12 Affirmations for CONTENT SUCCESS - Teacher: Juma Bannister

Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. I am Juma Bannister. I am your host and the teacher in the Useful Content Classroom today. And today we have a special episode, a bit of a different episode. You know, I'm a big believer of building things in public.

And from time to time, I will have ideas and I want to share them. And this time, what I did... Is I did a live show which is unusual for me these days because I do my live shows recorded And I have them played back, but this time I was on live on LinkedIn and two other platforms, Facebook and YouTube sharing these thoughts I've been having.

And the thoughts I've been having are some thoughts about how every single business owner should approach content. And it revolves around affirmations or things people need to say to themselves. before they attempt and while they are making content. And so these are 12 affirmations for content success.

And I think in the video I say of content success, either way, it means the same thing and is a great, great live show I've edited for you for the podcast. Please enjoy. Tell me what you think. Here we go.

So good morning, everyone. Thank you for jumping on and joining me as I share these 12 affirmations for content success. The 12 affirmations for content success. Now, uh, let me tell you the origin of this real quick so that you can understand why this thing exists and why I feel like I need to share it.

So over the last few years of making content and being able to share content with people and help them. I've noticed some very specific things that come up over and over again. Uh, when I talk with people in private consultations, when I talk with people in the comments of my content, when I scour other people's content, I noticed some particular trends.

And this is specific to people who run businesses, who own businesses and who wants to be better at the thing that they do. Everyone wants to make content. Many people, when they're first starting off. have a very hard time actually getting into the habit, the practice and getting good at creating content.

Everyone is telling you to make content. No one is telling you exactly. How? So the encouragement is great, but then you have to think about what are the standards behind the encouraging things that you encounter when you're creating content and how are you as a business owner are going to navigate those things in order to create content in the most efficient way?

What are the standards? What are the things that you can follow? in order to be a good content creator and come out on the other side of this journey of content creation with results, not just talking about how it makes you feel, but you actually want results after that. And so the 12 affirmations of content success is 12.

Now it may change. And this may, as I said, may become a bigger piece of content. The 12 affirmations of content success is designed to calibrate your mind, to shift your mentality as a business owner, as a CEO, as anybody who is inside of making content so that you know that these are the things that I must stay within.

These are the guardrails for me as I create. These are the things I must always reference if I want to make content well and be successful at it. And I think people need these affirmations because It really is something that is not always said and affirmation is something that affirms your position that you can put it up on your wall.

You can, you can look at it, you can read it, and it's something that you should read weekly and every day it will encourage you to do the right thing. So you affirm these things so that you can create content correctly. So it's not a how to, it's not technical advice. It is something that if you look at it, it will shift your mentality.

And so let's get into the 12 affirmations of content success. Let's start with affirmation. Number one, the first affirmation of content success is. I will first know myself. Why is this important? And this may sound very ethereal in a song, not solid, but let me explain what this means. So whenever we do content strategies within individuals, whenever I consult with people, one of the things that I tell them to start off with when they're doing the content strategy is with the who, now there are two sections to who.

There's a section of who that is, who am I serving? And that's very important. But what comes before that is who am I personally? Who am I? What are my values? What is my story? What is my expertise? Why is that important? Because in order for you to be able to share content properly, you have to know what your values are.

What are the unchanging things that you believe in that will shape the way you communicate your content? You have to be able to share your story. It not, not only does it build your personal brand and cause people to get affinity with you, but it tells you how you can leverage the things in your past to then talk about where you're going to.

And the third and not the least important thing, but it's very important is what is your expertise. What are the things you have built your career with? What are the things that you've learned over a period of time? What is the knowledge you've gathered that you can execute on and serve people with?

What is the talents that you have? What are the things that you being able to do it is causing you to, to make money and bring in revenue? Those three things are very important. What is your story? What are your values and what are your expertise? And I always tell people to define these things because out of these three things, generally you have people being able to create content.

This is one of the first steps in addition to the other who, which is who do I serve? But the primary thing is who am I? Cause people, people assume that they know themselves. So they don't generally sit down and think about, uh, who am I? But the truth is, is that if you really want to be able to create content properly, one of the biggest things that you could do is really define who you are, define that thing.

And also that you'll be able to make the correct choices on how to make the content that works for you and works for your business. So that's very important. So the first content affirmation is I will first know myself. Your second content affirmation, which is very important, is I will not be like everyone else.

I will not be like everyone else. And this is very dangerous, especially For new content creators and for people who are just starting in the content creation game, people who are just starting to make video, people who are just putting themselves out there on the internet to share their expertise, to share their story and to share their values.

This is a dangerous time is a susceptible time because, because you don't know what you're doing. because you're not totally certain as to what you should share, you're going to be looking around the landscape, the internet, the social media platforms to see what other people are doing.

And more than likely you're going to find people who are you inspired by. You're going to find people who are doing something that you like. You're going to find people that you want to follow because what they say works for you and what they say is helpful to you. And many times what tends to happen is that you begin to take on the characteristics of these people.

You begin to imitate these people. You begin to probably share the ideas that they share. You begin to speak like them. I've even seen one person, somebody who I know, they literally copied the person's profile pic. They went and they had a pic taken just like somebody who they really admired. And while that is good, that is flattering for the person, it does not help you.

Imitation is not the way to go. You have to declare that you will not be like everybody else. What you should do is come to a point where you can emulate. No, emulation is not that bad. Emulation is boring. The idea is boring. The, the thoughts, boring the ways, but doing it so that you can emulation has a degree to which you're taking these foundational things, but then you're making it your own so that you can surpass the person or become better or begin to define yourself in a specific way.

And so you take these thoughts and you lay a foundation or make a point of reference so that you can build yourself. And that is a platform that you can build yourself. And that's very important for you to do as someone who is beginning to create. content. So that's the second thing. I will not be like everyone else.

The second affirmation of content success. The third affirmation of content success is I will value relationship over reach. I will value relationship over reach. Now, what does that mean? Relationship is very important. My personal philosophy is that content is designed to build relationship. That is the purpose of content and relationship will help you accomplish your business goals, not reach.

So let me explain the difference. So reach is how far your content goes. How many eyeballs end up on your content? How many people interact with it? How many people, uh, maybe engage or react or maybe comment and why that has some importance that is not what you're going for, because, you know, we all know of many people who have massive, massive amounts of engagement, massive numbers, and yet still, they cannot.

successfully build your business because it just does not resonate with the people who it's reaching. They might like it, but it doesn't make them take action. And so what you want to do is that you want to carry the people on the customer journey. You want to carry them from a place of not knowing who you are to becoming a loyal.

advocate for you. And so you want to build that relationship with them over a period of time. And the goal of your content is to do that, is to build that relationship. So every time you create content, you have to have at the back of your mind, or rather at the forefront of your mind, the goal of this content that I'm putting out is to build a relationship with these people.

It's a constantly communicate with them in a way. that allows them to see me for who I want them to see me as. So it's a brand building thing, it's a confidence building thing, it's a trust building thing, so that the people who are consuming the content know exactly who you are, and then eventually, over a period of time, of you communicating with them and building that relationship, that they will look to buy from you.

And possibly become loyal advocates for you as well. So you're not looking for the numbers. So don't get discouraged if things don't go viral. Don't get discouraged if a ton of people don't comment or a ton of people don't like or react to your content. That is not the point. While that may come later on as you build your relationship, especially at the beginning, that is not the point.

The point is not to get a lot of that because that doesn't really mean anything. If you build relationship, then yes. Over a period of time, people will begin to buy from you, and then you'll be able to build a successful business through content. So that is the third affirmation of content success. I will value relationship over reach.

The fourth affirmation of content success is a big one. It's something that I say all the time and it's a big one that is the fourth affirmation of content success. I will make useful content, right? So the reason you want to make useful content is because people only care about you when you help them.

And you want to make your content useful because you want to help the people so that they can understand how you can help them. And let me just run through real quick what I define as useful content because when we say useful content, obviously that communicates some level of utility, some level of way people can use the content, but it doesn't necessarily tell you the depth of what useful content is.

So let me go through that really, really quick. Uh, just a cursory overview. Of what useful content is. So useful content, I have an acronym called Supreme. Useful content is simply understandable, which means it uses language and imagery that is clear and not confusing.

It's practical. It shows you how to do something or take action. And you want your content to be like that. It is relatable. You can connect with it. This is your audience. Your audience can connect with it because it's all about them. It's not about you as a creator. It's all about the audience. It's relatable to them.

It's easy. It's supposed to remove or reduce difficulty and make things more accessible. So it's supposed to make things easy. That is what useful content can do. It removes or reduces difficulty and make things accessible. It's supposed to be motivational. It encourages you to take action and pursue goals.

And so it encourages the audience, the people who you're building community with, to take action and pursue goals. And lastly, which is, I think is the biggest one, it's educational. It teaches you something relevant. and helpful. It teaches your audience something relevant and helpful. And that is what brings them to the point where people say, Oh, this person knows what they're talking about.

This person can really help me solve this problem that I currently have. If your content is useful, you're more likely. to have people come to you to solve their problems when they're ready to buy. If your content is just airy, it doesn't focus on any particular thing, it doesn't help the people, it doesn't focus on their needs first, then it's highly unlikely that they're going to come to you when they actually have a problem.

They're They're going to go by from the next person who was sharing useful content about how they can solve their problems. So after useful content, the next affirmation, is I will have a plan before I start creating. The next affirmation of content is I will have a plan before I start creating.

So the whole term of just start should be removed from every business owner's vocabulary, that whole idea of Just Start. And I have been guilty of telling people Just Start. Now, Just Start works if you're not trying to build a business, if you're trying to figure out what content you're going to create for yourself.

Maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's fun, maybe you're not really connecting it to business as yet. Just Start is fine. But I, I would say for every person, especially if you're in a stage of business where You already have a business that is successfully running, and now you want to grow it with content. Just start is not the way to go.

So what it should really be is that you should just start, comma, with a plan. Just start with a plan. And that is the way you must go. Now the plan doesn't need to be a 10 page, highly structured plan. There are just a few things you need to know when you're making a plan for creating content.

And the three things are who you are, which we talked about earlier, who you're talking to, which we talked about earlier, and like broadly, what do you want to say to these people? Who you are, your content comes out of who you are, which is your values, your expertise, and your story. You want to talk to the right people.

So you want to know who you're talking to. And broadly, you want to know the right things to say. to them. So that's very important. So you will have a plan. You have to say to yourself, I will have a plan before I start creating. I will not just start. I will just start with a plan. So that is content affirmation.

Number five, the next content affirmation is a good one. And I think it's a very useful one and it's not so much these days a thing, but it used to be a big thing back in the the 20 teens, 15, 16, 17, 18 used to be a big thing and even into the pandemic 2020, that used to be a big thing.

The next, content affirmation you must make is that I will own one. Platform. I will own one platform. Okay. One of the biggest lies that has been peddled to us as content creators is that we need to be everywhere on every platform all the time. in order to be successful. That is a massive lie.

Not only is it a massive lie, it's also damaging and detrimental to you, your business, and to the people who are creating content for you. You will be doing so much work trying to be everywhere that you wouldn't be able to create good content for the place that really matters. And so that's why I'm saying for this particular content affirmation is that you must own One platform, choose which platform is most important to your business and focus there.

Now, it doesn't mean that in the future you can't expand to other platforms, but I would say at least for one year, double down and focus on building out your community on one particular platform. You do not have to be everywhere. And even if you have other platforms that are Being used to share content.

This one platform must be so important that everything that you share has to go be tested, be distributed there first. And then if you have someone who is working for you, I mean, if you're making content for yourself, it's going to be very difficult, but if you have someone who is working for you to repurpose that content that distributed elsewhere, that's fine, but you really want to focus on double down.

On one platform, you become great at something by focus. You become great at creating content by focus. You become great at doing what you need to do in order to build your business. by focus. And so focusing on one platform is vitally important, especially if you want results, and especially if you're starting off creating your content for the very first time.

All right, so the next content affirmation, uh, we, I think we halfway through one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Yes, we're halfway through the next content affirmation is I will make content. For one person, I will make content for one person. Now, what does that mean? It means that when you're creating content, you have to have a very clear focus about who you're creating it for.

So you're not making content for everyone. You're making content for one person who is just like another person who is just like another person and so on and so forth. You're making content for one person and a set of different people who is just like that. person. So essentially you're making it for one type of person.

Uh, so you have to find out who that person is. You have to define who that person is. And it doesn't mean that you only want that type of client. It simply means that that is the benchmark. There may be some people who may have some characteristics of that person, either to the left or to the right. But the main thing is that you make content for this one person.

That person is who you're thinking of when you're creating. Your content when you're creating your videos you're thinking of this one person I'm talking to this one person about the thing that is important to them and let me give you some an example So if you're here looking at this stream today if you're here live with me This is the type of person I want to talk to now.

You may not be defined as this person You may just have stumbled across This live stream, and it may not be something that is important to you, but here's the type of person who I want to talk to when I make my content. And then there are other people who will come inside of that space and we'll get more definition as a result of that.

Here's the person I want to talk to. I want to talk to a business owner who has had a stable business for the last three years or more. with 20 or less employees that has done well growing their business through referrals, recommendations, and networking, but needs to scale their reach and get new business by using content as the driver.

So What am I talking to? I'm talking to business owners who have had a stable business for the past three years or so or more with 20 employees or less that has done well in growing their business to recommendations, referrals and networking, but need to scale their reach and get new business by using content as the driver.

Now I have a lot of definitions in there. Does it mean that I wouldn't take on business from people with more than 20 employees? No. Does it mean that I wouldn't take on business from people who have, who have had a stable business for 10 years? No, it doesn't mean that. But when I make my content, I'm making it for a person like that, so that I know I'm creating it for this specific person.

So the things I would say, the way I would craft the content, the language I would use is focused on that person. So when you're making your content, you have to say, I will make. content for one person. And that is your seventh content affirmation? 

Your next affirmation of content success is I will not gather fans. I will build community. and so this is pretty easy. Fans are people who are enthusiastic about what you do.

They're devoted and usually they're spectators. They come, they look on, but they don't necessarily take action. They aren't necessarily people who would drive the spreading of the word. Sometimes they may say something about you and they may. They may share it with someone else, but really and truly, you don't want to make only people who will talk to you.

What you want to do is build community. You want to build a group of people around you who would talk to each other so that when they come down in the comments and when they they come onto your live shows, you will have the community interacting with. each other. You will build a group of people who share very similar interests, who share similar values, have very similar attitudes.

You build that type of people and they can amplify your brand. And that was so important to me when I was building out my live show. Like what's the language behind the show? What do I get when people say it's good to relate? What do I get when people call themselves useful content creators, the language behind it was very important.

These are the people that would fit into your community. They would talk to each other. And so you could easily then take that and. Literally do an online community and let the community drive itself. And out of that, you'll be able to build even more business. So you don't want to just gather people who are like what you do or no excited about what you do, but you want to build community.

People who could build by themselves around the thing that you have given them. The next content affirmation, and we're coming up to the last four now, is I will not be trapped by the tools I use to create. I will not be trapped by the tools I use to create.

That's content affirmation number nine. And simply what that means is that there are some things that we use daily to create content. It may be a piece of hardware. It may it may be a piece of software, but Those things are just what they are.

They're tools. And one of the reasons I wanted to mention this too is because these days, because of large language models, AI, the GPTs, et cetera, people are not using those things as tools. What they're using them is as their source for creation. So if for some reason that goes away, they don't have access to it, then they are unable to create.

Now, if you're using that to generate frameworks or to take your ideas and expand them out and then come back in and create it with more definition that comes from your voice, then that's fine. Even with that, you have to be very careful to make sure that it comes across in the way that you want it to come across.

Because what you don't want to do is add to the noise of the internet by being someone who just takes that raw AI generated content and putting it out there as your voice. Your voice is unique. You have to put things out. Based on what you believe in, based on your voice, based on the things that are important to the people who you serve.

And that has to be something that you do dutifully, , in order to get the thing that you want in the long term. And so, you don't want to be trapped by any software. You want to be able to create outside of software and you need some hardware to create, but you also don't want to be hamstrung by if you have this particular camera or that particular or that particular camera, you still want to be able to do those things.

So you don't want to be trapped by the tools you use to create. Tools are just that. Tools are just things that you use in order to make things easier. The actual creativity and the content comes from you. All right. So let's get down to number 10. The 10th affirmation of content success is something I've been saying a whole lot in recent time, which is I will reject single use content.

I will reject single use content. Why, why is that important? It's important because we don't have time to waste as business owners. It's important because you simply cannot allow the effort that you put into creating content to go away with one use. If you spend 10 hours on creating a video and the video is five minutes long, if you spend 10 hours versus five minutes and you release it on one platform, one way, and then that's it is dead and it's done.

You didn't maximize the value coming out of that piece of content. And so what you want to do, you want to commit. to 90 of your content being able to be used at least twice. 90 percent of your content being able to be used at least twice. What does that mean? You can repurpose the content, which means you can take a long form content and you can make smaller pieces out of it and distribute it multiple times over a period of time.

You can remix the content, which means you can take it, you can change some bits and pieces of it and release it at another date or on a different platform and we can reuse the content, which means taking that same piece of content that you release and then say, six months later, putting it back out, which means that focus should never be on time sensitive content, things that are news heavy, things that are event heavy.

Now, if your whole life is speaking and being at events and that's your whole life show as you, you do that. But for the majority of people whose focus. is not a business like that, whose focus might be manufacturing, whose focus might be accounting, whose focus might be plumbing. You want to create content that is helpful to the people and that you can take these things, this helpful content, which is going to be very useful to them.

and use it over and over again. And you don't want to release something once and say that's it. Every single piece of content that you make, you want to be able to release it multiple times, or in different ways, or remix it, or repurpose it. You have to commit to that. You have to reject single use content before you create anything.

Always think about whether or not you could use this. more than once. All right. So affirmation number 11 of content success. Affirmation number 11 of content success. I will not participate in trends. I will not participate in trends. And here's why you don't want to participate in trends, right? Trends do not create Long lasting content. They take you away from your plan.

Trends will take you away from your plan because think about it. A trend is something that is popular. Now it's in vogue. Now it pops up. Now it spikes now, and then it slowly fades away as people's interests shift to another. trend. It slowly fades away, which means that you'll be abandoning your plan in order to satisfy this particular trend.

You'll be abandoning what you had structured in order to jump on something that is not part of your structure. And it could also mean that you're abandoning the person you've crafted this content for. In order to please an algorithm or in order to say that I've done this or in order to make people laugh, which is very detrimental for your business if you do that over and over again.

So I want you to make that affirmation as well, that I will not participate. In trends, it will take you off off topic. It will take you off the flow of what your content is to be It will break your momentum So I will not participate in trends is very important. Do not participate in trends. You have to affirm that I will not participate in trends.

And the last thing, the last affirmation of content success that I will share today is this one. And I have to share this one because inevitably, people want to look at this and say that this is important, but it really isn't. So here's what you want to do. I will not worship Likes and views. I will not worship views and likes.

I will not use that as a benchmark to decide how I will create my content. I will not use that as a benchmark to decide how successful my content is. I will not use that as a way to value myself, value my business, or value my content. Views and likes are important in the context of finding out, okay, my content has this velocity, it has this reach.

This, and my analytics tells me it got to this place over this period of time. But what is more important is who was looking at the content. What is more important is what is the response to that content? Did people inquire? Did they send me DMS? Because you could have a low performing piece content from a views and likes perspective, but that low performing piece of content could be the one that wins you business.

So you don't want to worship views and like you don't want to look at that as the benchmark for being able. To determine if your content is successful or. Not. And so that's the last thing I would share in my 12 affirmations of content success. This is going to become a bigger piece of content.

I'm probably going to make a book out of this or something, because I have so much more to share inside of those particular sections. So that business owners could grab this thing, this book, and have these, this, a poster with 12 affirmations of content on the wall, so that every day when they look at it, they will know that I'm not supposed to do this.

And regardless of what guru, what, what content person comes and tells you these things that you will know. I am not going to do it that way. I'm going to stick to my content success affirmations, because that is the way I can actually build my business with content. 

So I hope you enjoyed that episode. I enjoyed delivering it live and though I have some things to clean up and some expansion to do if I want to make the content even better, I think it was very valuable for the people who were there and for the people who are listening to it now or would have just listened to it on this.

podcast. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave it for me. And I've never asked for this before, but could you please leave a review for the podcast as well? Let me know what you think and check me out on LinkedIn as well. That's it for this episode of the useful content podcast, useful content classroom dismissed.

And of course, we're clear. I think I'm going to do more of those lives. That was a, that was a good live and the recorded lives are nice, but doing it live, live, you know, some sentimental things going on there. I like that.