RECAP TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:03:23 - 00:00:34:23
Duncan Alney
Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to the Firebelly Executive Briefing on content creation made simple. This content for today could actually fill a few days worth of education. But we're going to try to cram it all into 20 minutes. So let's get started now. This is our sixth month doing this. We've done one per month and I'm grateful and thankful to all the people on the fire team for putting this together and for all the support.
00:00:34:23 - 00:01:01:07
Duncan Alney
With that Kyle and Arnelle and Lauren and many other people on our team. So thank you very much. A little bit about Firebelly. We have a very heavy focus on food and beverage. And you might recognize some of these names and we'll reference a couple of them. Some of the beverage clients we work with lots of wine brands, Fiji Water, some distilleries and some other clients we've worked with and you might recognize.
00:01:01:07 - 00:01:33:12
Duncan Alney
So but let's start immediately getting into it and let's get on the same page on what content even is. So content has evolved a lot over the last ten or fifteen years. And really I'll say that content does so many things that entertain us. It informs. If you think about content, it really is. In our world of business, communications really comes down to formats, blogs, podcasts, e-books and of course, social media posts.
00:01:33:12 - 00:01:58:23
Duncan Alney
So there's a lot that content does in our world. We tried to do a quick little diagram for you. It could be the five Cs. We're just going to call the three Cs for today. But content gets involved and content starts things out. If it's relevant to the audience based on research and people putting it out the brand, putting it out, knowing their audience, if it's relevant, there will be conversation.
00:01:59:00 - 00:02:20:10
Duncan Alney
If there's continued conversation and exposure over time, hopefully there's some affinity. If there's value that's being delivered in a friendly way, you start to see a relationship. And then if that incentive, including the call to action or the conversion action, is done correctly, you have commerce. And but I mean, that's where a lot of us are trying to be.
00:02:20:12 - 00:02:42:09
Duncan Alney
Now for the Jonathan Jacobs that are in this room today, we're happy you're here, Jonathan. He might say, Well, what about community, Duncan? And I'm going to say that most brands are today cynical. I know can't really afford to do community the way it needs to be done. So but what is content and what does it look like?
00:02:42:11 - 00:03:14:01
Duncan Alney
Content could be all different things in terms of communicating with your audience. So it could be a blog post, it could be Tik Tok, it could be Instagram, could be YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so much more. So there's many things that content can be in terms of a few little numbers there. So, you know, the vast landscape of content, 91% of B2B companies use content, 86% of B2C companies use it.
00:03:14:03 - 00:03:41:22
Duncan Alney
Visual content is known to perform at a 40 times higher rate than its peers. Visual ads are processed 60,000 times faster than other ads. So there's a lot of compelling reason you really use content. Why would you do it? And one of the benefits you reach new people, you educate people, you differentiate from your from your competition and you have the opportunity to build credibility and trust.
00:03:41:24 - 00:04:20:11
Duncan Alney
And so let's talk a little bit about content strategy. We're not going to get so much in this topic. We're not going to get super deep. We're going to try to give you things that are really helpful. And we found this quote that really I had never seen it before. I really love it. You are your niche in terms of understanding your customer and the way I would like to explain it to you today is the fact that with our work and food and beverage, we know what we like and we know that there are so many different people on our team who all have different preferences, different quirks, you know, different ways of consuming
00:04:20:17 - 00:04:44:05
Duncan Alney
that. We actually have a lot of understanding of the food and beverage space just from a consumer standpoint. And so as you're working with your customer, remember that you have an experience with your own business. You know what the customer is going through. And therefore if you adopt the stance and you are your niche, you can get a long way along the way with that.
00:04:44:07 - 00:05:03:07
Duncan Alney
But you need to know who your customer is, right? That's the most important piece of putting content together, starting with understanding who they are. And we like to look at it from a standpoint of what is the problem that they're dealing with or what is the solution that your product or service or business meets? Who are these people?
00:05:03:07 - 00:05:25:14
Duncan Alney
What are they like? What do they do in their daily lives? What do they eat? What did they drink? How do they buy? How long does it take them to buy? Who else is involved in the buying decision? There's so many things they're whether it's B2B or whether it's B2C, and you could look at content as sort of being oriented or having different goals.
00:05:25:14 - 00:05:49:14
Duncan Alney
So, you know, there's the piece of content that's meant to provoke a conversation. There's content that is educational and its approach and the success around the content is being consumed. There's the content that you want to use to build an audience or get people to react in a certain way. There's the piece of content that is going to convince someone to do something or conversion specific content.
00:05:49:14 - 00:06:22:16
Duncan Alney
So there's all different kinds of content. And then the other question that's important to think about is whether you have pillars and how not whether you have pillars, but really what your pillars are. And you've got to make sure that you have them. And so what are they? They're really basically themes or pillars as pillars suggest. They hold up your brand and so you focus in on on those kinds of topics or themes, purpose, values, voice positioning, general esthetics.
00:06:22:18 - 00:06:47:22
Duncan Alney
I'll use our own brand as an example. We have a certain enthusiasm for food and beverage that we bring to the table. One of our pillars is life at Firebelly and then the other ones are around thought leadership. It's interesting because we think that the thought leadership is the most important part. However, the people consuming our content seem to relate more with our life.
00:06:47:22 - 00:07:11:12
Duncan Alney
It's entirely content to silly stuff us as being human and our enthusiasm around the space. So let's I like to jump on two examples immediately. So we brought some little examples for you to see. Herculean meal Prep is a company that we started working with in the last few months, and what it is, is it's high quality food that's pre-prepared.
00:07:11:12 - 00:07:46:02
Duncan Alney
So you can, you know, you can eat it in the morning, you can bring it to work, you can eat it if you don't have time to cook. And it's going to be very quality ingredients. You're going to see what the macros are, you know, how the carbs and the proteins are broken down. And so, you know, the the goal of the brand is to cater to people who are already living that lifestyle and to get people that are not into the brand to try something out, you know, So it's like, can you be curious about this so you can see here the content is, you know, they're making some jokes, they're showing the actual
00:07:46:02 - 00:08:22:04
Duncan Alney
food and then they're showing the selection process. So there are some examples of the content. Hilarious in action, A brand that I love personally that we also work with is a brand in Texas. R-C Ranch, and they produce some of the highest quality American Wagyu and their pillars are around what happens on the farm because that's a core part of who they are in, how they're raising this cattle, how they treat the cattle, who's working on the farm, what's the life on the farm like, Who's behind the food?
00:08:22:06 - 00:08:39:09
Duncan Alney
What are they doing with that? How are they cooking it? And there are specifications and on how you cook it. And then they have a local butcher shop as well. So they really do focus on showing you the brand in action. Some of you who may know me know that when I came to America, I wanted to be a cowboy.
00:08:39:15 - 00:09:10:08
Duncan Alney
And so I was particularly hoppy, and we started working with this brand. However, as luck would have it, when we went to shoot all this amazing stuff on the actual ranch, I was not in the country. So anyway, I think the other important thing to look at about why content pillars matter from an audience standpoint, when you don't have content pillars, the content that you're consuming somehow seems a little chaotic and haphazard.
00:09:10:08 - 00:09:35:01
Duncan Alney
And so the content below is really help you and if present your content in a cohesive way. And so even if the customer is not able to tell that it is organized subconsciously, they're able to see that it's organized. And this comes from Arnelle, that content pillars, content feels disconnected or even random sticking to your brand below will ensure your brand remains relevant and engaging amongst your customers.
00:09:35:03 - 00:09:59:18
Duncan Alney
So let's get to the part that I think is where some of the best value is based on some ideas for you. There you here and I'm not known for quoting Nike, but when it comes to content, you really have to think about it and a Nike way, which is just do it. Some content is better than no content in every shape and form.
00:09:59:22 - 00:10:22:00
Duncan Alney
And the other piece that's really been fascinating for us is to get over the nervousness because there is such an incredible plethora of content out there that first of all, your content may not even be seen. So don't overthink it. And also under produce content is always going to feel more relatable than overproduced content. So, you know, if you're just shooting it with your phone, it's probably going to go over well.
00:10:22:05 - 00:10:57:02
Duncan Alney
Short form video. If you attended our Dominate Video for social media with a video presentation last month, you would see all the stats behind short form video. It is the fastest growing consumption trend. It's it's brisk, it's relatable. It captures attention quickly. And 58% of people will finish watching the video in under a minute. And here this one was particularly designed to provoke and react, made a espresso martini and grated cheese on top of that.
00:10:57:04 - 00:11:32:13
Duncan Alney
That may not seem like your cup of tea, but it did perform. It was one of the highest performing, as you can see, pretty good reviews. And it's important, of course, to have a good time, easy to produce. So short format is the little bit here in terms of like adding some value to what you're producing using AR filters, frame the content that is, you know, the format in itself appeals to a younger and wider, wider audience base also is kind of geared to people with short attention spans.
00:11:32:13 - 00:12:01:03
Duncan Alney
You know, it's a very short investment of time commitment. So and it's, of course, increasingly popular. One thing I do want to say in general, whether it's short form video or graphics, has been going into understanding trends is supremely important, and I'll get to that in a more detailed way shortly. So when it comes to graphics, then another awesome opportunity to present your content in a way that is easy to consume.
00:12:01:05 - 00:12:32:16
Duncan Alney
The visuals, make things memorable and stand out on the feed, which is a big deal so people can actually stop scrolling and see. It also makes repurposing content easy and it's easy to comprehend. So there's some reasons there. And you can see this is from our own blog. We use graphics to get the message across. So the next one, of course, and this is the most obvious, maybe the most straightforward to do is photography.
00:12:32:18 - 00:12:54:01
Duncan Alney
You've got a couple of things that you want to keep in mind. What's the message you want to get across? Make sure that message is front and center in the picture on the right. That's a client you work with, Delicato family of wine brands, relax. And the whole point is to show that summer vibe and the wine is presented in a very direct way and appealing.
00:12:54:03 - 00:13:13:14
Duncan Alney
And so you want to make sure that you can communicate your message and that it looks nice and it's easy to look at. So the other piece that comes across in all of this is that this session today is sort of like content creation ideas, not on the depth and the philosophy of visual storytelling, but you want to try to tell a story.
00:13:13:14 - 00:13:49:11
Duncan Alney
And so the story that you see there with the relaxed content is the fact that it's summer. You know, you're hanging out and maybe it's not summer. You live in a warmer place, you're hanging out. And the certain chillness about doing that, which coincides with the brand's value. Also, when you're trying to get blogs done, the things you can do with blogs, of course, establish authority, thought, leadership, you know, that's great SEO comment, but blogs don't have to be Pulitzer Prize winning pieces of content.
00:13:49:11 - 00:14:13:21
Duncan Alney
They can be roundups. They can be like, Hey, you know, we're building one about if you're a beverage, what beverage would you be? why? You can bring content from different people that are authorities and the space that you're in, bring those all in. Continue to love When you tweeted out linking all the people, there's really interesting specific ways of showing what you're thinking about.
00:14:13:23 - 00:14:41:22
Duncan Alney
Put it out there for people to read. It's your voice and it doesn't have to be supremely difficult to produce. One that we see a lot of and there's this this market is sort of still the space is still wide open is with podcasts. Usually when people think about podcasts, it's about because they're thinking about a massive audience, you know, and I'm going to have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people listen to my podcast that, you know, we're going to go on.
00:14:41:22 - 00:15:05:18
Duncan Alney
This whole trajectory probably won't happen. But the more important reason to do the podcast is to build relationships with people in your industry, people you want to work with, people who know what's up but maybe won't be your client, you know, their apartment or they're a consultant or they're helping other people with their businesses. And those people will ultimately be your clients or customers.
00:15:05:20 - 00:15:37:14
Duncan Alney
But building trust and credibility, if there is a cachet to being able to say to people like, Hey, you know, will you come on that podcast or let me send you a link to that to the episode. But. Leo Katsuya, in this case, you know, works with King's Hawaiian. So a very, very awesome brand. And there's SEO value to where you can extend it into YouTube and of course you can use clips on it and social media as a podcast becomes a really high.
00:15:37:20 - 00:16:12:04
Duncan Alney
Well, in terms of the extendable opportunities from the content on the podcast, let's talk we brought a couple of examples to the table of people that are doing very, very simple content that could inspire you to do your own simple content. This one is a brand in the UK, little moons and their mochi. Hopefully everyone has had a mochi and this makes me think I want to have a mochi now, but it's basically delicious gelato wrapped in a rice dough casing.
00:16:12:06 - 00:16:37:15
Duncan Alney
And so that's what it is. But they started doing really interesting content that basically highlighted the content, wrapped it in some humor, and then they, I guess, invented their own brand where they were doing these crazy reviews around the cheese and pairings with them. And then they took it to the next level. But actually doing ads off this content and paying to get in front of people that didn't know them.
00:16:37:15 - 00:17:18:14
Duncan Alney
So as you can see from the little examples here, that's very straightforward, very simple content that's done really well for them. You know, putting titles on top off the content to highlight what you want to highlight about it, but also using the most importantly in this and this particular, you know, TikTok content context or reader's context, it's really important to look at what sounds or audio is trending that that will help you really ride that wave friendly phrases and just basically making your content relatable, human and also humorous as possible.
00:17:18:16 - 00:17:40:19
Duncan Alney
So before we get into the questions, the very interesting quote from our senior creator, Bryce Thompson, don’t force it, Be natural. Your audience can tell with their friends if you have something that you think the world needs to hear about, do it. Don't try to be someone else. Do it in your own voice because no one knows how to beat YouTube better than you.
00:17:40:19 - 00:17:59:11
Duncan Alney
And that's going to be the most natural. So I love this quote and it's really helped us with our content, putting out 30 to 31 pieces of content a month a very, very heavy lift. And so instead of talking about the things we didn't know about, we started to just being ourselves and and building characters around different people on our team.
00:17:59:13 - 00:18:22:04
Duncan Alney
So last of all, before we get into questions, trends, spotting and I really love this part of the presentation because there's something super valuable for you to start your content creation journey with or continue your content creation journey, which is how do you identify these trends? So there's a number of ways you can do it. Industry trends is the obvious one.
00:18:22:06 - 00:19:02:21
Duncan Alney
You know, if you're in the aerospace industry and people are putting out content, aerospace, what are they doing? What kinds of content that it's putting out? How can you make sure that this is incredibly relevant to your your customers? A couple of really great resources. One is Pinterest predicts and the other one is Google Trends. Google Trends is based around emerging search patterns, and Pinterest predicts is particularly interesting because they look at, you know, millions and millions and millions of Pinterest pins and content in general on Pinterest to see what kinds of things are emerging.
00:19:02:23 - 00:19:31:09
Duncan Alney
And what's interesting about Pinterest prediction capabilities is that they are a little bit longer tail. So you could see something that Pinterest, as predicted, which is emerging, play out over the course of six months or a year, which is a little bit longer than trends typically last. So it's a very, very valuable tool and one that is easy to use and it's been incredibly helpful and it tends to infiltrate other social platforms as well.
00:19:31:11 - 00:19:55:20
Duncan Alney
Engaging in conversations with your customers, with the partners of your business, with people that you work with on a regular basis to understand what's emerging, what people are talking about, the kinds of things that they're seeing, the kinds of things they're interested in seeing, I think can be great ways of spotting a trend. And then, of course, good old fashioned research, listening to podcasts and reading what's going on in the industry is useful.
00:19:55:20 - 00:20:16:01
Duncan Alney
One that I tend to do, which is, you know, a very straightforward way of finding out what's either already trending or what is beginning to trend is looking at what content is popular on whatever platform you’re on and just going into the open feed and seeing what's popular. So and of course, watching your competitors, you know, you could be like Apple.
00:20:16:01 - 00:20:34:02
Duncan Alney
You don't have to be the first in a space. You could just make it, you know, one of the most interesting experiences and or better, better your competitors with what they're doing. So that said, we wanted to rush through this because we had so much about but 8 minutes left for questions, so I'll let Arnelle take over. Yes.
00:20:34:02 - 00:21:04:00
Arnelle Mitchell
Thank you, Duncan, for the presentation. If you do have any questions, please go ahead and put them into the chat and we'll get to them. Or if you want to, you can you yourself. If you do, if you are interested in getting some help with your content creation, we would love to chat with you about it. So if you are interested in talking to Firebelly about getting help with some content creation, add a link below where you can talk to us.
00:21:04:02 - 00:21:33:12
Duncan Alney
But please, if you have any questions or your questions below, even if it's something about how do you apply your content pillars to your own business? Yes, just let us know. So the first question for teams, people who don't like, who don't necessarily like to be on camera are not confident. Your ability to create what would be your number one piece of advice to get people started?
00:21:33:14 - 00:21:56:22
Duncan Alney
That's a great question. And so let's say that for whatever reason, you don't like to be on camera or you're an introvert or whatever it is, you could turn the camera on to a customer or a client or someone that has a point of view that you want to put out there. So the other way is to still be on camera, but to minimize your role in just facilitating the conversation.
00:21:56:22 - 00:22:15:16
Duncan Alney
So you're asking the questions and someone else who's maybe a bigger expert or has credibility as to answering the question, that's an easy way to do it. But the other thing is you can just not be on camera at all. You can take video or a picture of something else and put a message on top of it. And there you go.
00:22:15:16 - 00:22:51:16
Duncan Alney
You're still getting it out there, but you're not on camera. So anybody else have any questions? If you're comfortable, you can just unmute yourself and ask a question. I have another question, another statement question. I said I love this statement of people. I love this statement of being like Apple Brands are usually not first to trend, but mimic trends often enhances the connection that people have with the brand.
00:22:51:18 - 00:23:16:06
Duncan Alney
How do you think this enhances the story, the people's brand story? Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing, right? Because do we care? I mean, I guess this might be out a few years, but, you know, MP3s really emerged in the late 1980s and like 2000 and 2001, but they weren't MP3s players were pretty shit to look at.
00:23:16:08 - 00:23:44:11
Duncan Alney
They did the same thing. But then when Apple emerged with the first iPod, it was beautiful and it had this cute little spin. The wheel didn't work half the time, but it was so much better than the MP3 player of the past. So I think that if I understand the other question, it's making trends often enhance the connection that people have with the brand.
00:23:44:17 - 00:24:04:13
Duncan Alney
I think this enhances the story. I think it's about imitation is a sincere form of flattery. You know, if someone you like wears black all the time, you decide to go hang out with them and you wear you wear black as well. In a way, you're paying homage to them, right? So I think it personalizes the story. It makes the story more relatable to you.
00:24:04:15 - 00:24:24:02
Duncan Alney
And people know that friend is going on. So, you know, the Wes Anderson trend, I guess a month or something ago, you know, people were putting their own spin on that. And our esteemed colleague Lauren Johnson, was in our version of the Wes Anderson trend and the people that sort of like, Oh, that mix. That's so funny. There's Lauren and she's walking around and she's standing places.
00:24:24:02 - 00:24:56:23
Duncan Alney
So I think it makes it more relatable. I want to look that video, Lauren, by the way, and Dan asked a question. He says, Have you started to use air in all your content creation? And how big of a role do you see it playing in the future? Well, that's Dan, that's a great question. And some of us just got off a call with Sprout right before this briefing to talk about the role that AI tools are playing in agency life.
00:24:56:23 - 00:25:21:22
Duncan Alney
And at this time, I'm going to say that it's sort of in the efficiency stage of things, but using A.I. for idea generation, using A.I. to fix difficult photo editing problems by using AI to create graphics. Do they work for our clients? A lot of times they don't, but it gets you on the road to the correct answer.
00:25:21:24 - 00:25:45:10
Duncan Alney
So I think we also heard about somewhere there was someone, another agency leader, that was submitting a story to Forbes and in addition to the box that she had to check that said, you know, all this information is accurate and yadda, yadda, yadda. This the second box actually said that this story was created by me and did not utilize A.I..
00:25:45:12 - 00:26:18:01
Duncan Alney
So I think we're going to see a lot more of AI and content creation. I think it's going to play a bigger role. I do think, or I hope that the human moderation or the human instinct for creation will supersede it, at least in our lifetimes. So that's that's what I see. But I think I do think it can do a lot for making life easier for, you know, starting your rounds of ideation, of getting started with the first round of copy so that you can then take it to the next level.
00:26:18:01 - 00:26:54:11
Duncan Alney
Sometimes the first draft is the hardest draft. Bryce asked a really great question for brand as a product, maybe for example, maybe a single product. How important is it that that product is in each and every piece of content? Is it necessary? Are there other components, types of content that is valuable outside of product shots? I mean, I don't I think it depends on the brand and the vision that the brand has off its own future and and what it's trying to do and what the values of the brand are.
00:26:54:13 - 00:27:20:13
Duncan Alney
I don't know that it has to be. And again, I think depending on the persona of that brand, will determine whether or not the product is in every piece of content. I mean, I'm since I'm on this apple roll, I remember when the first the first iPods were being marketed, there were no iPods in it that were like teeny tiny little boxes with the with the wires going to the headphones.
00:27:20:15 - 00:27:50:07
Duncan Alney
But it was about being out and dancing and not being tied to a wired device. So I think it depends on the brand. I mean, you know, with with R-C Ranch, right? I mean, we show steer, you know, I'm trying to think of the right word frolicking in the meadow. And so you can't really see the brisket or the rib eye, and neither do you want to, but you see the cattle and they're happy.
00:27:50:07 - 00:28:14:23
Duncan Alney
they seemingly happy And so I think that the my answer, it doesn't have to be in every piece of content. I think it just depends on the goal, again, of the piece of content that's your you're creating. Yeah. I would also say to just think about your content pillars and solve your problem goes around educating people. I mean, there's different ways that you can do it outside of the product shot.
00:28:15:00 - 00:28:43:02
Duncan Alney
Our last question is from Abby. I know this was all about content creation, but what about what content? But what is content? What does it do? I mean, that is a deeply philosophical question. I understand your question is what is content and what does it do? Well, this is an inspiring question and puts me at the very existential place.
00:28:43:02 - 00:29:13:07
Duncan Alney
And I'm going to reply in the same spirit that you asked the question, because I believe that content is what content does. Awesome. Yes. Amazing. I mean, it does so many things, right? It makes you think maybe it makes you happy, maybe it makes you sad. I think the intent of the content should determine what it can do.
00:29:13:07 - 00:29:37:11
Duncan Alney
And I think we had a piece recently where we showed the same cows frolicking with really ominous music and then really happy music. And what it could do is totally different. So I do think it is what you wanted to do. Yes, content drives action, different types of action, but yes. Awesome. Well, thank you everybody for joining this executive briefing on content creation.
00:29:37:11 - 00:30:02:06
Duncan Alney
Made simple. If you are interested in getting access to the replay, you can just let us know if you want to just put your put it in the chat. Well, we'll actually send it to everybody so everybody will get access to the replay of your RSVP. You get access to the replay. But thanks again for joining and have an awesome Wednesday.