Building Momentum with Content ( Getting Distribution and Repurposing right ) - Teacher: Justin Simon

hello, useful content creators. We don't have any fancy trailer intro this week. We were quite busy for the past week, but what we do have is a great conversation with Justin Simon, your favorite distribution first podcaster. Let's make useful content. 

Hello and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. And today we have a new teacher in the Useful Content Classroom, Justin Simon. Hi, Justin.

Hey, hey, super excited to be here.

It's great to have you on, Justin. I've been following your content for a while now. Um, we connected early on LinkedIn at some point when you were starting your content journey. And I must say, you have been one of the more influential people inside of my content creation process. And I'm always trying to look around the landscape and spying for people who are saying things that are easy to understand that are relevant.

And you surely struck a tone with distribution first. Um, and so could you please tell the people what you do and how you create useful content?

For your clients.

Yeah, absolutely. So for me, I mean, I run a small consultancy solopreneur running my own business. And as far as creating useful content for my Audience, I create useful content through the podcast distribution first, um, a new, a weekly newsletter, daily LinkedIn content, bigger and larger pieces throughout the year.

And, and how I basically doing that for clients is helping them. A lot of times clients have a lot of content they are creating, uh, and the problem with. With that is typically they are spending so much time creating that they don't actually think about how to get that content in front of the audience.

Um, it seems fundamental. It seems like it would be something a lot of companies would think about, but, uh, most of the time it's create, publish, create, publish, create, publish. And so I'm able to go in and actually help them build out a strategy, build out a plan, repeatable process to be able to consistently build a distribution.

That's great. And, um, I know many companies, part of the drum you've been beating is that people have too much content and they don't know how to get it in front of people. Uh, in your case, you work for yourself. So how has it been creating content while being

employed by yourself?

It's the best, uh, because I get to, you know, I'm in full control, right? Uh, it's the best, maybe it's the best and the worst, right? Like, I think it's probably true of like running your own business overall. It's awesome because you're your own boss and it's the worst because you're, you're your own boss.

But for me, it's been really It's been really eye opening because, because I'm in control of every single piece of it, I can run any test I want, I can just do different, you know, different experiments, I can try different things and not, not be worried or be beholden to any particular metric or any particular, like, growth or, you know, different things like that, I can really spend the time to do.

Think about what the audience needs or wants, validate those things, and then build on those as we go. And it really is fun. I mean, a super small example is, for the, for the podcast, like, I started repurposing little micro clips out of older episodes and just calling them quick hits and putting them back into the feed just to see how the audience would react, right?

Like I know for a fact, not everybody's going back and listening to episodes from last April, but I know those episodes are really, really good and have lots of good content in them. So how do I pull out those nuggets and put them back in the feed? And it's been awesome. Like I would say. For the typical podcast that I run, it's, you know, a 30 ish minute, sometimes solo, sometimes conversation, uh, and then the quick hit might be five to 10 minutes of a, of a quick segment.

And I would say performance on those are probably right around 85, 90 percent of a traditional episode. And to me. You know, that, that's a win win right there. So just an example of how to, how I'm able to test different pieces of content quickly, be able to pull things out, try new things without having to like be beholden to some like larger, I can guarantee you in a, in a larger org, I would, I would have to make the pitch, run the test, you know, all those types of things to be able to even just to try that versus being able to just do it on a whim.

Yeah, that's so true. By the way, I've listened to every single episode, including the quick hits. I know you put out some recently and, uh, I listened to those two. Those are good. And they kind of harken back to the early days of the podcast. The podcast was launched about this time last year. 

Yep. Almost exactly a year ago. 

Yeah.

It's like around, I see that you put on Twitter on February 8th, which is the day today that you were launching the podcast. So I know it's around that time you mentioned experimentation. How important is experimentation to you in your content

development process?

I think it's, it's, it's huge because you don't, you don't know what's gonna hit or what's not gonna hit. And I think having a Mindset around experimentation helps you be a little bit more free in what you're creating. Uh, it's hard sometimes as a creator because, um, even a traditional, like, content marketer, it's hard because you don't want to kill your darlings, right?

Like, you don't want to put all this effort into something that doesn't work. But I think if you separate yourself from that and say, like, we're just, this is a big, giant test. Everything is a test. Everything I'm doing is a test. Um. You know, I, I, LinkedIn is an example of that, right? Like some things hit, some things don't.

Emails, some things hit, some things don't. Okay, why did, I sent out an email and it gets a 5 percent click through rate and, you know, boosts the, the listens on the podcast. Why was that versus the last one that got a 1 percent click through rate? And so it's like just a constant test and experimentation of what's working and what's not.

Um, I think the downside of experimentation sometimes is you can Either test the wrong things or you get down this, this rabbit hole of not being able to land on anything. But, you know, I think for the most part, experimentation is healthy and a lot of, a lot of folks should focus on it as they're creating,

Uh, I mean, you don't know until you test it, obviously. Do you kind of get ever get discouraged when you test something and you don't see it go the way you

want it to go? 

of course. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like you, you think something. Is gonna work or you have a hunch that it might and it doesn't and but I think like that that Failure is should only be a learning if you're actually taking it the right way in terms of like well I'm not doing that again one and Two like all right.

I like I can kind of think through why that didn't work Was it the timing was it the topic was the subject line was it the hook? Was it, you know, there, there's a variety of reasons of why something might fail and that can be hard to nail down. Sometimes you don't know, but I think being comfortable, like comfortable with failure is hard.

That's hard for me, like comfortable with failure, comfortable with rejection, comfortable, but like the more that you take action, uh, the more that you're going to learn, the faster you're going to be able to iterate, the faster you're going to be able to experiment, the faster you're going to get on the right track.

Yeah, I like that. The more you take action, the faster you're going to learn what works, the faster you're going to learn the thing that actually will take you forward. The interesting thing about your process that I find that was, it really stood out to me is that most people take a while to get to something that they own.

So Jay Klaus, he talks about one thing that he would do or some things that he would do if he were to start. YouTube over start building his business from the start again. And one thing that he mentions is that he would own a term. Uh, so his, the term that he owns is creator science. You came out the gate swinging.

You came up with distribution first owning that term. But I know you were employed before at TechSmith and you had different experiences running content teams. Was that. a happenstance. Did it happen by chance or did you like say, this is what it is. I'm going to come up with this

exact thing. I'm going to stick to it. 

Yeah, I mean, it was probably a combination of both. So I had the content repurposing roadmap course before, as when I was full time at Metadata, started doing that kind of on the side, left Metadata, still had that, and was trying to figure out like what The business was going to be what the pod and especially when I started iterating on the podcast and what the name was it because my business is I don't really have a business name.

It's me. Uh, you know, I'm a solopreneur, but I needed something that could kind of stand the test of time and be The framework, like I just know the power in names. Um, and I wasn't, I didn't set out to like, you know, create a category or do, you know, be these people like, Oh, you know, you gotta, you gotta, you know, build a category around X, Y, and Z.

I really didn't think of it in, in like that type of way, but I did think about it, like I know the power of repetition and I know the power of standing for something and being known for this thing. And it is funny because. Over the last few months. I mean, I started distribution first and like you said last year and over the fast past few months, I keep seeing the term distribution first popping up in conversations and it's like, okay, like even if they're like just saying that without.

Maybe they don't even know I exist and that's okay. But to me, that's a sign that something's working and that this idea around distribution first is starting to take hold a little bit. And that was, that was ultimately the longterm goal, right? Was to build out distribution first to have a distribution first framework that I can go implement with these companies and show them how it works.

Um, yeah. That, that was, uh, so there was, there was forethought, but it did take time to, to come up with it. And thankfully, uh, thankfully it's stuck.

Yeah. Are you okay with being known as the distribution

first guy?

I mean, if I'm going to be known for something, uh, I think, I think that that'd be it at this point. You know, I, I'm, I'm always open to, to being known for like, to adjusting. Like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know in five years if I'll be distribution first guy, but I think for right now, like I'm, I'm a okay with that because at the end of the day, if.

And, and this is true, because people tell me it, uh, right? Like, Justin equals distribution, Justin equals distribution first, you know, um, a, it's, it's helpful because as of right now, the competition is low in the mind share around distribution. Like it's me and, you know, Ross Ross Simmons, like we chat about it, like that, that's, that's about it.

Right. And so with a, with a little bit, uh, you know, people talking about it sort of tangentially as a, as a subtopic, but really for. For me, like nailing down a single piece around a single idea has been very, very helpful because especially, especially starting my own business because you're, if you're a, a video marketer and there's 50 video marketers.

What makes you unique? Why, why, why you over? You know, if you're a podcast production company, okay, there's like a ton of them. So which, what makes your pocket, what do you stand for? What is your, you know, way of thinking around podcasting? And so for me, it was content marketing and the funny thing with distribution.

And I was just telling somebody this the other day. Distribution, whenever I get into a company and I start helping them with distribution, it ultimately helps me understand their content strategy and where their content strategy gaps are. Because when you start peeling out what you're going to share and how you're going to share it and what your messages are and all those type of things, it shines a bright light onto your overall content strategy.

And do you have content worth sharing? Are you sharing it on the right channels? Are you creating, you know, are, are, is the intent proper, right? Like, are you creating, um, thought leadership content and hoping Google picks it up? Are you creating, you know, content for Google, hoping you can repurpose it on social and mixing those channels up?

So really it's been, uh, it's been a fun journey.

Lovely. Lovely. So let's get a little deeper into those things, uh, how it works, how distribution first works. And in today in particular, we're going to talk about building momentum after a content. Launch, and we're going to dive into these distribution and repurposing, uh, strategies. Uh, so, so tell me, what do you mean by building momentum?

What is

that?

I think building building momentum to me comes down and it really is in two different ways. You can build momentum. Macro around a topic or an idea, and you can build momentum around a specific piece of content. And so taking those two things in both their hands and trying to build a plan that really works both of those at the same time.

So an example, if you have a, uh, traditionally, maybe you have a gated piece of content around a framework or something that like your business in particular sells, right? You. In a traditional sense, you might gate that ebook, gate that guide, gate that playbook, run some ads to it, hope people sign up, and that might be it.

Or you'll send some emails, use it as cold. The problem with that is there's so much value, hopefully, so much value in that piece of content that's untapped that your audience has no clue. about that. It exists that you have this framework. Why would I want this framework? What are the problems? And so building momentum to me is taking.

If you have that piece of content, what are all the ideas inside it that we can Put out into the market, share those things, and then bring those people back in to when, if they, if they pop open that ebook after they get her to that guide and they see the same thing you talked about, it's not a bad thing.

It's actually a good thing. Cause it's now it's hitting that point again and be like, Oh, okay. That was what you were talking about there. Um, you know, I do this with my course. I pull stuff out of my course all the time. And drip that out on LinkedIn, drip that out on emails. And it's not anything different than what's in the course, but I'm doing that purposefully because it's going to take people more than just watching one course video or reading one LinkedIn post or reading one newsletter to be able to understand the ideas, the concepts, the problems, the frameworks, all those types of things.

So building momentum is all about building momentum around that idea and making sure after I hit publish. On this ebook, on this blog post, on this video, this webinar, not only that the content last, I'm actually less concerned about the content self, the piece itself, like that this webinar is going to keep getting click after click after click month, month after month, but that the ideas and the concepts are going to get consumed through these different distribution channels, month after month after month.

And then if you want to watch the webinar or you stumble across it, or we somehow, you know, share that as, as an option. Now you're even more engaged to want to consume that content.

Hmm. And so it seems that you're saying that it's in the best interest of any business for them not to force their audience to exchange their email for content. Is that what you're

saying?

It's, it's an option. It's just limiting the, the reach of the idea. When you're for, like, you can do that. Like, um, I mean, even at a most basic example, like, I technically do that with a newsletter. To read the newsletter, you have to sign up. But what I can do is take that newsletter and the ideas that are out of it.

And I could pull those ideas back out and share them so that even if you're not on the newsletter, you can get the ideas. And I do that all the time. Same with the podcast. You don't have to listen to the full podcast or pull the ideas out of the podcast and pull the clips out of the podcast. And you can consume them, you know, natively right on LinkedIn or in your inbox, and you don't have to listen to a full 40 minute podcast.

So it's really about, it's really about just getting the, like,

keep it, you can keep it gated. Um, but it's on, it's sort of like keeps those ideas in jail. It keeps them in a cage. Otherwise, like you really narrowing the amount of people you have that will consume that as a percentage of your audience.

Hmm. I agree with you. I asked you that question deliberately because I think if we were to think about it even more critically, that the reason people sign up for your email list in the first place is because they've seen something, they've heard something, no one signs up for company updates. Like we're doing this, we're doing that.

This is what we're doing. No one cares. But if I get content from you, which has happened, this is a real case with, with myself and with your content. Uh, this is useful to me. This gives me value. So therefore, if I go on, you ask me to sign up immediately, there's no question. So I'm making the commitment, knowing that there is something that I saw or interacted with or interface with that already gave me value.

So that is, so I agree

with you 100 percent on that. 

Yeah. And I think it's a shift. It depends on the type of org. It depends on the, like how you're set up. Is a huge piece of that, like a lot of, uh, you know, content marketers, if you're in house, like you don't have control on how your sales organization is set up and how their gold and how, you know, they need leads to be able to try, like, that's, if that's the case, then I understand why people are gating and why people are using MQL, SQL, all those types of things to, to try to drive that we don't necessarily have control over that, but I think there's nothing like you could, and that's why I say like, you don't have to ungate the thing.

Yeah. But you can now, what you can do is ungate the information and then tie it back to where, Hey, if you want to dive into the entire framework, we have a whole guide that shows how to do this. If you want the template, we have a whole, you know, that go get it. We, you know, we have this thing, go get it.

The only way that you're going to be able to, I think not the only way, but probably in the majority of the, the, the correct way, the way people actually interact with content these days is. To gain that trust before they go put in their email address. They're not just going to go blindly like, Oh, I guess I'll go get this guide.

Right? Like it's building that trust and making them want to sign up. It's one thing to say, sign up for my newsletter. Like you said, it's another thing to say, super valuable. Uh, tip, a little bit of a tease. Hey, here's, you know, here's what I'm dropping in the newsletter tomorrow. If you want it, make sure you sign up.

That's a much more enticing offer if you will, than just, Hey, I've got a newsletter. You should sign up for it. Trust me.

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think so. I think, um, like most times, and this is just me, I don't know if you've done this in the past. It's like when somebody has like a. Uh, download or some bits of information that I think might be interesting, but I don't know. I just kind of stumbled across it somehow. I tend to send them to the graveyard.

The email graveyard is what I call it. So an email, I never check. I just put that in and that goes there. All the valuable people come to my main email and I read what

they send. So I don't know if you 

have done 

Absolutely. And I bet, I bet that's most people. Uh, I bet that's most people. And again, like that's the trouble with. You know, basing leads off of just a simple email without any qualification. I'm much more interested in using content as a long term, uh, building trust and building brand. And that way when I come to the sales team, I'm ready to, I'm ready, you've convinced me, uh, let's roll.

And how much more, how much better is that at a lower volume? Obviously it'll be a much lower volume, but higher quality.

Yeah, definitely. Great. Great. Great. I'm glad you set that platform. So let's get a little deeper into the momentum. So you believe that most companies, and I've heard you say this over and over again, most companies don't have a plan. Uh, they just hit publish and move on rather than to build momentum and plan, uh, to get the content they just created in front of the audience over.

Time. Why do you believe that this is true for most companies?

That's a, that's a deep question. I think it's, some of it honestly comes down to priority. Um, because what is prioritized will get done. What is not prioritized will not get done. So some of it is simple, even. And like true, true, like a need, like we must do this. Like, it's one thing to say, I need, I need to go to the gym.

It's another thing when you need to go to the gym to S you know, starve off, uh, you know, some sort of life threatening illness or something like that. Right? Like there's a different. Thing to say, I need to do this first. I need to do this. I must do this. And that's a mindset shift. And so I think being able to shift that, that mindset within a company to say like, all right, we're, we're, we're done with this.

We're we're running on the hamster wheel. We we've been creating a ton of content where we're flatlining on traffic. We're not, we're not building things up. It's just not working. Why? And I think a lot of the companies I work with get to that point. Where they're, they're just, they're doing a lot of things, but the things aren't tied together.

Um, and so I think when you're talking about building momentum, it's, it's really building momentum, like content marketing in so much, so many ways is marketing today in general, in terms of how you're getting your messages out there. And so it's like everything from understanding what's the point of view of the company, how that point of view filters into the.

Content you're creating, how the content you're creating filters up to the features and the products that you sell. And what I find is that a lot of times, all of those things are disparate. You have random, you have random or honestly no opinion because you're trying to hit everybody. You don't distribute your content well enough and you end up never tying it back to anything you sell.

And so how's your audience supposed to know what you do, how you help them, what problems they have. And so it's using, it's using. A core piece of content and then being able to deliver on that consistently. Like for me, it's a podcast for a lot of companies that might be a blog, might be a video series, might be a monthly webinar using those and then having bigger pieces that help validate and might draw in more people that could be anything from like a virtual event that could be.

Uh, a, a, a big research report, different things like that throughout the year. Uh, but I think what happens for a lot of companies is that they end up trying to fill all those lanes with a lot of stuff. Like we're doing a lot of stuff and, uh, and, and we think it's going to work, but they don't actually have, like, like you mentioned, they don't actually have a plan laid out to even say like, Oh, do we have enough, do we have enough?

Bandwidth to execute on this, well, do we, do we have enough distribution bandwidth or, you know, like I, I, I've worked at companies and worked with companies that are creating so much stuff. They literally can't get it out because there's not enough LinkedIn posts and not enough emails and not enough things that they can send in a day without overwhelming the audience.

So like, what's the point of creating three blog posts and a press release this week if we can't tell everybody about it, 

Yeah. That, that's so true. And so you need a plan and you help people with those types of, of plans. So before they start creating anything, they should have a plan for how they're going to distribute these things. And so let's talk a bit about the plan. When somebody approaches you, what is the first thing you look at when telling them how to fix this problem of little or no

distribution? 

It usually starts with an assessment of what they have going on, understanding overall their marketing, what they're trying, what points they're trying to get across, what messages they're trying to get across, how it ties back to product, all those type of things. Just get an understanding of the marketing mix, what they're creating, just to kind of see the overall health of the program.

And then it's funny because one of the first things I look at is what is their points of view, uh, on any given topic. Cause I think especially for like LinkedIn content. Newsletter content, even for a company, having a point of view, a stake in the ground, a reason why anybody should pay attention to you is so vital right now.

And it, it often gets skipped and not looked at. And so it's one of the first things I do is look at what are your overall content themes? So like, what are the main topics that you want to touch on? Typically, we'll start at a quarter. So like for Q1, if I'm coming in, like, okay, what are the main things like at the end of Q1, do you want people to start doing that association with you?

Right. Um, and okay, these are the themes. Okay. What are your, what are our points of view about each of those themes? And now you can start drilling it. And I have a whole bunch of exercises that work, work with people on. And then from there, now we can start to see, all right, these are our themes. These are our points of view.

Do we have any existing content? That we can repurpose, redistribute that fit these topics in these themes. Is there anything out there that we don't have to create brand new start from scratch that we can start getting back out into the, into the motion? If yes, we start working on those things. If no, we start ideating on future content as well and try to try to build that plan to where your.

Content hits those themes, hits those points of view, mapped out over time. And then obviously figuring out channels where, where your distribution is and then building a literal, not literal, building an actual flywheel for that content to be able to get distributed every single week, because if you have a floor, like what can you actually do?

And I'll, you know, I'll ask that, like, what can you actually execute on? Like, we'd love to be doing. YouTube, and we'd love to be doing, uh, LinkedIn, and we'd love to be doing, uh, X, Y, and Z. And it's like, okay, well, what, what do you actually have bandwidth for? Who, do you have video people on your, no, we don't.

Okay, well, then we're not going to worry about YouTube right now. Do you, do you have, uh, copywriter people who can do emails? Yep. Okay. We've got a motion in place. We've got, you know, okay, cool. So let's try to try to build that, that motion out and understand like. After this piece of content, and that's when you start to build the flywheel.

After this content is released, blog post, whatever, like what happens and going through that discussion of like what happens after, and it typically revolves around most of the B2B companies I work with at a minimum. It's okay. Blog post. And then LinkedIn content written off of that would be a, just a very generalized, um, thing that then either can or can't point back to the original blog, uh, with the way LinkedIn's working right now, it's, it seems more better not to point back to the original blog because they, uh, they're discouraging such things, but that's the, that's at a very like high level.

How, how I start to think through and work through with companies is building that muscle. into after they're creating content, they know what's next. So after I write the draft and get it going, I'm going to start pulling out the individual things. It's no different than a podcast. After you hit up, after you publish a podcast, I hope you're going and pulling out the best clips.

I hope you're going and finding the best segments and then doing something with them. Uh, it's no different for any other piece of content, webinar, blog posts, et cetera. And then one of the cool things. And I just had this, this realization with a client the other day, I was talking with her and she said, you know, this is great, but it's actually.

Going to change how I create content, because once you figure out what you can or can't pull out of a blog post or pull out of an episode, after you've done it a few times, you start to realize, Oh, I need better content to pull from. So it can actually change how you're going to create content before you even start.

I

Yeah. And I suspect to that change in content will be like the structure as well. So instead of just doing a big block of talking, you then start to say, okay, this is my main topic. These are the sub points one, two, three, so that when I'm going to repurpose later on, I can pull this as a social post, or I can make a short form video out of this.

If that's the direction that you're going in, if you're going in the opposite direction, like with long form video and going back, then you probably do it in the opposite, opposite way. And, uh, and, and that, yeah, that, that would make complete sense. If you're telling someone about that and what have you seen though, in your experience as is the, like the, you know, everything has a stress point.

Everything has a point of failure. What have you seen as the main point of failure for people trying to execute on? Uh, distribution first and building their

momentum. 

far. It's the muscle of, of doing it. It's building the consistency muscle consistency is probably the biggest thing it's easy to, okay, we did that for one blog and then we're falling back into the, you know, there's no, like, it's not, it's not, it takes time to build it into the process. It's a habit. It's, it's, it's really no different than, than, than going to the gym in a lot of ways, right?

Like, uh, you can go to the gym. You can feel great and then you can very easily never, never go again. Uh, you know, we're at the beginning of the year. This is, this is the time to talk about it, right? Or you can decide that it, it, it really is. Over even a mindset shift, it's an identity shift to this is how we create content.

Now we create content in a way that we make sure it gets out in front of our audience. And I think part of the problem is that folks don't slow down on the creation side either. They want to add a distri like, they want to add a lot of distribution just plopped on top of their still create and, and that creates a bandwidth issue because if you don't take anything away, how are you going to add something on and let, unless you're like, in some cases they, that's why people bring me in, like I end up being their distribution person where I'm coming in and figuring out all this stuff for them so they can just keep creating.

And, and that's fine, but you got to kind of think through that. And so I would say consistency is huge in terms of figuring out a plan of when to do it. I, I advise like both coaching clients that I work on one on one and folks where I come into their actual businesses, I advise that they batch the work.

So I, I have a, I have a distribution doc. I have some momentum app worksheets that I, that I have for folks. And I always advise like just bat, like batch it, sit down, dedicate, you know, an hour. Two hours, maybe to, to write, get all the stuff figured out and then give yours just like you would with a blog post, then give yourself time to come back and edit it, give yourself time to come back, take a, take a step away.

Don't feel like it's, it can't be super overwhelming to be like, I gotta, you know, come up with, you know, 10 LinkedIn posts off of this blog or five links. Like what, Oh my gosh. So it's like batch it out. So give yourself that time, throw it on your calendar block. If you know you've got a blog post coming out every single week, it comes out on Tuesdays, let's say, maybe Monday afternoon or Tuesday at some point, or even Wednesday after the fact.

Somewhere within that week, you've got time dedicated to start pulling those things out and be able to distribute it. Mm hmm.

Yeah, it's, it seems like the, one of the biggest hurdles in being able to do the thing in a better way is just your mindset. It seems like that's a massive hurdle. It seems like. Um, because when, when I think about it, when I think about our content strategies, it is normally resources problems, like this human resource problems, technical resource problems, and time resource problems mainly.

Um, but we, we haven't really talked about what it takes, the way you're thinking as the shift. Cause what you described just shoehorn a new system into old habits. And it seems like that's the case. Do you, as part of your talking with companies addressing that directly?

I I think I think so. And it's actually like part of like for my business, like if I just look at the, the folks I consult with, it's much better for me and them if they come in knowing they want to change, um, you know, we can get there, it's just slower if there's bigger organizational gifts that they're, you know, it.

Because there's typically more layers than just like, how do we distribute our content? You know, there's a there's a lot that goes into a marketing program, a content program, all those type of things, depending on the size of the company. But for folks who come in and are ready and I say, you know what?

I'm good, I'm, we, we know we're creating stuff, but we just want a better system. We'll, we'll change, you know, we're, we're willing to figure it out and adjust and figure out how it goes best possible scenario. Um, but yeah, like, let's say like with a coaching client, for instance, like, how do I get to that point?

A lot of the work is mindset. A lot of the work is habit. A lot of the work is building the systems to be able to do it because. I mean, let's face it for a lot of companies, like they don't have five or six content marketers. They probably have one or two and some freelance help. And so like, how, how do I, how do I manage that?

And I think another thing, uh, that I would, that I would say is with a piece of content, big, small, however, macro repurposing micro, however you want to frame it up, there are infinite options. There are. Unlimited, almost number of ideas that you could come off of. Uh, any given thing, there are endless formats that you could create there.

I could go, I could create a short about this and, oh, I could do a long form video that, or I could make, what you have to do is, is either keep a running list of those things and just, and just house them for future reference, do that. But then also. You, you have to like, just figure out what, what the floor is like, what, what am I actually going to do every week?

Like every single week I'm going to do X and have that floor because that floor is a consistency for you. You're not going to lose your mind because every single Monday you're going to come and be like, what are we creating this week? And the floor is also consistency for your audience. Okay, Justin sends an email every Saturday.

Justin releases a podcast every Tuesday. Justin posts on LinkedIn every day. And again, that, that, that's just my, my play, and I ebb and flow on that, and there are different frameworks you can do even within those, right? Like you could do a particular topic cluster every Tuesday I talk about X. You could do a topic cluster for any given quarter.

For Q1, we're gonna go all in on Y. And we're just, by the end of Q1, people are going to know exactly about what Y is, and we're just going to talk about all the different assets of it. So, yeah, hopefully that's helpful.

Yeah, I, there are two big points that you made that I think is very important. Uh, let me see if I remember them now. So the first, I think the thing that you said that really stood out to me was the fact that it's customizable, like everyone has a different solution to their distribution problem. It's very much customizable and um, and it's not a one size fits all.

That's why you need to look at the systems, look at everything you've been doing and then figure out what actually works for yourself, for your business model, for what you want to accomplish. That's the first thing. The second thing. I think it was really very important that you said that I want to highlight, especially for the business owners listening is the idea of expectation that your audience has expectation and that you build that relationship by being consistent and fulfilling those expectations that you mentioned Tuesday was a release day.

You ship on on Tuesday and doing that consistently gives people a place that they can come to and expect. What the, um, a particular thing, and I think that's so, so very important is like the difference between you navigating to a location and then realizing this office has moved totally, you know, that would be madly disap that would be wildly disappointing to you if that were to happen to you.

So why treat your content that way? Why treat your content in a way that somebody comes expecting anything and then it's not there and there's no communication. So I think. In terms of maintaining the audience, growing them and having respect for them as well, that fulfilling those expectations are extremely important.

Yeah, and for anybody who's running their own business, working in house, any of those type of things, being consistent alone will put you darn near the top 5%. Because most people stop. But most podcasts don't get over eight episodes. I think over 50 percent of podcasts that are on Apple have two episodes on them.

So like just consistent, like consistently showing up is already going to put you above the bar. And then obviously from there it's quality content. It's, it's at scale. It's how do you do that? How do you build a system to, to build that out? But I think for like, I think most people and most companies overestimate the amount of content that they need. Because again, they think I have to publish a blog twice a week on, on, so I can show up for my audience. Even though your audience isn't showing up on your blog. When really what you need is to show up everyday where they're at. And that requires a completely different skill set, and a completely different type of content.

Because it's, it's a Harder and easier in some ways to create short form content. It's a, it's a little bit more throwaway. It's a little bit less, you know, I have to invest a ton in it, but it is harder because you're trying to, you know, condense ideas down to a small amount of time. But I think just understanding the amount of content that you actually need, where you need to show up consistently is huge.

That's the distribution first model as well as like understanding, like what channels are you focusing on? Where do you need to be? And then from there, reverse engineering out. How much content do you need? I use this example all the time, but if you have, if you're a traditional B2B company or a business owner and you're say, I got to be on LinkedIn five days a week.

If you're on LinkedIn five days a week, which most people are not, 1 percent of content creators on LinkedIn are probably posting five days a week. If you're posting five days a week, that's only 20 pieces of content, 20 small little pieces of content you need every single month. And if you're writing a blog post a week.

If you're doing a webinar on top of that, if you're also, you know, and you think about all this content that a company produces every single month, you absolutely can get 20 pieces of content out of that. You probably could get a hundred pieces of content. And so being able to distill that down and say, Oh, if I only need 20.

Do I need to do a blog and a podcast and a this and a that and the other and the other and the other, the answer might be no, unless you have other goals and other metrics and other things, other distribution channels that you're trying to use those for. It's a, it's a good guardrail to start in, in reverse engineer toward.

Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. And I think, um, you know, this has led us to a place in the conversation where we could go deeper and talk about the alignment of content ideas, goals, audience and distribution. But what I want you to do as we kind of coming for the ending here is to share any last Big idea or thoughts that someone, any business owner will have to take with them or can take with them in order to begin to approach content marketing in a way that is in alignment with how people actually consume content today.

What would, what would that big thoughts or that idea

be?

I think the biggest thing for me recently has been around creating platform native content. So understanding. Where you're putting content and in the expectation of the audience, where they're at. So for example, if I'm on LinkedIn, I'm not looking for how to do anything in particular, I'm simply scrolling and looking to get dopamine hits.

Uh, so that being said, if you're, if, if your content. On LinkedIn is, Hey, we're talking with X, Y, and z next Friday, uh, out on our webinar. Make sure to sign up with our link in the content. Boy, I'm blowing past that real fast 'cause I'm not going off platform. I'm not interested in signing up for anything.

I'm just looking to like get a quick hit coming through the, you know, coming through the feed. So the, the difference on that is what topic are you gonna be talking about on that webinar? What problem would your audience have in that webinar that you're gonna talk about? What are the, you know, the pain points that you are going to solve in that webinar and then talk about one specifically and then say, Oh, by the way, next week, we're going to have a webinar that deep dives into this.

If I have spent the time to get hooked in, get value, become interested and. I may or may not have the time to attend that webinar next week, but you're at least have a much better shot than just saying, Hey, we've got this thing. And so it's being able to get, pull the value out of whatever you're doing and sharing it natively where it's at.

Because again, understanding somebody coming in their inbox may, may or may not want to just go click off and do the thing you want them to do. Um. You know, they probably want a little bit of value coming out of that. What's in it for me, I think that's the biggest thing is for, for especially business owners, um, is it's not, what's in it for you.

It's what's in it for the audience and just giving over time. It never goes out of style.

Yeah, that's, that's good. That's good. That's a good way to end it off. Giving over time never goes out of style. And I think we kind of started there and we went all the way around and came back on the importance of being able to share these ideas freely so that people can come back to get the main, main value.

So Justin, some people may want to find you online and, and see where your content is at, could you share with the people where they can find you

online 

Yeah, absolutely. So you can

find me at, I mean, if you want to check on my website, see what service I have, uh, justin simon. co. If you're interested in the podcast, you can go to distributionfirst. co. And, uh, if you're looking for me on LinkedIn, it should be just Justin Simon. You'll see, uh, CB on there, uh, giving constant tips every single day, trying my best to, uh, to provide value over there as well.

and your colors are green these days, right?

That's right? 

Everything's green. 

Everything's green. Everything's green. I would

think they're like a million Justin Simons on 

There probably are. So yeah, if you search Justin Simon or search distribution first, you'll, you'll find me in one way or the other.

Excellent. Excellent. So thank you so much, Justin, for coming and sharing with us today about how to keep momentum in that distribution of your content. And thank you students for being part of the Useful Content Useful content classroom, dismissed. And away, Claire.

Oh, thank you so much, 

Justin. 

it was 

Hey, that was, that was good. That was good. It's good answers. Good answers to the questions. I have some of them I just made up on the fly. I didn't, I don't really have set things most times, but sometimes I

have things in my head that I want to ask. 

Um, I I, have a, I have a question though.

What, what, and this is, you know, what motivated you to get that

new photo shoot done? 

Oh, uh, so that's a hilarious story. That was actually like my wife does photography and. She was, my kids are homeschooled and she was doing, and they're part of a co op and she was doing all the school photos. And so I was her test subject.

Oh, you don't say. 

So that's literally how it came up was like, Oh, I'll be your test subject. I'll, I'll, she was trying to get the lighting all squared up and get everything right for the backgrounds and stuff. So that was literally shot in my living room.

Oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. I want to know the story behind it, you know, because clearly you were having fun. She like pulled some stuff out to you. I was like,

ah, Oh, 

and for me, I was like, yeah, this is, uh, this is a good, a good time to switch it up. So if it felt right, it had been about a year since I had, I had taken a photo. So I was like, you know, we'll, we'll switch things up now.

very nice. Cool. Cool. All right. Let me, let me start. That's a good story. Let me stop it off off here now.