AP 0612: How Do I Create Good Content?

AskPat 612 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 612 of AskPat, thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Manjit but before we get to his question I do want to thank today's sponsor which is Design Crowd. That's DesignCrowd.com/AskPat, which helps entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource or crowdsource custom graphic, logo and web design from designers around the world. They have more than 500,000 designers from over a 100 countries ready to help you with any creative and design projects you might have. Check out designcrowd.com to learn more and get started at DesignCrowd.com/AskPat, that's DesignCrowd.com/AskPat for a special VIP offer for our listeners.

Now, let's get to today's question from Manjit.

Manjit: Hi Pat, I believe the success of your site is based on the quality you provide in your content and the value that gives you your user base. I was just wondering how do you create good content because that's what I'm struggling on. I want to give my users value but I don't have the confidence or the understanding how to create this content from start to finish.

Example, could you tell us how you would create an ebook from start to finish? Any help you can give would be appreciated, thanks.

Pat Flynn: You know I appreciate this question a lot. First of all because of your vulnerability, just the honesty behind it and the fact that you do want to create good content. I think that's first and foremost the number one thing you all need to do, is to have that drive and that want to create good content. Not just good content, but great content. How can you actually stand out from the crowd? And that's where I want to start. Great content is often content that is unique, that's different, that's out there in a different way than what's already out there. Now it's hard to create, and the reason why I say it like that is because it's hard to create brand new, kind of completely never before like discovered something amazing, that nobody's ever seen or heard of before. It's very difficult to come up with stuff like that. But, you can take principals and ideas and things that are already existing and put your own voice, your own spin, your own conclusions, your own words, your own style into it and that can make it unique and make it great.

Now it's hard to create, and the reason why I say it like that is because it's hard to create brand new, kind of completely never before like discovered something amazing, that nobody's ever seen or heard of before. It's very difficult to come up with stuff like that. But, you can take principals and ideas and things that are already existing and put your own voice, your own spin, your own conclusions, your own words, your own style into it and that can make it unique and make it great.

Especially when you consider and this is the second part, how it's actually transforming the readers or the listeners or the viewer's lives. And I love, love, love to think about content as transformational content. That's what makes great content, transformational. And the reason I say that is you know, it's basically saying well what's the purpose of this piece of content you are writing or recording. But when you think about transformation, it takes the focus off of you and your purpose for doing it and puts it on the person on the other end who is consuming that content.

And so when it comes to transformation, you want to think about, well, what is the end goal, what the end result there, what are they gonna get that they didn't have before they read that thing, before they listened to you, before they watched you. And then taking that end goal and working backwards. Determining what those steps are, determining what those supporting points are, what stories can you tell that can lead somebody into that?

Now I will say that yes, I do believe that I have great content and it is of high quality but it definitely didn't start like that. Definitely, definitely didn't start like that. What made it great was learning from others, getting help, paying attention, but more importantly just doing. And yes, I was in the same boat, I didn't have confidence at first. But, I knew that the more I did it, the better I would get. That's the case with anything.

So Manjit, I would recommend that you just go and write with the focus of transforming your readers or your listeners or your viewers. I guess if you have readers, or excuse me listeners and viewers you're not writing, unless, anyway, nevermind. Focus on the transformation, determine what those steps are and just practice and put it out there for the world. And ask for feedback, and that by far has also been one of the top things that I have done is as my audiences begin to grow and has grown much larger over time, I continue to ask my audience, in surveys but also in person. When I see people at conferences or via email, on Skype sometimes, over chat, what I could do to improve or what they like. That way I know what I should and shouldn't do moving forward and that's how you become better, that's how you become more confident.

Now if you want a step-by-step process on how to write an ebook from start to finish, I highly recommend you check out my free book. It's called Ebooks the Smart Way. I wrote this back, way back in the day and all the content is very relevant still today and it's helped over a 100,000 people understand how to write. But not just write, how to publish, how to market and also how to automate it. So whether you put it out there as a lead magnet to generate more emails for your list or sell it, that book's gonna help you do that too. I would highly recommend sort of re-reading the parts about mind mapping, that's gonna help you come up with the content that's gonna be great for your audience too. And just structure everything so it flows, flows nicely as you're beginning to type it all out.

So Manjit, check it out ebooksthesmartway.com. Everybody should check it out actually and I appreciate you all for checking that out. And Manjit I appreciate your question because this is great, it's going to be helpful for a lot of people too. So thank you so much and we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured on the show.

Thank you and thank you to everybody else out there who's asking questions because this show wouldn't exist without you. So please keep asking your questions, head on over to askpat.com, you can ask right there on that page and I pick a person five days a week and you will win a t-shirt which is great, for free also.

Today I'd also like to thank Design Crowd for sponsoring today's show, Design Crowd helps entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource or crowdsource like I said, custom graphic, logo and web design from designers around the world. Over half million designers from over a 100 countries, ready to help you with any creative and design projects you might have. Again check out DesignCrowd.com/AskPat for a special VIP offer and learn more, get started now.

All right thank you so much I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day as always from Rick Levine. He says, “Authenticity, honesty and personal voice underlie much of what's successful on the web”. There you go, take care, see you in the next episode, bye.