📚 The “Content Creation Hierarchy” explained

Today I’m going to share with you a more efficient approach to content creation that I’m adopting.

Something I’ve dubbed the “content creation hierarchy.”

Let’s dive in…

At the start of the year I began posting a little on Facebook and Instagram.

Not because I wanted to, but because I thought I had to.

In reality, it was probably a smart move. It got me my first 70 newsletter subscribers.

But I quickly realised it’s largely a waste of time for me beyond those first few weeks.

It just DOES NOT make sense to me that there are people focusing solely on an Instagram and Facebook first organic content strategy.

What do I mean by that?

Almost every post on IG & FB have a shelf life of a few hours. You’re forever on the content hamster wheel, and as soon as you stop posting, you’re no longer relevant.

To a certain degree that’s true for all platforms, but less so for Youtube or Podcasting.

When you post a YouTube video, it not only has the potential to gain new subscribers in the first few days, but it can also be optimized for search as well.

It’s possible that a video you create today, is still appearing at the top of search terms in 5 years time.

Gaining you thousands of new subscribers for work you did many years before!

That doesn’t happen on IG or FB!

This is where the “content creation hierarchy” comes in.

It’s a structured way to approach content creation, by leveraging your time in much more productive ways.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1 is to focus your time at the top of the pyramid. Create 1 or 2 long form pieces of content each week – podcast, Youtube, Newsletter (maybe blog post, but preferably call it a newsletter)

From that comes 2-3 short clips or snippets, 5-10 Reels (they could be text overlay or shorts videos) and 50+ text social posts that can also be turned into images.

In fact, I’d say those amounts are conservative. It’s actually possible to create hundreds of high quality content pieces from 1 hours work.

I covered the exact process in this YouTube Video: Create 73 High Quality Social Posts In 3 Minutes.

As the entrepreneur or content creator of your brand, all you need to do is focus on producing one or two high-quality long form pieces of content.

Then using AI and 1 or 2 VA’s, they can repurpose that content in hundreds of high quality posts for all other social channels.

If you don’t have time to do all 4-steps or the money to hire a VA, simply start with the top of the pyramid, then slowly add the other steps.

That’s what I’m doing right now.

Two weeks ago I started to focus on Youtube. Currently I’m averaging 12 new subscribers per day and over 400 views.

More on this soon! Next, let’s back this theory up with some data and real world results…

As reported by Neil Patel, who works with some of the largest brands in the world, a whopping 42% of brands said they would decrease social media budgets in 2023 due to organic reach continually declining and organic social media not providing as high of an ROI as it used to.

He provided another report that showed the lowest ROI marketing activity for almost every brand is social media.

For my pet care brand, we had a social media manager when we were scaling quickly. This year we decided to scale our team back from 8 VA’s to just 2. The social media manager was one we let go of.

Now, we’ve basically stopped doing social media. If one of our current VA’s has time, she’ll throw up a few posts here and there.

We now focus solely on keeping it simple, and doing ONLY what makes us money; summits, workshops, emails and ads.

That’s it!

Our revenue has decreased by 50%. But our profit has remained the same.

We’ve gone from a 13% profit margin to now a 40% margin!

The best part though…

My work week for that brand has gone from 6 days per week to less than 1 day per week.

I no longer have to manage a big team. We are no longer spread thin in multiple projects with no idea what’s really working.

If I MUST only do organic marketing, what would I do?

Now, I know not everyone wants to run ads. I get it.

So if I had to only do organic marketing, what would I do?

Well, I’m actually doing that for my personal brand right now.

First, focus on step 1 of the hierarchy: YouTube (highest preference), and a weekly newsletter.

YouTube audiences are much more valuable than any other channel. When people see you showing up regularly, and producing high quality video content, you build a lot of trust.

Brands also pay a much higher fee for brand sponsorships to YouTube creators. This should tell you something!

Once I’m at about $10k per month in profit for my personal brand, that’s when I’ll bring on a social media virtual assistant to help me scale aggressively on all other platforms, producing hundreds of pieces of content per week.

But right now, it makes no sense at all to do that!

The punchline is this…

For the first 7 years of building businesses I rarely put much thought into planning, processes and systems.

I moved from strategy to strategy, doing things that others said I should, and neglecting the parts of the business that actual drive the business forward.

I spent way too much time spinning my wheels!

When AI got traction in 2022, I quickly realised that while I may have got away with no planning, processes or systems for all of those 7 years, moving forward there’s no way you’ll be able keep up!

I’m now OBSESSED with how to grow my business using automated systems and focusing on the highest leverage point for everything we do…

Especially when it comes to content creation!
– Mitch