel like they they give me a discount, right? But the reality of it is the best talks that I've done have included stories, right? And it's not a story with intention, right?
[19:03] With intent. So I will whittle in three stories if I can. You're always going to want to start with a really good attention getter, right? So you don't want to make it too long, but you want to have something that will pull them in and get them engaged and get them smiling and getting getting them laughing.
[19:22] Right. You're going to get some energy in the room or you're going to you're going to you're going to kind of set the mood and get people going.
[19:28] Right. But then you have the job of educating. So so then you got to go back and kind of, you know, educate, educate, information, information, information.
[19:36] And then the middle of the presentation, it's really important to get them engaged. This could be another story. It could be taking a poll. It could be asking them to to raise their hand for a survey.
[19:48] I'm going to give you a real cheap one that I do. All right. This is about the cheapest laugh that you can get. There's something called laugh yoga.
[19:55] OK. And the way you do this is is before you even start the presentation, you go into the room and you say, OK, everybody stand up and make eye contact with somebody next to you. Right.
[20:08] And then I want you to start laughing. And I want you to to just keep laughing. And I'm going to hold my fingers up and I'm going to go one, two, three.
[20:18] And I go all the way through 10 seconds. And people are trying to make eye contact. And it's just embarrassing. It's kind of like in church when they make you get up and shake hands.
[20:27] And you're like, I don't really want to do that. Right. So what it does is is it you can you can feel the energy level in the room go up right from the beginning.
[20:36] And so it gives you a good start. Then you got the story in the middle. And then you end with that call to action. And if there's something you can do, you never waste a close. Right.
[20:45] You want to make sure to leave a good story or a good impact at the end. Super duper important. You know, even if we're talking about digital creation.
[20:55] Yes. You can use this story. Yes. How do you how do you do this with digital? Yeah. So there. So I would give a book recommendation on that. There's a there's a book called a story brand or story selling.
[21:13] It's Donald Miller. I may have gotten the title wrong, but it's the author is Donald Miller. Right. And the idea is working on that story brand.
[21:24] That's it. Thank you. That that the name slipped my brain there. But a story brand is is is fantastic because what it does is it uses that same story narrative and it applies it to all of our digital marketing.
[21:40] And I'm a big believer in that. You know, even though I'm in finance, English and philosophy was what I studied in college. And so the idea of the the hero's journey and and you being the guide and taking them from point A to B, if you go to my website, Houston First Financial Group Dotcom and you look at the website, it doesn't look really fancy, right?
[22:03] It's kind of we've homemade some stuff together, right? But it is set up in accordance to that story brand where everything that we have on there is an answer for us taking that pre-retiree all the way through retirement.
[22:20] And so we were able to whittle in examples and we're giving, you know, versions of showing people that we've helped and and those types of things along to get them to the other side.
[22:32] You can apply that same blueprint, right? The hero's journey, Joseph Campbell. That's what they're using in that book. You can apply that to every single piece of content, really.
[22:45] And it's a good kind of a litmus test. You know, not everything will fit into it, but it's a good place to start. Thanks for the recommendation, Chris.
[22:52] Now, at the beginning of this conversation, we started with your background in content cursive. Right. We got that. And we talk about content creation strategies.
[23:03] We talked about our target audience. Now I want us to talk about content distribution. Right. But before you talk about content distribution, let's go for a short break.
[23:15] And when we come back, we'll talk about how to distribute our content on social media platforms. Sounds like a plan. So for the past two weeks or so, I've been posting everywhere, you know, inviting you, my listeners, to join an exclusive WhatsApp channel. I've created for this podcast.
[23:36] Now, I feel like you don't believe me. So I invited a member of the WhatsApp channel to tell you the benefit he's getting since he joined. My name is Omar, and I'm part of the exclusive WhatsApp channel for Kalaso Social Media.
[23:48] Being part of that group gives me the opportunity to enjoy the content a week before it comes out. Also get the opportunity to ask questions and also get to know who is going to be featured every week before it takes place.
[24:00] If you want to enjoy this, join the WhatsApp group also. Thank you. Now, you believe me, I'm still inviting you. If you want to join the Kalaso Social Media podcast WhatsApp channel, top of click on the link in the show notes.
[24:13] Now, this will give you the chance to get all that Omar is saying. See you there. So welcome back to Kalaso Social Media podcast. This episode I have with me, Christopher Hensley, and we are talking about content creation strategy.
[24:34] Before we went for the break, we talked about content creation, how to get your target audience right. And now we are going to talk about content distribution.
[24:44] So I'll leave it to Chris to tell us what are some of the effective strategies for getting your content in front of the right people. Yes. So distribution is a is a is a big one, right?
[24:56] Because there's so many different platforms out there. We talked earlier about the different hats that I wear. Right. I know for the the invites that I send, that is email marketing, right?
[25:08] And I do a good bit of volume on that. And so that's direct marketing via email. The podcast, on the other hand, that's going to be social media.
[25:16] Right. So we're putting that out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you know, YouTube now, which is huge. It's in fact, the the short form videos are getting way more hits than the than the podcast, which is, you know, people's attention spans are really short.
[25:32] Right. But that is a thing that is is I'm seeing heavy numbers and people just watching the short reels. The reason I'm bringing this up is that any time we distribute content, right, deliverables for somebody, we have to think about experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
[25:56] Right. That's E-E-A-T. And the reason I'm bringing that up is if you know about search engine optimization, this is the acronym that Google has provided us for the rules on how to get your content noticed and ranked in the search engines.
[26:13] Right. Yeah. If you if you want to get into the search engine optimization for your website or if you went out and did a blog or even a podcast post, right, if I did a podcast and then I wanted to transcribe it and put my podcast notes on there, but I wanted it to get ranked in Google.
[26:32] We don't have to guess. Google has given us an 80 page document that tells us the rules for what they're looking for to to rank. And when the bots go out and they scrape the Internet and they're, you know, pushing stuff up to the top, it's going to be experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness that E-E-A-T. Right.
[26:56] So being conscious of that and making SEO rich titles, right, making SEO rich content and long form when you do when you make these posts is going to help you accomplish that goal.
[27:13] And I'm going to go a little bit further. So if I have any other podcasters out there, I know you're you're a podcaster. But I'm bringing AI back in here.
[27:21] Because, you know, you are allowed to do it for quite some. Thank you. And so, you know, the AI is is able to do a lot of stuff for us. So I actually built a a chat GPS and you can recreate this or, you know, if you email me at Christopher Dot Hinsley at Cambridge Secure Dotcom, I can share this with you for free.
[27:45] Let me tell you what it is. All I did is I took the 82 page PDF from Google that tells us about search engine optimization. And I said, I'm a podcast host and I'm going to be transcribing my podcast.
[28:01] I'm going to feed you the transcription. And I want you to make a post for me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube. And I want it to be optimized for search engine optimization following the rules that I gave you.
[28:16] Wow. Put that all in in one GPS. And so now when I do my podcast, I use Audible or Audible. I use Audacity to edit it. I'm still like old school. Yeah, I went in there and I use this little stream deck here where I can push my button on chat GPS for that and then throw the transcription in there and then have it feedback the the content.
[28:43] Now, we do know that that artificial intelligence, I would say human assisted artificial intelligence. We're not quite there yet. It does spit back some crazy stuff sometimes.
[28:54] So this this is your opportunity to go back and check. And, you know, anything that's going on social media, it's going to live there forever. Right.
[29:02] So we got to make sure to go back and it and it engages us. It's not like we're just letting the machine do it. We're we're going back into it.
[29:11] We're editing it. We're making sure that our points are in there. Transcription is famous for spelling people's names wrong, right? Little nuances like that.
[29:20] So we can go back and double check for that. But that's one of the things, as far as distribution and SEO that I've been been using lightly that pops into my head there.
[29:30] Also, I'm loving this conversation, Chris, seriously. Yeah. So, Chris, let's let's let's continue. Can you share some example of content marketing campaigns or let's say projects that you've been involved in that achieve outstanding a resource with us? Yes, yes.
[29:48] So these are always not always, but a lot of times they're surprises. And what I can tell you on that is, you know, part of getting my podcast, the longevity and getting it up and running.
[30:02] And I think I'm not the only one. A lot of podcasters will go out and they'll find quality guests and they'll try to find, you know, people with the most credibility that they can.
[30:10] Right. Because you're going to be sharing their audience. Right. And so that was a strategy that I used. I was like, I'm going to go out and get best selling authors. Right.
[30:21] I'm going to get, you know, people that have a big wide range and I'm going to I'm going to get them on the show. That does work. Right. But another thing that works is when you have local guests and they have a huge network and you don't even know about it.
[30:35] And so every time you you you on the podcast, every time I've had somebody on the show, I send them an email afterwards and I always say, please share this with your newsletter, your natural market, your friends and family.
[30:52] Some of the best shows that we've had have been a result of you sharing this. And of course, we're going to share it on our side with everybody and push it out to listeners.
[31:02] And I've been shocked because there there have been people that you'll go through the whole podcast with and they're experts. But you wouldn't necessarily think that they have a big network.
[31:12] Yeah. And then it turns out that they have, you know, following on LinkedIn and they've got a newsletter and all of this stuff. And so it's like happy accidents like that.
[31:21] That is, you know, I'm trying to think of a specific one because it's happened so many times and every time I'm like, OK, that's a cool thing. So.
[31:31] OK, so let's talk about the evolution of our digital landscape. You just made we've been talking about AI. I think if I'm not mistaken, you've mentioned AI for like three times here in this conversation.
[31:42] So let's let's talk about evolution in our digital landscape. How do you stay updated and adapt to your content strategies to new trends and technologies?
[31:53] Yes, so I'm probably a little extra there because I'm a I'm a techie. I you know, I yeah. You know, when I came out or like like AI has been out for like 20 years and people just didn't technology, though, as a small business owner, technology is really one of the only leverage points.
[32:13] It's not the only one, but it's one of the ones that a small business owner can really use. Right. And so I had to make a decision when we, you know, when AI became the next big thing and you hear everybody talking about it and we get saturated with it and we're about sick of hearing about it at this point, I had to make it I had to make a decision.
[32:35] It was either embrace it or, you know, you don't want to be the cut bleeding edge where you go out first and then the mistakes come and they fire the CEO and then you're using the platform and it doesn't exist anymore. Right.
[32:48] But but I digress. So but with with AI, it's such a time saver. And if you're not on board with it or ready, you're going to be kind of left behind. Right.
[33:02] It's not it's human assisted. It's going to be it's every it's already kind of everywhere. And it's one of those things like it's like medical ethics, right?
[33:13] Or bioethics. Science and technology will move forward. Should we do that? What are the guardrails? What are some of the things that we do that ethics and the morals of it?
[33:24] We will go back and we'll put those guardrails in place. But the trains already left the station. So it's not a question of if it's it's here. Right.
[33:32] So I went out and got if anybody's interested, Vanderbilt University through Corsa offers a free AI course. They have two of them. One is on prompt engineering and ones on data analytics.
[33:47] So I took the data analytics one and got the certification through there. And then the one that's on prompt engineering, I'm about halfway through it.
[33:57] And I'm a two man office here. And so I actually had my assistant do the same thing. So because we're such a small business, we, you know, we don't want to be left behind by the competition.
[34:08] So we did that fast forward about six months into the future. And we're using chat GPT on a daily basis. It's it's a it's a real time saver. It's human assisted.
[34:20] So it's not like it's doing all the work for us. And that I think that's what a lot of people's worry is. It's it's a tool. And it's like anything.
[34:30] If you take the time to get educated on it and learn it, it's going to kind of, you know, push you into that next level. Right. So I would say embrace it there.
[34:40] I see the pros and cons on both sides. There will be entire industries that will will have to retool. Right. But that's that's that's been life forever.
[34:51] Right. You know, different careers. People have had to do career changes and that sort of thing. So this is the new digital, you know, AI canvas for us for the future. Right.
[35:03] So. All right. So, Chris, you mentioning data and analytics sort of lighted a bulb in my brain. So I just want to ask you this question before we continue.
[35:14] What role do data and analytics play in content creation and strategy? And how can content creators effectively use data to optimize the efforts?
[35:25] Yes. So be honest with yourself. If you for I'm going to I'm going to use my email marketing campaigns that I do. Right. So if you do a subject headline and you think you got the perfect one and it's a dud because it doesn't convert, people aren't signing up.
[35:44] This is not a guessing thing. You have metric of analytics. You can pull up these analytics on anything, whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, what are the what's the downloads?
[35:55] What's the engagements? What's the how does it convert? Right. And then sometimes we have too much analytic information or metrics. Right. I call those vanity, vanity analytics or vanity number metrics.
[36:09] Yes. Vanity metrics. Because what it does is some of this stuff makes us feel good because we're getting a lot of views and we can see we're getting some traffic there.
[36:18] But you're not converting it either into sales. If you're somebody who's business models, you're trying to sell a product. Or for me, where I'm trying to get, you know, butts to see people to come and watch my webinars or my educational events. Right.
[36:32] So if you don't get that conversion part of it, the data analytics is huge because, you know, I've been doing this for for many years and I've got years of data where I can go back and say, I know this one really well.
[36:46] Now, this one over here in California is not quite working. What's the difference? And feeding that into chat GPT and having, you know, the CVS file and going back and asking it questions and it can create all of this stuff that you can download from your, you know, your your back end matrix, right?
[37:05] You can recreate that as visuals and in AI. So it's really I know I'm bringing up AI again. But but this is something you can continue to do with AI as well.
[37:17] It's the idea of having a B testing. It's the idea that there's all you know, you're always looking to to tweak it, adjust it just a little bit.
[37:26] So and sometimes those crazy small details are the thing, the difference between somebody opening the email or watching the video or downloading the episode. Right.
[37:37] Now, Chris, I don't know about you, but over here, content creation involves a lot of people, a lot of collaboration. So in a case of collaborating with other people to create content, what advice do you have for effective collaboration and project management?
[37:55] Yeah, yeah. So so I'm a bit of a solo printer. When I say that, I've got my assistant and we're like a we're like a killer team of two, right? But thinking about collaboration and in teams of really creatives putting stuff together, I can share with you that that over the years, I've used marketing interns.
[38:17] I've used audio interns at the at the radio show. And they've, you know, educated me on the technology where I didn't even you know, they pointed me in some of the paths.
[38:28] So what I like to say is ask for help, right? Human beings have a hard time asking for help, right? No man is an island. You can't do everything on your own.
[38:38] And collaboration, that's really where we see some magic happen. Right. Some of the best stuff that whether it's content or just good ideas, you know, you're never going to know everything about all things, right?
[38:51] Bringing in somebody else to either fill in the gaps or to collaborate with is a very positive thing. So be open to that. I personally don't turn down any collaborative stuff occasionally.
[39:04] Occasionally, I'll turn something down. But most of the time when somebody asked me to work with them on something, there's it's usually a win-win for both of us.
[39:12] So it's usually something that I'm going to say yes to. I'm going to seek those out. And I would encourage people to do the same. With that being said, I'm going to put a little asterisk here on quality.
[39:27] Right. Yeah. Because part of what you're doing is the importance of reputation. Right. Yeah. So you do always want to make sure that there's the flavor of your message that you're not doing anything that kind of strays away from your message.
[39:42] Right. Yeah. There is a lot of bad content out there. Right. We know what it is. It's hard to describe, but if we see it, you know, we'll get those emails that you open them and you're like, oh, this is just annoying. Right.
[39:54] Black Friday is a good example of getting tons of tons of stuff on buying stuff on Friday. Right. We're saturated with it. So you never really want to be you don't want your message to be part of that.
[40:05] So this is just a reminder about the importance of reputation. Don't sign off on anything that's hokey. But with that being said, that's an exception, right?
[40:13] Generally, always say yes. Be open to working with people. You're going to be surprised at what it comes up with. I mean, I'm surprised at what I'm hearing now because when I decided to work with you, you know, we met in the Facebook podcast group and I made I made a new saint an email over and I'm being surprised.
[40:32] Yeah, I'm being marvel about this deeper knowledge. I appreciate this. I love it. That's a that's a huge example. The podcast guest and podcast contributor group.
[40:43] Yeah, it's kind of a crapshoot. You don't know what you're going to get, right? And here's a really good connection. Yeah. So I think I appreciate you inviting me on to the show to share.
[40:54] All right. So, Chris, we've talked about content creation since the beginning of this episode. We've talked about our target audience. We've talked about how to distribute our content on these social media platform.
[41:07] Now, I want us to talk about the measure of success. How do we measure the success of our content strategy? And most importantly, what KPIs or metrics do you consider most important when it comes to content creation?
[41:22] OK, yeah. So the proof's in the pudding, right? My wife likes to remind me of this. Well, in my business, a lot of the stuff that I do, you can do you'll get excited.
[41:35] You'll do a whole bunch of work on it. You won't necessarily see anything. It could be six months down the road. It could be a year before stuff transfers over.
[41:44] So the proof's in the pudding, right? She's my wife's really good at reminding me of that. Where's the paycheck? So so she's right. You know, she's 100 percent right about that.
[41:54] Sometimes we need a kick in the butt to remind ourselves things that things have to to to actually put food on. You know, we love doing stuff for free and help people out. Right.
[42:07] But at the end of the day, we all have to put groceries on the table. Right. So I think that it that is a really good litmus test of what, you know, what is a really good analytic?
[42:18] Is it putting cash in our pockets? Is it is it provide you giving us the paycheck that we need? Almost second to that, if we're not putting a dollar sign next to it.
[42:29] Right. Yeah. Is going to be just the call to action. What are we persuading? And that sounds bad, but persuasion is a good thing. I persuade people to do things that they need to do anyway.
[42:40] Get a wheel, get ready for retirement. Nobody likes doing that, but you persuade them in a positive way. Right. But what are you trying to persuade somebody to do?
[42:50] And do they actually do that? And if that's the call to action. So, you know, for my email marketing, it's going to be them signing up for the webinar.
[42:59] But if it's watching a video or if it's listening to a podcast, it's clearly telling people, you know, what you need them to do, that call to action, kind of making a hit, hitting them in the face. Right.
[43:11] As far as a big button, you know, play here, hit now and sign up now. That's you know, that's that short attention span where you have to to to kind of make it really easy for everybody to work with you. Right.
[43:27] KPIs, that's a good one. Let me thank you for a second with the KPIs. It's really for me, it's a it's about the the revenue that it generates for my business.
[43:40] There is, you know, and when I when I say that, it almost sounds like, well, you're not spending your time doing anything that doesn't pay check.
[43:49] But that's not true. I can tell you for sure there are going to be a lot of things that I've done over the last 20 years that are are free things. Right.
[43:57] But but it's a long term investment. And if you're patient with some things, it will it will grow into what you want it to grow into. There's two big debates here.
[44:08] There's one, like never work for free. And then there's there's, you know, never work for free. And then there's give some stuff away for. It's been in the kind of and I've kind of been in the camp for free because, you know, people, if they want to trust you, they've got to know you.
[44:25] They got to see some of the stuff that you've done. So, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I can give you an example of like a like social security. A lot of financial advisors don't really go down the social security path because it can get complicated.
[44:40] And I help people with their social security. I do reports for them. But that doesn't necessarily translate into as much money as the investment piece, which I also do. Right.
[44:50] But over the years, the person who came to me with the social security question ended up doing business with me separately from that because they started with that.
[45:01] So I would encourage people also, you know, if no matter what service industry you're in, giving people something of value that keeps them throwing the ball back and keeps them engaged with you is really key to building those long term relationships.
[45:20] Awesome. Awesome. Now, I know with every industry, it is not always rosy. And same thing applies to content creation. So can you share any common content creation mistakes that businesses should avoid or something that you've come across that you think no business should do this again?
[45:44] Yeah, so I could write a book on the the you know, the eggs that we've broken in the kitchen, right? These are these are always the most difficult lessons to learn.
[45:57] But most of the time you you learn them and you learn them once. Right. For content creation, you know, there's nothing worse than hosting a webinar, getting all exciting and having one person on there.
[46:09] Right. You know, uploading a podcast that hasn't been edited properly or finding out that, you know, the maybe you misspelled a name or something like that.
[46:22] So it's a little, you know, it's a you want to you want to, you know, quality, you know, in the digital world, this stuff lives out there forever.
[46:30] If you don't catch it, gosh forbid somebody comes and pointed out to you and say, hey, you misspelled my name or something like that. Right. But I do want to leave listeners with a with a good story because some of the worst things that you you think that you've done wrong can still work for you. So so, you know, there are lots of roadblocks.
[46:52] There are lots of things that can go wrong. You know, one of my best clients, I went out and did a financial literacy talk at a local community college and this guy was falling asleep in the audience.
[47:06] I mean, he was literally snoring, right? And he ended up after the presentation calling me and hiring me to be his financial adviser. And he is one of my best clients still to this day.
[47:20] And so, you know, it's one of those things where even sometimes when you're not doing your best, if you're patient and you're consistent, it still will pay off for you.
[47:30] So that's not to say that you that's not a license to make mistakes. Yeah. Those roadblocks, those mistakes are always going to be there. I would definitely recommend, you know, asking somebody, tapping a mentor or somebody that you know, that's kind of been done that before, tap them and just ask them.
[47:52] You know, that's how I've gotten quite a few of the guest is just by by asking. And a lot of people don't. Right. So worst that they can say is no. Right.
[48:01] But asking people who've done the thing that you're trying to do, what mistakes that they've seen. And that's really a good way to avoid them.
[48:13] Email marketing, I've been blacklisted from doing mass email marketing from some servers. And what happens is you have to end up, you know, I'm not going to use constant contact.
[48:25] I'm going to use a MailChimp or something like that. Right. And there's a reason for that kind of stuff. And there's spam laws and all of that stuff.
[48:35] And so you need to respect people's privacy. Privacy. And you need to have that opt in on the on the emails and all of that stuff. Right. The reason I'm sharing that with you is that it's it's important to kind of know all of those rules around your target market and be respectful.
[48:54] That's why we have the unsubscribe feature on there. If they don't want it, they'll unsubscribe. I never want to be annoying, right? You don't want to leave that impersonation.
[49:02] So. All right. So, Chris, for your last task, I want you to be a CEO. Right. So I want you to tell us your predictions for the future of content creation and strategy.
[49:22] Yes. So, you know, I'm going to go back to A.I. And I hate to be like kind of a broken record on that. You knew that's where I was heading. Right.
[49:31] So for for digital creation, that is where it's where it's going. I mean, I'm I'm in my head. I've got this book about podcasting and A.I. But and it's an old guy like me who started out on terrestrial radio and is now using A.I. for the podcast and that journey to get there.
[49:52] That's every creator, right? There's stuff that we were doing manually that, you know, you can drop the MP3 and it's doing the transcription for you, the what we have to worry about. Right.
[50:05] Here's the negative part is people who are just straight graphic designers, copywriter or copy editors, right? People who who are in that part of marketing who don't adapt.
[50:21] That's going to be that's going to be a problem. So when I say human assisted, it's the idea of people learning about how A.I. can complement or work with it with what they're currently doing.
[50:33] You're not going to replace an art, a true artist, right? You're not going to replace it. That's not that's not going to happen. It just doesn't.
[50:41] It won't translate, right? A lot of the stuff that we're seeing coming out looks canned. You read it and it's like, OK, it's just a little bit off, right?
[50:49] Some of the A.I. are the arms are messed up a little bit. There's an extra finger, something like that, right? But the scary thing is that it's they're fixing a lot of that stuff.
[51:00] It's moving to the direction where it's going to be more so on the passable side than the not passable side. So so with that, I would encourage people to see how they can complement what they're already doing.
[51:13] And I think the biggest thing is it's going to be a time saver for everybody. So you can't let yourself become stagnant. You have to retool, reeducate the, you know, some of these tools are just fantastic and it will just give you extra time to do the stuff that can't be replaced, that true artist, that creator, the stuff that you want to do.
[51:36] You can spend more time giving that feel to your content. Hopefully, that's the idea. That's where I'm trying to be an optimist about it. If we're in Terminator 5.
[51:49] I can't speculate about that, you know, but I am an optimist and I see that that's that's where I would like things to go. Let me say that. Also, also optimistic Christopher Hensley.
[52:02] Thank you so much for joining me. Oh, that's your new name, by the way. Joining me on that. I love it. I'll truly, truly thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate your presence.
[52:15] Absolutely. Thank you for having me on the show. Have a good one. You too. Bye bye. Thank you for tuning in for another Colours of Social Media podcast episode.
[52:34] If today is the first time you've listened to this podcast, subscribe and hit the notification bell on Spotify to avoid missing an episode. Our guest for today's episode was Christopher Hensley, the host of Money Matters Radio, a show dedicated to promoting financial literacy.
[52:51] You can reach out to him on LinkedIn via Christopher Hensley or visit his website, moneymatterspodcast.com. Colours of Social Media podcast is a builder studios production.
[53:02] My name is Enoch RobotBoy Appiah Junior. See you same time next week.