Creating Content That Starts a Conversation

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I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never ending content creation guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked. Good content.

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Hey there, friend. Welcome to the Good Content podcast. I'm your host, Shannon McKinstrie. As you can see, I have transported somewhere. I am actually in Savannah, Georgia right now, hosting a retreat with my business partner, Emily with the Social Squad Society, and we're going to be recording reels all weekend long with our attendees. So I'm so excited because guess what? We're testing content while they're here. And so for the next podcast, I'll be reporting back with, like, what worked, what didn't. So get excited. This morning, Emily and I are mapping out all the reels, ideas for each person coming. Some are in marketing. Others are realtors, home designers, stylists. So it's exciting because we get to test a lot of cool stuff out. And what I want to talk about in today's episode is something that Emily and I said while we were planning out these reels this morning. And this is not to sound mean, I'm an Instagram user, too, but I think a lot of people, when they overthink their content, if you want to make good content, you have to remember there's a couple things I want to say. One, right now, people are loving conversational content, meaning content that makes us want to chime in and join the conversation.

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Whatever that looks like to you, we'll get there in a second. That's what's going viral right now in May 2024. Today's May 2nd. But what Emily and I were saying about this is like, again, this is not to be mean.

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We're giving our audiences more credit. Not they deserve.

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But you know what I mean. We overthink it because it's almost like we think our audience is smarter than we are. As an Instagram user, when I am scrolling, I could see that, for lack of a better word, dumbest tip of all time and go, that's mind blowing. I promise there is something you know that you think I know, and I have no flipping idea when you're writing your content captions, especially, do not use any fancy jargon. Talk to us like we are dumb.

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Explain it like you would to an elementary school student or kindergartner. We are so wrapped into our own lives, we're not thinking about the cool tip or hack you want to share or the cool pep talk that you want to give us. You need to bring us into your world. So one of the biggest mistakes I see when people are trying to create content, if they want to make it good, which, again, good content always works, right? Now you want to just dumb it down, help them join a conversation, tell them something that they can attach to and actually chime in. Because here's the thing. Here's what I noticed. A lot of the tips I'll give, all anyone can really do is go, oh, cool. Thanks, Shannon. Bye. They're not an expert in my field, just like if you are. Okay, let's do hair salon, for instance, right? I just did an audit for hair salon two days ago. Instead of being, like, telling about complex formulas you're using and all this sort of stuff, tell us straight up what to ask our stylist for to achieve the look that you just said for your client. We don't want to learn it. Just tell us what to say. Tell us what to do. Again, we know nothing. If your client asks for curtain bangs, I need to know that. I don't know what curtain bangs are. Do you know what I mean? We are not in each other's worlds like that. Dumb it down. Make it simple for us. Make it easy to digest. We're not on here. When I open this app, I'm not clocking into a master class.

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I'm usually in line at Target, scrolling at the end of the day with my husband on the couch while we just sit there and scroll our phones. When I say conversational, one of the rails I saw that went wild the other day was on an airplane. It said, if you could only get one for your next flight, which would it be? I said 1234, 1 was like a whole row to yourself. Free drinks, and people went nuts. So I did it, too. Okay. That's why I was so excited to record this podcast today, because I wanted to wait a whole day before I reported back. Almost 100,000 views in 24 hours. That's. That's wild for me.

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I might get 100,000 views over a few days, but rarely do my reels go that crazy. And it's going to continue to go because it's not even been 24 hours. I said, you can choose only one for your next Instagram post.

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Number one, zero glitches. Number two. 50K new followers. Number three 10k in sales. Number four, 1 million views. So far, number three has won. But, you know, lots of people saying, oh, my gosh, you know, chime in like, well, I feel like the followers would bring me blah, blah, right? It's like, it's starting a conversation. And what's so dope about this is this was market research for myself. Now I know that my audience, 80% of them more so care about making sales on Instagram than going viral. And guess what gets you sales? Good content. So I'm glad you're listening. But, you know, a lot of us do want to go viral and like, that's fun and all. But at the end of the day, if you want 10k in sales, if you want 1 million views, if you want 50k new followers, start a conversation.

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Almost a thousand comments so far, guys, 50 shares, 1300 likes. And it's going to keep going. Help start a conversation and make it something we can chime into. So like I said, I think the biggest takeaway is whatever it is that you do instead of teaching us something today. Tips and education are great. Let us vote.

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Let us vote on an outfit. Or let's say you share cleaning hacks. Give us the simplest hack that you think everyone knows. We don't know it. And if we do, we're gonna be like, I actually do that. Let me share it with my friends because I bet they don't know. And then they can flex by sharing it. Okay. Like, that's literally how it works. And like I said, we all love a poll. So if you want to do exactly what I did, just again, make it your niche and be really specific. I didn't just say more followers, I said 50k followers. I didn't just say sales. I said 10k in sales. I didn't just say virality, I said 1 million views.

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So again, that goes back to the other podcast about specificity, right?

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And simple and shareable. So that makes up a viral reel, that makes up sales, that makes up new followers. It makes up all of it. Or let's say you own a restaurant, a coffee shop, you sell beverages, whatever it is, you have to give up one for the rest of your life.

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Which is it? I mean, there's dozens of ways, millions of ways to start conversations on social media. Let's say you are in the beverage industry and you're showing a cool mocktail that you made or a fun new the drink of the summer. Maybe it's a slushie and you add vodka, whatever it is, right? You could say, which one would you choose? What are you adding to the slushie? Vodka or gin or mocktail? It's that simple.

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And again, you're reminding them what you do and you're building a community. That way you're letting them chime in. You're starting conversations with them. Hold on. So let me tell. Let me have Emily tell you in her words, because she said the same thing. So what I said was the reason why your content might not be performing well is because you think your audience knows more than they do. We're done.

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We don't know anything. So you're talking over us and we can't connect to it.

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Right? There it is. You heard it. You heard it. I love you guys.

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Like I said, next week I will be reporting back on all the reels that worked and what didn't. Love you. Thanks for listening.