How to Repurpose Your Content on Social for Maximum Results

Woods: Repurposing [stocks] in the planning stage and it shouldn’t actually be an afterthought that you just create your content and then stop and think, “Oh, how should I repurpose this?” But actually create the content with the repurposing in mind so that it repurposes like a dream.

Baer: Hey friends, welcome to the Social Pros Podcast, glad to have you with us. I’m Jay [Baer] from Convince and Convert, joined as always by my special Texas friend. He’s the executive strategist for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Mr. Adam Brown. What a fantastic episode and Amy Woods is on top of it.

Brown: She is and Jay, as we talk about on the show, she does so much for this show.

Baer: Yeah.

Brown: A lot of the marketing and promotion and cross-marketing that all of you see that drives you to come download our podcast each and every week comes from Amy and her organization. I really loved how she answered this particular question and that we need to be thinking ahead of the curve about how we’re going to repurpose and re-market all the content. It’s not just something you can do post-mortem. It’s not something you can just do when the film is in the can, so to speak. Her approach and her strategy here was bang-on.

Baer: Yeah, I think every single person out there in the social media community will benefit from this particular episode with Amy Woods, founder of Content 10x. She’s got a real method, the definition of method to taking a content asset like a podcast episode and turning it into a panoply of other smaller, snackable, bite-sized assets. It’s really, really fascinating. She does a great job. You’re going to like this episode.

Baer: Also, you’re going to like brand new sponsor on the show, Adam. Super pumped about this. Our friends at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions are sponsoring the Social Pros Podcast for a bit. Thanks very much to them. In fact, we talked about LinkedIn a little bit on this episode.

Baer: The question I have is, what if you could reach the right professionals the right way? There’s more than 600 million professionals on LinkedIn and it gives you access to the world’s [inaudible 00:02:02], right? It gives you access to business leaders, decision makers, the people who influence those decision makers.

Baer: I mean, everybody who listens to this show knows how important LinkedIn is and as we talked about in the show, it’s one of the last bastions of organic reach. But you can also be really successful with LinkedIn Advertising Solutions. It can be really interesting because it offers some targeting tools that you frankly just can’t get anywhere else, right? LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to target by job title, by a bunch of other things that you just can’t do in other places.

Baer: Especially for B2B, it’s kind of a no brainer. We’ve had a ton of success with it here at Convince and Convert, even promoting this particular show. It’s so nice of the LinkedIn guys. Check this out. Going to give you a free $100. $100 free to Social Pros listeners. Here’s what you have to do.

Baer: To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn advertising credit to launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com/socialpros. That’s LinkedIn.com/socialpros, free $100 ad credit. Terms and conditions apply, of course, but please take them up on that. They’re giving us money. Go to LinkedIn.com/socialpros and make that happy, which is super cool.

Baer: Also, Adam, more new stuff on the week from Salesforce. That’s your guys. New ebook. What does customer engagement really mean for businesses today? I mean, we talk about it here on the show all the time. To answer that specific question, the Salesforce team surveyed more than 8,000… You guys really over deliver on the sample size.

Brown: [crosstalk] research team knows what they’re doing.

Baer: [inaudible 00:03:36]. Let’s just interview everybody. 8,000 consumers and business buyers across the globe and put together the third edition of the State of the Connected Customer report. Man, super fascinating. All kinds of really interesting findings about what really makes consumers move, what makes them behave, what makes them click and share and talk. It’s really great.

Baer: If you listen to this show, you need to download this report. It won’t cost you a thing. Go to bit.ly/customersrule. Bit.ly/customersrule. All lower case. That’s the new State of the Connected Customer report from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So, not just one but two brand new things for you here, Social Pros listeners. 100 bucks for you from LinkedIn, brand new dope report from Salesforce, and an incredible guest.

Baer: This is a barn burner here this week on the Social Pros podcast. Hope you enjoy. Here comes Amy Woods. Delighted to have on Social Pros this week, Amy Woods, who is the founder of Content 10x, also the author of a brand new book of the same name, Content 10x and host of the Content 10x podcast. You can see a theme.

Brown: There’s definitely a theme here.

Baer: Great with the branding. Amy and her team also do the post-production on this very podcast, the podcast that you’re listening to right now, Social Pros. They make Adam and I sound better than we really are and they also make all the social media graphics that you see out there about the show. We’ll talk about that here today. Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Woods: Oh, it’s a pleasure to be on. Thank you for having me.

Baer: We are delighted to have you here and sincere thanks to you and the whole team at Content 10x for all the work that you do here for Social Pros. I know the Social Pros community appreciates it as well. One of the things I think is so fascinating is you run a company that literally wouldn’t have existed a short time ago, right?

Baer: This whole idea of, “Hey, let’s build a professional services firm that repurposes digital content.” That’s a very modern idea. Talk a little bit about the fact that this is a thing that is truly suited to the modern age.

Woods: Well, yeah, I guess it is, isn’t it? Social content repurposing. So, we work with podcasters, video creators, live streamers, so yeah, you wouldn’t have had live streams awhile ago. I guess content repurposing in a non-digital form has been around for awhile but we fully focus on spreading the work more digital.

Woods: So, the world of social media, anything that we can create from a digital perspective, we create as well. Yeah, it’s all about spreading the message broader, wider, reaching more people, having more impact of what we have today.

Baer: The company’s called Content 10x. What does that refer to? Is it making 10 things or it is amplifying your results by a power of 10? How did you come up with that phraseology and what does it mean to the organization?

Woods: Well, it’s about creating more pieces of content from one piece of content. When we talk about repurposing content, I very much see it as when you create content, you’re communicating a message in a certain way and what we do is look at the [inaudible] way that we created that content and that message and how we chose to communicate it. Then what are all the different ways that we can communicate the same message, the same story, the same sentiment but in different formats and then in different locations?

Woods: The 10x is looking at multiple formats, multiple locations, so from websites to YouTube to Facebook, LinkedIn, Medium, et cetera and [inaudible] more people too, so multiplier of format, multiplier of location, and ultimately multiplier of people. It’s not necessarily 10. Could be 100x, 1000x.

Baer: Content 1000x, yeah.

Woods: Yeah, exactly. When I came up with the name, I guess I just kind of thought it sounded good, Content 10x. It’s about content and then the multiplying factor.

Baer: Lots of people who create content either for their business or for their personal brand, they might have a podcast like this, they might have a blog, they might have a video show. I think many people now understand that you want to use social media to amplify that core content. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.

Baer: I believe that most folks have a handle on how to kind of do it, but the difference between what is typically the case and what I think you and your organization are so good at is you’ve really turned it into a process, right? It is like a machine. Add episode to top of meat grinder and out the other end comes all these amazing assets that are synced up for each of the social networks and to what audiences in those platforms desire.

Baer: Talk a little bit about the process part of it, because I think it’s really important. Because when you start doing it differently every time, it can really be a tremendous time suck and also really, really frustrating.

Woods: Yeah, I think that like you said, most people are completely bought into the entire concept of repurposing their content. It makes so much sense to not constantly reinvent the wheel but whilst most people are bought into it, not a lot of people do it and most people I speak to and I tell them what we do and we talk about repurposing, they always say, “I should do that more often.”

Woods: It’s always a thing that people never disagree with it, but they always say, “I wish I did that more often”, but it’s usually the same people who say, “We don’t have time to do it.” But then they rush off and do the next podcast episode or the next video or the next blog post and just keep spinning loads and loads of new content without actually making the most out of the content that they’ve already created.

Woods: People are bought into it, but it’s more of a time thing and it think it’s the view of it’s all content, whether it’s repurposed content or the core, the original content is content and it’s where you put your time. From my perspective, the processes we follow, we tend to work with video, live stream, or prerecorded video or podcasts usually is the main sources of content that we work with.

Woods: As we’ve spoken about before, Jay, if you have video, you have audio as well, so that’s always definitely the best form of content repurposing but either way, it usually starts with a copywriter. The copywriter is the person in my team and my business who gets their hand on the content first because always turn the video and the audio content into written content.

Woods: [inaudible] the copywriter, if one person has to consume the whole thing to make lots of decisions on the best teasers, the best quotes, the best everything, it’s the copywriter that has to write articles and things like that. So, they’re going to consume the whole content.

Woods: So, the copywriter starts and they will write blog posts, et cetera, articles, social content based off the video or the audio. Then the creative team get to work in terms of they will then create teaser graphics, audiograms, all sorts of infographics, the blog post images, things like that.

Woods: It’s a process of create the content, copywriter gets involved, graphics team get involved, video team get involved and then it goes to the publishing. Then the publishing will be publishing on websites, publishing on all the social platforms, on YouTube, et cetera.

Woods: Then the post publishing review with how did it do, do we need to change when we publish things, what kind of graphics work well, what kind of teasers work well and then like you said, go to the top of the grinder and start again. Kind of look at the feedback and go through again.

Woods: It’s kind of an art and a science. There’s the art of being creative, being different, it’s not copy and paste by any means and there’s the science of it’s a process and it’s a methodical process that we go through.

Brown: Amy, it’s great to have you on the show and I’ll reiterate what Jay said. Thank you for everything, excuse me, that you do on the show to help us. I want to talk a little bit about that idea of repurposing. In the film industry, they typically have this term they call shooting coverage, which means it’s when they’re shooting a scene, they’re going to shoot it in a couple of different ways.

Brown: They’re going to have some wide shots and some close in shots and they’re going to make sure that when they get to the editing room floor, they’ve got enough material to actually assemble the film or the movie.

Brown: I’m curious if you have any tips, Amy, for how we as content creators can be kind of shooting coverage to make sure that when we get to that point that you’re talking about with the meat grinder that there’s enough coverage and that we’re giving teams like yours or if we’re doing ourself, ourselves enough material so that we can parse that original content and effectively repurpose it.

Brown: Anything have you found that works and that we should be mindful of when we’re actually creating the content?

Woods: Yeah, I love that question because I always say that repurposing starts in the planning stage and it shouldn’t actually be an afterthought that you just create your content and then stop and think, “Oh, how should I repurpose this?” But actually create the content with the repurposing in mind so that it repurposes like a dream.

Woods: I think it’s things like, for example, making sure that your content is evergreen so that it can repurpose, you’re not saying things that are too in the moment and using terminology like today, yesterday, and things like that that are too time specific.

Woods: So, thinking about it being evergreen as well and also think about, for example, if it’s video, segmenting your content so that if you’re going to create short teaser snippets and things like that. So, longer form content into shorter form content, you need to think about what would that shorter form content be and how can you present it in such a way that it’s going to be snackable and create bite size pieces of content.

Woods: A good example of this is when we work with people whose core content is going live. They’re live streamers and sometimes they have a weekly live show. I always say to them that if we’re going to repurpose this into bite size, more evergreen content, then we need to make sure that we keep live sections to one point and then we get into the core content where you present and you aren’t having banter and interaction with the audience, which is not interesting for any non-live audience.

Woods: You’re not there and you’re not part of the party, you don’t need to see any of that or be witnessing that. It’s thinking about from that point of view, segmenting. In that instance, say hello to people, interact, then let them know that you’re not going to answer any questions or refer to comments for the next 10 minutes or so because you’re going to present on a core message and then you’ll get to questions at the end and that core section in the middle, that’s what’s going to be the repurpose-able content

Woods: Also though, I always say things like bloopers and things like that are okay to save as well. Don’t get rid of-

Baer: We’ve got plenty of those.

Woods: Exactly, because that’s funny on social, keeping bloopers and things like that but segmenting your content. That’s the presentation, it’s keeping evergreen, thinking about the bite size sections and how can you plan in advance for that. But then also, things like the format. If you’re going to be creating video content that’s going to also become a podcast, then you need to think more about audio quality than perhaps you usually would for some videos.

Woods: Then also, the things that you say. Again, the terminology that you use so it’s not too visually dependent, that you don’t say, “Look at this,” and things like that. It’s just planning ahead and looking at different formats and things like that that can really, really help make it repurpose like a dream.

Baer: Such a good point and just for the reminder of Social Pros listeners, we do actually record this show on Zoom with cameras turned on. Adam and I have found that it makes the conversation flow a little bit better when all the participants can see one another.

Baer: But also, Amy and her team at Content 10x then take the actual video file from these Social Pros podcast recordings and use the videos in some of the social media teaser graphics that they create for the show. If you’ve, for whatever reason, never seen one of those graphics, we absolutely record this show via video. We didn’t always in the seven year history of the show. We’ve only been doing it for the last, what Adam, year, year and a half?

Brown: Year and a half maybe.

Baer: Something like that and I think it makes the show. Amy, one of the things that I want to emphasize that’s so critical is that when we talk about repurposing content, we really do mean repurposing content for each of the social platforms or other digital platforms where it’s being published. This isn’t about creating a graphic and then publishing that same graphic to every channel.

Baer: What we work with you and your team on and I think is certainly a best practice is there’s a different teaser for LinkedIn and a different teaser for Insta and a different teaser for Stories and different teaser for Facebook and different teasers for Twitter. It is very much a specific graphics and promotional package for each social network.

Baer: I want you to talk a little bit about why that is so important, why it’s to just we’ll make… I see this all the time, people who don’t put this kind of time and effort into it. They just make a graphic for the show and they put that same graphic everywhere and then they’re surprised that the results aren’t great.

Woods: Yeah, so I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that people can make is they’re just assuming that every platform is exactly the same because everybody has their own platforms for different reasons. You really need to think about… I guess it’s coming back to what I said about content is a form of communication.

Woods: On those platforms, how do people communicate with each other and how can you slot into that form of communication to get your message across? How you communicate with people on Snapchat is not how you communicate with people on LinkedIn. You have to be platform specific and so, Twitter is more about conversation starters, getting the conversation going, short, sweet, and speaking to people in that way.

Woods: LinkedIn people are a different frame of mind again, so you’re going to ask something different, share a more longer form content. Every content is different. Instagram is going to be way more on the visual side of things, but again longer form, shorter form, different content for Stories. It’s showing that you respect the platform and showing that you are respectful of why people are there and how are you going to get their attention and how are you going to engage with them.

Woods: I also think that it’s about then making sure that you’re there for the conversation as well, because another thing that people do, they’ll cross post but then they don’t follow where they’ve cross posted to. Just because the functionality is there, will post in one place and will also post somewhere else.

Woods: Not only is it not relevant for that platform, but then if people engage with them, they don’t actually follow the content over there and then the people are just commenting to it to nobody because nobody is commenting back because that form of repurposing is I’ll just set it, forget it. I created it in one place, I’ll put it somewhere else. I don’t really use it, but why not just bung it on there and see what happens? But if you’re not there to see what happens, then nothing happens. Nothing effective happens anyway.

Woods: So yeah, we always look at what works on each platform and again, respond to what people are telling us they like and do more of that and do less of what people are not responding to at all.

Brown: Amy, I think that’s such an important point and I’m going to use an American term here. Social and content repurposing is not Ron Popeil, master of said it and forget it. You do have to-

Baer: Nice reference, Adam. Good one.

Brown: Thank you very much. I do some things well, especially when it revolves around advertising. My idiot savant really starts to appear. It’s so important thought to make sure you’re engaging in all those places that you may be repurposing content or what I call cross-pollinating. Trying to get that content and that conversation really going in different places. But as you said, conversation can’t happen unless you’re actually there.

Brown: One of the things that really impresses me with Content 10x and one of the things that you talk about in your new book, Content 10x: More Content, Less Time, Maximum Results, is the fact that your agency and firm focus almost exclusively on organic and you’re having a lot of success doing it.

Brown: You told us right before the show that you really find that LinkedIn gives you the best organic reach. Organic reach is still happening everyday, every minute on LinkedIn and also you’re having great success, not to be surprising, on Instagram Stories. Love to hear you kind of talk about how organic has changed in the past couple of years and how you’ve had to change your focus in your agency to really capitalize upon it.

Woods: Well, yeah. LinkedIn, we see the best organic reach on the posts that we create, but with Facebook, organic is a huge challenge, isn’t it really, on Facebook for businesses. Whilst with my agency, we don’t actually run paid content, a lot of the content that we create if our clients are going to put some [inaudible] marketing spend on that, then we’ll bear that in mind and we’ll create content that is in line with advertising guidelines and things like that.

Woods: I like with Facebook, we’ve seen that it’s becoming more and more about paid. With Instagram though, Instagram Stories we still find is working really, really well and in an organic way. We’re not necessarily seeing that we need to be putting any advertising spend on things going into Stories, it’s almost we’re doing things right and using hashtags correctly and things like that.

Woods: I kind of see it go really up and down on Instagram in particular, in terms of people do really well and then all of the sudden, there’ll be these peaks and troughs where they’re saying, “What’s going on this week or this month? It’s gone down and then it’s going up again.”

Woods: But I think it’s just again, it’s about on Instagram, we find that we do quite a bit of research into hashtags and the correct use of hashtags. We make sure that we don’t use hashtags that millions of people are using that are just going to get lost in about 10 seconds because millions of people are using it. But not ones that nobody’s using as well. So, we try and mix it and get the sweet spot and the mixture of kind of 10 more niche or niche ones and then somewhere in the middle and them some quite high but never over a million follows for those hashtags.

Woods: It’s trial and error and that when we find things work, they work for a certain amount of time and then just stop working as it always [inaudible] the social platforms. But I think a lot of people go around blaming the algorithms a bit too much sometimes and actually they just say everything isn’t working, it’s the algorithm.

Woods: But actually, it’s just the fact that actually maybe the content isn’t that good, it isn’t platform specific and it isn’t engaging and it’s not getting conversations going and it’s not the algorithm’s fault. Even though organic is hard, I don’t think everyone should blame everything on the algorithms all the time.

Brown: Hashtags, I want to double click on that a little bit and I love your approach. It’s almost like the Goldilocks hashtag. Not too hot, not too cold but just right.

Woods: Yeah.

Brown: Not too big, not too small. Talk a little bit tactically how you find those hashtags and is there any process? Is there any tool? Do you just go out and kind of look at the [zeitgeist] and look at trending topics and try to find those sweet spots? Other than doing a postmortem and task performance, how do you know that that’s the right hashtag to try to leverage and take advantage of?

Woods: Well, within Instagram when we use hashtags mainly on Instagram, we do most of our research in the platform itself. We’re looking at the numbers and we’re looking at how many people, what the search numbers are, the usage numbers are on those hashtags. Sorry.

Woods: We do most of it in there and then we go down rabbit holes of looking what other people are using and what seems to be working and then we’ll go down more and more rabbit holes of trying to find unique hashtags. We have a formula that we follow, a roundabout as I said, and specific more niche ones and then ones that are between about…

Woods: Well, under a million, so 500,000 to a million and then a lower ranking and then super specific ones that are being used but it’s okay if they’ve only been used 1,000 to 10,000 times. We apply a bit of an art and a science again to that but we have used some paid tools in the past. There’s various tools that we’ve used where they will help you and you can put in who you’re trying to reach and hashtags that have worked for you and it’ll spurt out all the hashtags.

Woods: But despite buying for any of these tools, we’ve still found that the best research is just actually natively on the platform itself and seeing what other people are using and then again, trial and error to see and then looking at the analytics to see how many people found the post, by either hashtag or by the discover and then just responding to what we’re seeing natively within the platform.

Baer: Amy, what do you believe the content repurposing objective is for a show like this or somebody’s video program? Is it actually to drive traffic back to the show notes page, in our case socialpros.com? Or is it to create broader awareness of the show or the particular episode so that the potential listener goes and accesses that piece of content in their native podcasting app or goes to YouTube or whatever the circumstances are?

Baer: The reason I ask it that way is we’re all familiar with some of the algorithmic tweaks that either penalize overtly or indirectly presence of links and sort of linking out to other content from within the content. Even now, Instagram’s starting to depress things that actually say “link in bio”, the kind of classic “link in bio” technique, all those kind of things.

Baer: Because ultimately, they want you to stay in their platform. They don’t want you to go to somebody else’s platform. That’s kind of how it rolls. How do you talk to your clients at Content 10x about that when they say, “Well, this repurposing is generating X clicks, but isn’t it about more than clicks?”

Woods: Yeah, I think it’s a few things. It is about being front of mind and staying front of mind as much as possible in front of your audience. Making people aware of that latest video, latest podcast episode, or just the recent longer form content that you’ve created.

Woods: I think firstly, it’s just about being present and having that presence and not losing that presence in the busy social media landscape, so keeping up with your audience on Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. Even if they’re not necessarily able to click that link and follow through, they’ve seen that you’ve done your last week’s episode [inaudible] with Pat Flynn on a Social Pros. Maybe that moment in time, they didn’t click, but they’ve seen it, it’s front of mind and they’re reminded that you have these great guests and you have the podcast.

Woods: I think firstly, it’s just being present and it is important to be present and it’s important to be present on the different platforms and stay front of mind.

Woods: I also think from a personal brand perspective, I guess building on the presence, but when you are repurposing your content and it’s sharing your message, the same messages but in different formats and in different ways, it’s asserting your authority on what you talk about and continuing to assert your authority and continuing to be seen and be known as a person who has that message and is talking about that topic constantly.

Woods: Also, I mean I do think it is… We usually do work with our [inaudible] clients to try and get people back to the website and consume the longer form content, but you are right. For example, LinkedIn, we stay away from putting the link in because we find that that makes a huge difference if we put links in. It’s that awareness and people should know where to go and usually we put a link in the first comment, otherwise just to say where people should go to try and get around it.

Woods: But we do see traffic increase, but I think it’s more also just that being present, brand awareness, thought leadership, and reasserting your thought leadership because if you aren’t, other people are and people are going to start to forget about you if you’re not there and present. So, having the presence I think is really, really important.

Baer: One other question on specifics and if you like this topic of conversation, friends, make sure you listen to Amy’s podcast Content 10x because she goes into great detail on these kind of issues every single week. It’s really fascinating if you’re into social media mechanics and specifics. It’s a really, really great listen, so check that out, Content 10x.

Baer: Also, of course, the new book Content 10x which is available, I think in just a couple of weeks and when we record this, you of course can pre-order it on Amazon or all the places that books can be procured. Cannot wait to get a handle on that. We’ll have a link on the show notes as well at socialpros.com.

Baer: One question, Amy, and I don’t know if you and I ever have talked about this overtly about this show in particular, but I was just pondering this the other day. If we’ve got nine different assets that are created from each episode, is the best practice in your estimation to publish those assets on all the different social platforms at the same time or on the same day? Or to drip them out in a sequence in between episodes?

Baer: We record, or I should say we publish Social Pros episodes every Friday. Social Pros listeners, if you’re not familiar with that, every Friday is a new episode. Is the best practice then to, on Friday, we talked about the show on LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram? Or is it sort of one per day? What do you think about that?

Woods: Well, I think you should do both because I think that you should [crosstalk 00:30:34].

Baer: Well, there you go. Just do it all, baby! That’s why you need Content 10x.

Woods: I think you should treat your go live day like a mini launch day. I mean, like a big [inaudible] and launch and tell everyone on all your platforms and things like that. But then I still think that that’s not enough because not everyone sees on that day and then I think you start to sprinkle things out and when you’re sprinkling everything then out on the different platforms, that’s when you stagger it and you don’t do everything then on the same day.

Woods: So, everything on the first day and then sprinkle in and scatter it out not just the next week but if it’s evergreen, obviously for weeks and months and for years to come. So, a bit of both I think.

Baer: There you heard it, Social Pros listeners. All the platforms on the launch day and then sprinkle it out over time until the next episode launches. Great advice from Amy Woods, founder of Content 10x, our guest on the show this week. Amy, before we get to the big two questions that we’ve asked all the guests here on the show dating back to January of 2012 when this program began, I want you to talk a little bit about how this company began because it’s quite an unusual origin story.

Baer: You are not one of those folks who sort of loved social media and was a Twitter nerd and then decided to make some money at it and start a company. You actually come from big enterprise consulting and you spent a whole career as an enterprise consultant before starting this very modern, very entrepreneurial venture.

Baer: I’d love for you to talk about that a little bit, because it’s such a fascinating tale.

Woods: Well, yeah, I was a management consultant for 13 years and I was working in mergers and acquisitions mainly in the banking and financial industry, so it’s completely different to what I do today. But basically when I was moving on from that, basically having a family and not being able to leave the house on a Monday and arrive home on a Friday every week anymore. My husband and my kids would not have liked that.

Woods: So, looking to start a business basically and do something different and bit more flexible. I started to basically create something where it was business consultancy in an online capacity and I started following all the online people like yourself and Pat Flynn and Gary Vaynerchuk and all these people who in a corporate world, I’ve never heard of but went down the rabbit hole of learning about this.

Woods: Then I started to create content and started to repurpose content and my heart wasn’t really in what I was doing with the online consultancy and I guess I just spotted a business opportunity because I was repurposing my content that consisted of having different freelancers helping me with a copywriter and then someone with graphics and I assembled a team and I realized that the team I’d assembled and what I was doing was a service, you could sell that service because who wants to manage all these multiple freelancers and review everything that they’ve done? All that’s a headache.

Woods: So, I just spotted it as a business opportunity really. Nothing more than that and I got really passionate about it. I went on a small, six person mastermind with Chris [Ducker] and I brought the idea to that table that day and told everybody what my business idea was and I got such a great response. Everyone was a podcaster, blogger, vlogger, et cetera [inaudible] and I just went all in.

Woods: That was just over two years ago. Yeah, two and a bit years ago, then I just started the business and the rest is history basically. Just one client after the next after the next and now there’s a book and started the podcast two years ago as well. I’ve just immersed myself and learned very quickly, I guess.

Woods: But my background I guess is very… I’m very process driven type person so managing people, managing processes, and building efficiency into anything is probably… Everything that comes out in my business is around that. Managing the team, process, efficiency. I do lean an awful lot on everything I learned as a management consultant, just deploying those skills in a completely different and more fun, in my opinion, way.

Baer: Well, thankfully that is the case because Adam and I just like to sit around and talk to interesting people and then let you guys handle the rest.

Brown: You do the magic.

Baer: Yeah, between your team and my team at Convince and Convert, we’re delighted to have all the smart people behind Adam and I here on the Social Pros podcast. It makes it a lot better, that’s for sure.

Baer: Amy, you’re from Texas obviously, as everybody can tell on the podcast. So many of our guests are from the US, I think partially because so many social media strategists are here in the US and so many of the social networks are based here or largely operate here in the States.

Baer: Any differences or observations you have working in the UK in the work that you do and interacting with content creators from all around the world?

Baer: Well, I think the biggest observation, most of my clients are based in the US. It’s probably about 70% people in the US, 30% over the UK. I definitely think that you guys in the US are a lot more progressive and innovative with the content that you create. I go to quite a lot of podcasting conferences out in the US because they don’t honestly even exist in the UK really. No podcasting conferences or anything like that.

Baer: Sounds like your next business, the Content 10x conference.

Woods: It does, doesn’t it? There’s the first one that’s coming up in November that I’m speaking at but you’re years ahead of us, so that’s why most of my client base is over in the US because you guys are years ahead in podcasting but just also I think in many of the more modern… So, live streaming was all going on way more with the US audiences before the UK or the rest of the world, I think, really.

Woods: My main observation really is that, that you’re more ahead with everything and we’re kind of catching up in the UK. Then that’s it really, the UK the US. We work with a few… There’s someone in Australia, Canada but they’re the main two countries and everyone’s trying to keep up with you. That’s what I find.

Brown: Kind of to that point, Amy, I’m curious if… I think what you just explained is kind of the maturity curve that we see on a lot of different things and if the US is a little bit ahead of the curve as it relates to podcasting and content repurposing, are there any tips or advice that you give to your international customers where you can say, “Hey listen, we can jump a couple of steps ahead because we’ve already been able to ascertain that this tactic or strategy works or this doesn’t”?

Brown: Anything that you’re doing with your international customers or, in your case, your local customers and clients to kind of take advantage of some of these things that the industry has learned?

Woods: Well, it’s a bit of a tricky one really because we just find that there isn’t really any one size fits all for clients because people’s industries and their audiences and everything, everyone is so different really. What’s working for one person isn’t necessarily working for other people.

Woods: For example, longer form podcasts work for one client because their type of ideal listener has got that time on their hands to listen to longer form content and then some people in other industries where 10 minutes is about enough because your listeners are never going to listen beyond 10 minutes, because that’s what we’re seeing.

Woods: It’s not really passing on things. We’re seeing what works for some people doesn’t work for others, so my biggest advice that I give people is that we need to be nimble and operate in an agile way as we start to work together so that we can see what works and doesn’t work and then respond accordingly and then go all in on what works and doesn’t work.

Woods: As we’re keeping our eyes out and we’re looking at similarities between different clients and different things that have worked and making sure that we deploy what works, we’re also just trying to be nimble at first and make sure that we respond quickly if things don’t work as well.

Woods: So, there’s never really been any magic secrets [inaudible 00:39:10]. It’s all trial and error until you find the sweet spot.

Baer: That’s the thing, right? I mean, it’s all trial and error and even when you have the sweet spot, it sort of becomes trial and error again because-

Woods: Yeah, exactly.

Baer: Because of all the rules and algorithm changes and so, yeah, the sweet spot is fleeting, ladies and gentlemen.

Woods: Yeah.

Baer: That is the truth.

Woods: Yeah.

Brown: Lot of job security for all of us because of that.

Woods: I think in terms of the algorithm is changing like you said, sometimes we see things change for some people before others because the big social networks, they don’t deploy all their changes in one go, [do they 00:39:51]? So, certain people will say that they’ve noticed this change happening and other people say they haven’t but it’s just because it’s a release, a phased a roll out, a release of updates and so people are being impacted earlier and it might be [inaudible] other people are being impacted.

Woods: We can spot trends sometimes with that, where we know if something’s happening for someone, they’re not unique. It’s going to start happening to everyone. But again, we can spot trends. But as Jay said there’s the whole kind of one dog year is however many human years. What’s a digital year [inaudible 00:40:25]? It’s one month equivalent about equivalent to a year. I think it probably is, isn’t it?

Woods: So, we spot trends but things change quickly. We just have to keep our eyes open and I try and make sure that I stay as up-to-date as possible with everything that’s going on. I try and read well, I try and attend events that I can get to, and just try and stay on top of what’s going on and what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing and then we can make sure that we’re doing best by our clients because they don’t need to keep on top of things because we do. That’s what we aim for.

Baer: Amy, we’re going to ask you the two questions that we ask everybody here on the show as you know from listening to the episodes and putting together all the teaser graphics and the content repurposing for Social Pros. If you could give somebody one tip who wants to become a social pro, what would you tell them?

Woods: Well, we’ve already actually touched on this. It’s what Adam asked me before, but it would be to not consider content repurposing to be an afterthought, but to think about how you are going to make the most from your content when you are planning it in the early stages and have a forward plan beyond the first publish to have more content created. So, it’s not letting repurposing be your afterthought.

Baer: Yeah, create the content to be repurpose-able.

Woods: Yes. Yes, exactly.

Baer: As opposed to sort of hoping for the best after the fact. You guys are really good, but there’s that whole [inaudible] sort of adage sometimes that comes into play. Last question, Amy. If you could do a video call and then repurpose it with any living person, who would it be and why?

Baer: Adam and I thought that you were going to say the queen because you’re a subject I guess is what you guys go with and that feels like a thing that would be cool. But we also discovered that the queen probably doesn’t use Zoom.

Brown: Probably not.

Baer: Probably not at all, but you’d get corgis in the video which would be cool probably. What is your actual answer since [inaudible 00:42:25]?

Woods: I know you’re supposed to come with up a profound answer here that shows-

Baer: Is that true? I’ve never said that. I’ve never said that on the show. You interpreted that, but I don’t think I’ve ever encouraged profound.

Woods: No, I’m only joking.

Baer: [crosstalk 00:42:41]. Profundity [inaudible] the word.

Woods: It’s like sometimes a dinner party question though, isn’t it? That everyone tries and thinks of the most intelligent thing to say. But I don’t think it’s particularly profound, so my answer is British man, David Beckham. Do you know David Beckham?

Brown: Yes, no doubt at all. No.

Baer: Yes, we know David… What kind of weird question is that? Yes, we know David Beckham. David Beckham is internationally famous. Yes.

Woods: My reason is because he used to play for my team, Manchester United, and I had a crush on him when I was younger and probably still do actually. I’m just really interested in him from the point of view that he has gone on from being one of the top footballers in the world to building a huge personal brand for him and actually for him and his family, going on to be a businessman now.

Woods: So, all the different business ventures that he’s gone into since his sporting achievements. I just think it would be a really good conversation, though I’d prefer if it was not Skype and actually an in person meeting.

Baer: In person.

Woods: [inaudible] Skype call.

Baer: So, if you could do a shirtless video call with any person, the answer is Sir David Beckham. Was he knighted? Is he Sir David Beckham? I could be making that up.

Woods: He is, isn’t he? Yeah, I think he was knighted, yes. Yeah, yeah. Sir David Beckham.

Baer: You’re going to do that. That’s my prediction. The deal on Social Pros as you probably know from listening to the transcripts and stuff is that within six months, everybody on this podcast has a different job. Although, Nicholas from the USPS, from a week or two ago, has been at the US Postal Service for like 20 years or something. He may be the exception, who knows?

Baer: But everybody changes jobs, so I don’t think you’re going to change jobs because it’s your company but my prediction is that eventually, knighted. That’ll be [inaudible] for Amy Woods, yes.

Woods: That would be amazing. I’ll take that.

Baer: Yes, it’d be fantastic. Thank you again for being on the show. Thanks for all the work you do here at Social Pros. Folks, if you’re out there creating content, either for your personal brand or for your company if you’ve got a corporate podcast, if you have a corporate video series, all the things that Amy’s talking about, you probably have some inkling of how to do those because you listen to this show.

Baer: But it’s a whole bunch of work to do it well and Amy’s team does it really, really spectacularly and very well organized. So, couldn’t recommend her and the team highly enough. Make sure you listen to the Content 10x podcast and pick up a copy of the Content 10x book and I bet you there’s going to be a Content 10x conference. We’ll keep you posted on that as well down the road. Amy, thanks so much for being here.

Woods: Oh, thank you so much for having me on. It’s been great, so thank you.

Baer: Yep, we’ll talk to you soon. Folks, that’s this week’s episode of the Social Pros podcast. Delighted to have you with us. As mentioned in the episode, every single transcript, every single episode going back… We’re almost at episode 400, Adam. We’re right around the corner. It’s crazy. But every single one of those are available at socialpros.com and obviously wherever you listen to podcasts.

Baer: Had a bunch of new reviews come in on the show recently on Apple and Spotify and Stitcher, so-

Brown: Thank you.

Baer: Yeah, thank you very much to each and every one of you. We love, love, love to see your reviews and always interested in your feedback as well. Until next week, I’m Jay Baer from Convince and Convert. He is Adam Brown from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and this has been the Social Pros Podcast.