023 Consistency Beats Creativity
Why is consistency the secret weapon to long-term marketing success? Because showing up regularly matters way more than waiting for a lightning bolt of creative genius.
Quirky Quiz Time 🥳
What is the biggest advantage of consistency in marketing?
A) It builds trust and keeps you top of mind.
B) It makes you more creative.
C) It guarantees viral success.
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Answer: A) It builds trust and keeps you top of mind - if you want to be the top choice you need to be seen 👀
023 Consistency Beats Creativity
Creativity is great, but consistency is what actually builds trust, grows your audience, and gets your brand remembered. In this episode, we break down why consistency beats creativity every time, how to create a content plan that doesn’t burn you out, and what common challenges people face in staying consistent—plus, practical solutions you can implement today!
Building a personal brand or small business isn’t about waiting for inspiration to strike—it’s about showing up consistently. This episode dives into the common struggle of staying consistent with content creation, why it matters, and how to make it easier on yourself. The trick isn’t to post every single day but to develop a sustainable plan that works for your lifestyle. Whether it’s setting a realistic schedule, batching content, or repurposing older posts, we cover the essential habits that will keep your marketing on track.
One of the biggest hurdles to consistency is overthinking—whether it’s perfectionism, running out of ideas, or feeling like the algorithm is working against you. But the truth is, your audience isn’t scrutinizing every word you post; they just need to see that you’re there. We discuss practical solutions to avoid burnout while still staying top of mind for your audience. Because if you disappear for six months, they’ll forget you exist—but if you show up regularly, they’ll remember you when they need your services.
So, here’s your challenge: Pick a schedule, even if it’s just one post a week, and stick to it. No overthinking, no waiting for the “perfect” moment—just hit post. And if you want expert guidance on getting your video marketing game strong, book a session with Zoë Wood at Video Confidence Coach to get the clarity and strategy you need!
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00:00 – Welcome to Video Confidence Connect! Zoë checks in after a week of being sick, talks about upcoming events, and introduces today’s topic: consistency in marketing.
06:30 – Why consistency is the secret to marketing success—breaking down the overused but under-explained advice of “be consistent.”
13:00 – How to create a content plan that won’t burn you out—picking a schedule that actually works for you.
19:45 – Batching content like a pro—saving time by creating multiple posts in one go.
27:15 – Repurposing content: why you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time you post.
34:50 – Making consistency easy: scheduling tools, templates, and other hacks to streamline your marketing.
42:10 – Overcoming common consistency challenges: not having enough time, running out of ideas, and perfectionism getting in the way.
50:30 – The role of algorithms and why they reward consistency over viral moments.
57:45 – Final thoughts and a challenge for listeners: Pick a schedule, stick to it, and just hit post!
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Zoë Wood 2:20
Good day everyone, and Welcome to this week's video, confidence, connect with your host, Zo Wood, the video confidence coach, smashing your marketing mayhem with killer video strategies. And it looks like my captions aren't working. That's okay. So apologies for everyone for missing last week. As you could probably guess by that cough in involuntarily cough there I have had, and I'm currently experiencing a little bit of issues revolving around breathing and all those lovely germs. So as I try and fix this issue, what is wrong with you now, we got it. Okay? I think we got it now. Okay, I fixed it. So today, we're definitely gonna get through today. So thank you, everyone who is tuning in, either live or on the hashtag replay squad for this week's video confidence connect, where we talk weekly about personal branding, video marketing and general marketing strategies for your personal brand or small business. With me, your host, Zo Wood, the video conference coach, you can watch us or listen to the live stream on LinkedIn or on YouTube. Yes, I we are still moving on to other platforms, but being sick kind of put that on the back burner for now, but that is okay. My intention is to turn the microphone off whenever I'm coughing, because I does not sound good, and you don't need to be listening to that as we conduct our Connect today. So if you have any questions or any ideas or thoughts or even podcast topics that you'd like us to cover in our podcasts. You can reach in the comment below, and I'll make sure to do my best to respond to them, either during the live or out of the live. I always make sure to make to respond to the comments whenever they come up, if you want any more information, including show notes or other podcasts or the other offers that we have at the video confidence coach, you can check out our website, Vcc dot training, and specifically for show notes, because I did have a few people ask the show notes are in Vcc dot training slash video, dash, confidence, dash, connect. Or you can find that in the resources section of our website, because that's where I keep everything, and I do my best to keep all the show notes updated with information that will be useful to you whenever and however you're going a personal brand. So hopefully you're not hearing that. Yes, you'll be able to see me, zologies, I won't be able to both. To shut off the visual and the auditory, but I thought the auditory would be a little bit more egregious to have me coughing in the background. So just got a slight acute pneumonia. Everything's fine. It's just sickness and doing my best to heal. And now that my body is healing, my body decides that you're healthy enough we can start getting rid of the gunk, which is not great for me when trying to work. So thank you for all of my clients who have been very understanding and who have been very flexible with working with me over this past week, and for all the clients that I have worked with, thank you so much for giving me a mega giving me some grace as we heal. So thank you, everyone who's come for us this week before I'd like to begin, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the wadawurrung people of the Kulin nation, traditional custodians of the lands on which we conduct our business today, I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. I stand with the traditional custodians of these lands and working towards a more equal future. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to face discrimination. And disadvantage due to our country's colonial past. I stand with them in their fight against injustice. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land, and as we first move on to today's topics. So I've got a couple of topics. For those who may be unaware, video confidence Connect is a opportunity where I live stream for an hour once a week to be able to answer any of your questions that you've asked me throughout the week revolving around video marketing, personal branding. Or I take this opportunity to record some podcast episodes for our unborn your brand podcast, which is getting a lot of good traction. So thank you everyone who has been listening and watching that, both on Spotify, Apple podcasts and YouTube. So thank you everyone on that front I also take this opportunity to answer any community questions. So any questions in the community that I get around, obviously my areas of interest and speciality, I do my best to give you a say, 10 minute end answer to be able to put that in the video, so that you can have that answer straight away and not just, uh, wait for me to answer that in an email. I promise I'm getting better emails. I'm just not that good. But in the meantime, what I would like to say what we've accomplished over this past week, so this is a nice check in with everyone. And again, if you would like to let us know how what you've been able to accomplish this week. We are currently on the 14th of March, 2025 as we record this live, and for those who are watching in the replay, don't worry. You can always let us know what you've accomplished this week in the comments. Regardless, this focus for this quarter, we are getting to the end of the quarter. Mentally, I'm already in April, but we're still a notch. As I have been reminded multiple times, our focus is our glow and grow branding session, which is for $350 but obviously that includes the hour that we spend together, plus my collateral of tools, I don't even know if that's a word, multiple tools that can help you on your video journey. And I want to thank Sandra for taking us on our logo offer this week. I hope everything and you've hope everything is going well in your cleaning business, brushed clean if you're ever interested in the Geelong and bellerine region, if you need a cleaner, Sandra is a girl, and hopefully everything could work out on that front regarding the documents that we've sent through over this past week. As you can probably imagine, over this past fortnight, I have been very sick, so I haven't exactly been going out and about, but next week, I will be at the Geelong Chamber of Commerce. Welcome the new members. Welcome. Even though, technically I've been a member since about 16 years, I regularly go take myself off a member and then join back on, usually with a client. So we are sharing a membership. Usually, that takes down the price and it makes it easier, and also it's allowed, so they can't say no, but I'll be saying hello and mingling with a bunch of people from the Geelong Chamber of Commerce. And you'll also be seeing me at the one roof networking virtual events we have our, I think, accountability session today. So I'll see all of you at 12, and I look forward to seeing everyone again and getting some accountability for our business in the upcoming podcast so and our unborn your brand podcast, I should say you, last week, you saw our podcast of fighting business copycats, which essentially was me discussing my story about how someone was stealing my business name and parading around and sitting as me well. They weren't pretending to be me, but they had all their branding as the video confidence coach, despite the fact that I had registered and trademarked it. So I had to be a bit nice. No, I had to be a booming and then that was the ensuing situation from there, and having to just be on their ass to make sure that they weren't utilising My name poorly. You. But for someone with 25 years of experience, you would think they would do the due diligence of googling. Don't think I'm a threat. I'll show you I'm a threat. So if you want to find more information about that that'll be in the podcasting feed, feel free to look on look. Look for unboring your brand podcast. You can find it on all your podcast players, and you'll be able to see us there. This the podcast that's going to be released this coming week is when to start a podcast. So this is a community question that I have been getting a lot of good feedback on. So I decided to make it a podcast episode, because in the work that I that we do at the video confidence coach, yes. Video, does you know the video? Confidence coach kind of comes with the territory. We also do a lot of work with podcasting. And we also run a group which I will get to next, called Vic podcasters, which is Victorian podcasters. We have multiple groups and email newsletters which enable people to both have information about where to say, find grants, but also a tight knit community of podcasters in Victoria who are willing and able to help each other out. But when it comes to podcasting, obviously, I get a lot of people asking a lot of questions of when, as a business marketing tool, is it the right time to start? So you'll see that podcast this week, this Sunday, this Sunday coming up, so you'll definitely check that out. So if you are interested, make sure you subscribe, and you'll get that this Sunday at 3pm Australia needs to centre time.
And speaking of the big podcasters, we have a big podcasters podcast, and last week we were talking about winning back your listeners without begging. So if you've taken a break or if you're starting a new podcast, what to do and what tools and trip both tools and tips to use to get people back on your side, to start subscribing, but also to get them back listening and engaging with your podcast after a break, maybe you've made a change. Who knows? Either way, check out the podcast episode on Vic. Podcasters. Again, wherever you catch your podcasts Spotify, Apple podcasts, supposedly on surveys that are recently released as of yesterday, most of Gen Z consume like 56% of their podcasts through Spotify. So interesting to know this week, however, we have got podcasting to crickets, how to get listener feedback part one. So essentially, we want to touch on for a lot of our newer podcast people, but also a lot of our more experienced podcasters in the community, they find that getting feedback, so getting engagement from your audience is one of the hardest things to do, especially because podcasting is very much a passive platform, and as opposed to say something like a tick tock video or YouTube, there are like the comments are very easily accessible and not that far away. When it comes to podcasting, there's not exactly that type of community and engagement feel. So how do you know if you're doing a good job? Well, that's what you gotta stay tuned and subscribe to our upcoming podcast episode of The Big podcasters to find out. So this morning we are going to cover and I'm going to see if I can fit all this in in the hour. There is a good chance I won't, but we'll try. We've got why consistency is the secret to marketing success. That's a podcast episode. We're going to record how to create a content plan that doesn't burn you out. That is a big one that I have been talking with multiple people, multiple different people, over the past couple of weeks, and the community questions that we've got are, what challenges do you face in staying consistent, and how do you keep your message consistent when you try new things? So we'll see. We'll do our best to answer those community questions. But if we do not, if we don't answer those, do not worry. We can always push them to next week. I want to make sure that I give enough time and hopefully enough breathing room to be able to do those questions justice for you. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a break, turn on my air con, give myself some air, and hopefully cough out any of my coughs before we get a chance to talk. And again, even though we are say, for example, I'm recording podcast episode. I may not be as responsive in my comments. Do not worry. I'm not saying that to slight you in any way. I'm doing that mainly in a way of just making sure that I record the podcast as cleanly and easily as possible for myself who's editing it, but also so you can get uninterrupted information. And in that meantime, I'll make sure to look at the comments and answer any comments that do come up, as we do between podcast episodes. And in the meantime, speaking of podcast episodes, you'll be able to find all the information at the unborn your brand podcast. We are on Apple Spotify, and of course, RSS feeds, those are just the feeds that anyone gets, podcasting information, and from there, you can always check out our website. It's right here, Vcc dot training, where I'm going to be updating this probably over the next week, with useful information and more fun details, because I'm always up for updating all my stuff. All right, see you in a bit, Lisa asked the question, one thing I struggle with is keeping my emotions in check. On video, I work in animal welfare, and often end up crying. Any tips for controlling the rush of emotion when I speak about what I do and why I do it, stepping out of the shop and focusing on filming the cat sounds like one way, and that is definitely true. Lisa, being able to just have the focus be on the cats is probably a good way to go about it. And if you do need to be in front of the camera, because again, most of the time, especially when it comes to animal welfare, people are going to be focused on the animals. But if you are, say, for example, going to be like I mentioned before, you are going to be the one that is going to be picking up the phone, answering the messages, answering the texts. Then people feel a lot more comfortable as interacting with you, because they know that you are going to be the one who they see ultimately, when it comes to humans and doing the humans interactions. So when it comes to emotions, especially emotions as gut wrenching as ones that are involved in animal welfare and the care of animals. I definitely recommend not going with live streams to go probably going with pre recorded videos, and giving yourself that opportunity to take those breaks, as I mentioned before about filming when you have the highest energy in the day, that's always a good chance to be able to keep your emotions in check. You'll have more energy, say, for example, if you are someone who has more energy at the side of the day, film your videos either in a location that is more comfortable to you. So be it at home in, say, at home office or a lounge room, or somewhere where there's a nice, you know, nice soft furnishings that you can sit down and you can be comfortable. Be comfortable in because there's less chance of your and again, I hate to use the term negative emotions, because there's no such thing as negative emotions, but to be able to feel comfortable in yourself enough that you're able to get the message through and get the message clear enough without the need to say cry, because again, the work that you do is definitely needed, and that we are so lucky to have people in the world like you who do the work that you do. But if you need to take a break, that's fine. Take a break, have a little cry. So take some time breathe, and then if you need to get back to filming. And as cherry mentioned, she always does voiceovers. If voice overs are easier for you, to be able to have a script in front of you and read off that, or maybe even have dot points in front of you to read off that a little bit more naturally, without having to worry about focusing on a camera lens and worrying about crying, cos, of course, we might be able to hear that you're crying in the voice, but necessarily, that's not always going to be the case. So again, is it fit for purpose? Is it going to work with what you need to and is it going to ultimately help the people and help the cats that you're working with at the end of the day? Cuz it's okay. If that's not the case, you don't need to get in front of the camera if that's the case. But if people are going to be interacting with you, and they're going to be putting their trust in you and the work that you do, if you can get yourself on camera at least once, then that's shift kiss. And if that's not the case, then stand back and focus on cats.
Do you want to know how I managed to secure almost nine out of 10 of my clients at any given point, and I'll tell you, it's not showboating and giving them all the praise, it's being consistent. Intro, intro, intro, blah, blah, blah, Zo talks, Zo talks, why consistency is the secret to marketing Yes, I am doing really well. Thank you for asking why consistency is the secret to marketing success. So as you can imagine, this entire podcast episode is about consistency. So it's not, it's not exactly a secret to marketing success, exactly. But I want to be able to break down this idea or this nebulous cloud of consistency. I'm sure that many people in the personal branding or just in marketing space in general have probably told you, be consistent. Consistently. Be consistent. And I'm going to take down that microphone because you are too hot, as they've said, Why are you so loud? What's going on, as they've mentioned, okay, why are you so warm? I don't know. My apologies for everyone listening. And if that was not clear at all, thank you. Let me try that again. Oh, can you tell I'm sick? No, you can't tell I'm sick, right? Let me just pause for a moment.
Pyramid health. Let me start that again, my apologies. Why is consistency the secret to marketing success? Now, as you can imagine, this entire podcast episode is about consistency. So it's not exactly a secret, but I want to break down this idea of this nebulous cloud of consistency, especially when it comes to your marketing, because you get told this by gurus, but also by people who are regulars or experts in marketing, consistency, consistency, consistency. That is what a lot of people, especially in this pace, talk about. But I want to be able to break down this thing that we all know that we should be doing when it comes to our brands, but somehow life, procrastination and everything else always gets in the way. But here's the deal, if you want your personal brand or your small business to actually work, to actually grow, for people to see and recognise that you show up consistently for them and to serve them, you need to be regular. You need to be reliable, and you need to show that you are a friend that always brings snacks, and their snacks being, you know, good service and all the work that you do in your business, and that's why consistency matters. It's not about always being there and well, yes, it is, in a way. What I mean by this is consistency is about building trust and for your business or your brand to work, people need to trust you. Strangers need to trust you. Strangers need to see that you are there, to answer their questions, to help them get over the hurdle, to fix their problem, to be the solution, and to build that trust and for them to eventually give you money, hopefully, you need to be able to be seen doing that same thing over and over and over and over again. If you are showing up once in a blue moon, people are going to a forget about you because you go, yep, they've lost you. Or people are not going you're not going to stick in people's mind. So when they do, maybe the people that you work with or your in your target audience, don't necessarily have this problem all the time, like it's not a constant burden on their life, but when it is a constant, when it is a burden in their life. They need to know who to turn to and who they turn to is you, if they can remember that you exist. So to do that, you need to be always up the ass of your audience. I know that sounds a bit childish for me to say, but you need to be consistent and also just be there. Now, yes, you can do this in many different ways, and of course, I'll get into that in the rest of this podcast episode, but your audience needs to know what to expect and when they need to know what to expect of you. You need to be the one showing up every day, or at least consistently enough that they understand what you're on about and who you work for, so then they can a recommend you to other people, but also not just that, not just the word of mouth, because even though that is a popular way of marketing people, so word of mouth is when friends, family or colleagues mention your brand or your business to People who are your target market. Why? Because they remember you and they trust you, and why do they do that? Say it with me now, consistency. So for an audience to know what to expect, thank you for that tangent. Everyone, well done. All right. Everyone, sit down. We'll get back to driving. If that's what you're doing, your audience needs to know what to expect. And if one day you're sharing deep business insights in a long form method, like, be it a live stream or a podcast or what have you, but then the next that you're posting cat memes, unless your brand is a cat fair enough. But like, if that's unclear, well, the connection is very tenuous. People are going to get confused, because, remember, we as a society are bombarded with messages, with ideas, with thoughts with colours every single day, and for you to stand out again, to get people on board and to be that level of to build. Level of trust you need to what feels like appease the algorithm gods. LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, you name it. These algorithm Gods love consistency. They reward accounts by showing up regularly and by giving them more reach and visibility. Now, of course, as I like to say with everyone who is listening and watching the podcast today, social media should not be your only marketing strategy, but I understand if it is when you first start out, or it just ends up being the thing that you think of most, because it is so in your face. And for a lot of people who rely heavily on social media, it's because you use the platform regularly, so I'm not condemning you for that. All I'm saying is that when it comes to those algorithms, we've moved from a subscribe, follower mentality when it comes to these social media platforms to an algorithmic one. So essentially, instead of people like coming across you, liking you, trusting you, hitting subscribe or follow and seeing more of your stuff. That is no longer the case. It has moved to what is known as a tick tock algorithm, where the robots, the algorithm, feeds the people what they think they want to see and for you to make sure that you are there consistently and reminding people that you exist, you need to both appease the people who you want to gain their trust, but also the algorithm. The algorithm is a lot more nebulous. The people who even built the things don't even know how they work. So start off simple. Start off easy by making things consistent for yourself, and let's start off with how you actually do that without losing your mind. Number one, you pick a schedule that you can actually stick to. So for Angie, for Marie and for Sandra, I'm talking to you out of love and respect, but also for everyone else, making sure that you pick a schedule that you can realistically stick to is key. Now I'm not talking just social media. I'm talking about being able to both record your videos, podcast messages, however you want to do this. And again, we can and you can always check out other episodes of The unboring your brand podcast to actually break down your ideas of what exactly you want to do and how you want to start marketing yourself. Today, we're just talking about consistency in general, just to give you some ideas. But instead of say, posting every day because my competition does this, or posting every day because it just sounds good in your head. By the time that you hit day three or four, you're going to lose so much momentum, and you're going to realise that you have no content left because you're tired, you're well, by that point, you're probably grumpy and aggressive. But also there is just so much effort for not a lot of reach and kickback, because when it comes to the social media algorithms, one to two posts is not going to be enough to be consistent. And when it comes to email newsletters or when it comes to updating things on your website or regularly creating ways of messaging content with your audience through, say, YouTube or podcasting, you don't build an audience overnight. That's why consistency is important. Building that trust is important. Because if you are building it, it's not necessarily a build it, and they will come mentality. It's more of a things are going to have to constantly be built on over time, you're going to get better as both a communicator to be able to communicate your message, but also have a much better idea of who exactly you're talking to, because you will get feedback. So instead of having a post everyday mentality and the quality going instead
of the quality going down, maybe instead try and commit to a more sustainable schedule that fits within your lifestyle. Maybe it's three times a week with one video fortnight, because videos are harder to create, but also it makes it more doable for you. I've been working with Sandra, hi, who is a cleaner down here in the Zolo and the Bellarine brushed clean, make sure you check her out. And the way that we were able to make the video process work for her, and the way that she worked was we made sure that she was able to access tools. So this was lighting microphones and a tripod for her mobile phone setup that she was able to carry around in her caddy, her toolbox, essentially, with all her cleaning supplies, the tools needed to be light enough that she was able that she'd be able to get her phone out, set things up in realistically, less than 30 seconds. And. Start Recording, and then that footage being saved in the cloud, being saved somewhere other than her phone. So if her phone got damaged or anything, she still had the footage, but she could also use that later on. Why? Because she's able to stick to a regular schedule. If things are easier for you, which we'll get to later on in this list. But when it comes to finding an easy schedule, my recommendation is, where is your bare effing minimum? And I'm sure fans for podcast have already heard my podcast episode about this, but also have heard this multiple times from me. What is the easiest thing that you think that you can do half that and think, okay, I can post once a week? Oh, that's easy. Zoie, I already do that. Cool. Can you do it two times a week? Yeah, I think I can do that. It's relatively easy. I can talk about whatever, awesome, whatever is easier. And then once you get that consistency going for yourself, you'll be able to A then post two times, maybe even three times a week, again, whatever is easy for you in the moment, and you can also rely on using older and repurposing older content as well, just changing the description or maybe slightly tweaking the edit a little bit, which again, we will get into in the upcoming post in this list. So I'm getting ahead of myself here. Zo so again, making sure that you have a schedule that you can stick to number two batch your content like a pro. So instead of creating one off, either videos or messages or taking a photo here and there, and having to do all this work in like the little small grabs of your day, being able to set aside maybe an hour or two a week. And for most of us, marketing is a hobby in our business or our brand, so maybe after hours, being able to create multiple posts, videos or emails in one go stops you from scrambling around a at the last minute, but also enables you to actually spend some time thinking about what you're going to do, and do it in that one chunk of time. What I worked with a couple of people over these past couple of weeks is having a method of when you think of an idea, writing it down, putting it in your notes app, putting it in a a programme like notion or Evernote, which is almost like a personalised wiki. Wherever you are going to put find this information later. That's what you put it. Something like a notebook is usually quite useful. And that tool, let that list, is what you're going to look at in that hour or two where you're going to sit down and batch a couple of content and batch some content. So first, for example, you're going to set maybe a couple of hours, maybe on, say, a Friday afternoon, or maybe whenever your quietest time is. Maybe try doing that. And this can be once a week. This can be once a month. If it's once a month, I'd give yourself a couple more hours just FYI. But if it's something that you can do, say once a week or once a fortnight, that might be easier. And this will allow you to both write, record and schedule everything, so you don't have to think about doing things last minute. You can look at the notes that your brain has already started thinking. You say, thank you past me. It's very rare for you to actually say that to yourself, but thank you past me for coming up with these ideas. They're easy things that I can film, that I can record, that I can do everything and it will be done. It's not just you scrambling at the last minute. It will be done because you've made time for it. And if it's not a priority, which does happen to me, sometimes I have a tendency of moving my batching time because I want to work because not that I want to, well, a little bit, I would prefer to work on client work and making sure that they get the most out of what I my brain power, my work, but I have gotten to a regular rhythm of taking time couple of hours on a Friday afternoon, no one is emailing me, no one is doing anything, and that gives me time to batch a bunch of content, not just for my own email newsletter, social media, website, not not just that, but it allows me to think of things ahead of time. So when I actually do sit down and do the work, I can do it in less time and taking up less energy. As I mentioned before, number three, repurposing, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel, because turning one video. So one video message that you have into a blog, into a podcast, into a series of social media posts or even into an email newsletter is going to be a lot easier than you trying to think of things on the fly and coming up with things from scratch every single time. Why? Because you have the same messages that you're going to be repeating over and over and over and over again until you're sick of it. They're not going to be sick of it. Your audience is not going to be sick of it. You are. They're not. You.
And even though those messages may become quite boring for you, I'm going to tell you now that with the algorithms and with people you know opening their emails you know slightly less nowadays, but there's less chance that people are going to get every single message from you. I'm going to tell you now that it's going to be incredibly rare for everyone to get every single message from you, which is why repeating your old posts that did well in the past and giving them a fresh spin by maybe changing the description or maybe slightly changing the video or slightly changing maybe the hook, which is the first three to five seconds of the video, whatever is going to catch their interest. If you want to try changing that up, it's a lot easier, because you've already done all the work and you're doing it again to save yourself time and energy. You don't need to be original every time, because people aren't going to see your originality every single time, because you just need to be there. Why? Because we are being consistent. So to be consistent, you need to be there. And if that does mean using older content again, sure, I used one popular video of mine, eight, nine times. Why? Because it worked really well. Every time I get every every now and again I get people seeing it. I'm like so much work that I didn't have to do, and people are seeing and responding and giving me feedback. And that's what I want, and that's what I need. Hopefully, that's what you get too. Almost. Fourth thing on my list of making things easy for you to stay consistent is making being consistent stupidly easy for yourself. Can you use scheduling tools? So these are specifically for social media, but also email newsletters or even scheduling videos on YouTube. You can use for social media. You can use meta business suite Buffer, Hootsuite, later later, with two R's. There are plenty of other tools like that. If you do have a fairly robust CRM, customer relationship management tool check if they've got a social media schedule in there. I'm going to tell you now I have. There's been like, three people over the past month where I've mentioned this to them, and they go, I'll check mine. Zo, I found out that my CRM can do this. Like, awesome. You're already paying for it, so do that. So a social media scheduling tool allows you, in those couple of hours a month, couple of hours a week, whatever you're planning to do, allows you to schedule things so you don't have to post on every single platform as soon as you post it live. And also allows you to not think about let's just get it. Allows you to put the message out there again and repeat stuff again in the future, because you don't need to think about it. You can also make it a lot easier by yourself, easier for yourself by creating templates of either your graphics or your captions or the types of emails that you use, so you don't have to start from scratch every time a tool that you can use for this is something like Canva, which is essentially an online PowerPoint tool up to 1000 but essentially, what it does it allows you to create templates of your content relatively easily. So all you have to do is have the idea spend like couple of taps on the keyboard, and there you go. You've created a new piece of content with your new message without having to create absolutely everything from scratch, because that's the issue. You're making it harder for yourself by not relying on templates. And say, for example, if you want to change things up, that is your prerogative. That is what you can do. And do you have the power to do that? Why? Because it's your marketing. And in the event that you come up with a cool idea that you haven't got template for, maybe investing some time on putting it out there, seeing what the audience feedback is. And this audience is also your current clients and potential clients as well, and also their family and friends and colleagues. See what type of feedback you get from it. If you don't get a lot of feedback from it, it might be just an idea. They'll have to stay with you in your heart. But if you get a lot of feedback from it, make a template of it and just use it again. Keep the keep the content ideas in your phone, like I mentioned in that list, or a notepad. So when inspiration hits, usually at the worst times, but whenever it does hit, you can put it in your notes. Future you will thank you. And you don't need to start thinking from scratch. You don't need to rely on your brain to do the memory holding of these and thinking of these ideas, because your brain should be the one making the ideas, or generating the ideas, I should say, and not saving them. And one of the last things I want to touch on for this list as I sweat out the muscles, is stop overthinking and just. Post, my business coach has a regular tactic of telling telling me, Zo just do it. Shut up and do it. Your content doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be done. And for a lot of people like myself, my perfectionism lies very much. My procrastination very much, lies in my perfectionism. I want things to be perfect. I want to be able to serve my customers to the best of my ability, and usually that means putting brick walls and hurdles in front of myself from stopping myself to be able to reach out and help and serve the people that I need to what do I have to say? I've got a list of things to say, as I usually do, but I put, I put roadblocks in front of it, which I shouldn't be doing, because I help other people do the same. To take down those roadblocks, no one is going to remember a slightly awkward Instagram story or no one's going to remember a slightly off kilter post. What they will remember is that you disappeared for six months, that when they were scrolling on their feed as they were calming down from work, or maybe a family get together, or what have you, and they're scrolling on their phone and they don't see you, and they wonder where you've gone. They don't remember your name, but they don't they remember what you look like. They remember the messages you were giving them. And when people outside of your influence go in to check you out on social media, on your email list, on your website or your YouTube, they see the last time that you posted, they see the last message that you sent. And if it's more than a month, people get worried, are you still in business? Are you still able to help me solve my problem? And if the answer is yes, then you need to be there. And if the answer is no, then that's okay. You can just let it go. Building a personal brand isn't about going viral once. It's about being the go to person in your space. And that only happens if you keep showing up and if you keep being consistent, you will be there. Doesn't have to be perfect. Doesn't have to be right. You are just there. So let's make a deal. Don't worry, just you and me. Let's pick a schedule and try and stick to it and actually hit post, your future self, your business, your brand and your audience will thank you. So what I'm going to ask you to do is pick a time, maybe in a week from now, or even two weeks from now, depending on how busy you are as you're listening or watching this, and say, I'm going to put a email newsletter together. I'm going to do a 32nd video again, whatever is the easiest thing for you to do and say, By this point next week, it's going to be done. Doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't even have to be good, just has to be done. And while you're at it, especially when you're on your phone, you're going to go to Apple podcast or Spotify podcast and give me five stars. Also, if you don't like the podcast, you can always just let me know that in the comments. Erin through reviews as well, I'd love to know so I can better, improve and hopefully be more consistent for you, being confident in your product service skill and would definitely be a help, despite nerves and stage fright. I completely agree. Because once say, for example, if you are new in your business, I completely understand you have both the nerves of I'm new at this I can make, like there's so many mistakes I'm going to make, as well as being nervous of getting yourself out there in front of the camera or behind the camera to show your business to the world, there is a different, special type of fear involving that. But once you have a bit more confident in your own skills to be able to produce the product or service that you actually do in your business, then you can rest a little bit more on your laurels and give a little bit give yourself a little bit more of a hug going, Okay, this will be okay. I can do this. I can do this because you will have a bit more confidence in the work that you can produce and the clients that you can help. And hopefully, if those clients that you've worked with or customers that you've sold to are able to give you good feedback, that'll even give you even more robustness to be able to be like, Okay, I know what I'm doing. I'm okay with this giving me that good feedback loop to be able to start producing videos or reaching out on social media to people like your past clients you.
I'm still here. I'm just having a coughing fit, so I'll be right back. Terry says, I'm not a camera person. I like voiceovers, and that's alright, and that's okay too. You still got your energy, and your voice is still a personality of you. And when people are calling you a messaging you are reaching out to you, to work with you. They're going to hear your voice. So a voiceover is usually okay for most instances, especially for example, like cherry, who works in graphic design, where most of her services of graphic design, which is the output, usually speaks for itself. Most of the time you
Mark, what challenges do you have in staying consistent? This is a question that I had from a larger discussion I had with Mark. Thank you so much for your questions revolving around So what role does consistency play in building a personal brand, and how can I maintain that across different platforms they are currently moving from because everyone has a personal brand at the end of the day. Hi, in case you didn't know that, and Mark was interested to know now that they're actively working on their personal brand, because it's going to help them get get better opportunities in their career. But they also wanted to figure out the consistency side of things, because that's an issue that they have, not just with their immunocompromised health issues, but also just staying consistent in general. So I wanted to answer the question, What challenges do you face in saying staying consistent? And if any of these resonate with you, feel free to comment below and let me know, because Don't worry, all of these that I bring up today, you are definitely going to feel in some capacity. But in staying consistent this nebulous idea, it can be very hard when it comes to marketing your brand, be it for a small business or a personal brand, especially when creating content, is another thing to do in the to do list, it can be very hard between running your life, running a business, answering emails, remembering to eat lunch and posting regularly, just feels like One more thing on the overloaded to do list that. Why do I even need to do this? Zo, that is a very fair fair that is a very fair question, but consistency in the way that you speak to the public, in the way that you speak to your potential audience, and the way that you speak to your current audience is everything when it comes to building your personal brand. Because how do you stay and I want to ask you this, if you needed to stay top of mind to build trust and to actually get people to remember who you are and what problems you solve for them. How do you go about doing that if you're not staying consistent, if you're not regularly answering people's questions, if you're not putting yourself out there, how will you be remembered? Now you could take the approach and do something so stupidly dumb or so stupidly smart that you become viral, but that virality is going to last couple of days, maybe even a day, if you're lucky, and then you'll be old news. You'll be out of the cycle of interest and virality, and that is a lot of if ands or buts, but a lot of energy being put into something that may or may not happen for you and your brand. So when it comes to building up the trust being top of mind and getting people to remember you, you need to stay consistent in whichever Avenue you're trying to be remembered in. The problem is life happens. Your motivation dips over time, and suddenly it's been three months, six months a year, two years, three years, five years, since your last post, since your last email, since your last video, since your last website update. And. And these are the challenges that I'm going to break down for you and how to go about fixing them. The first challenge that you may come across is, and this is one that I get a lot. I do not have enough time. Zo, I do not have enough time for this. But the reality is, you actually, you do have time. You just don't have a system. You don't have a process to a make it easier, so your time is more well spent. But also you haven't made a priority for yourself to do this thing, to be consistent, to help your brand grow. You have not made that a priority for yourself. You haven't developed a system. You haven't developed processes. You haven't developed a template to make this process easier for you. Because if there's anything that you are going to do more than once, write it down. If there's something in your business and also in your life, if you're going to do it more than once, if you ever think about giving a task to someone else, be it a staff member in your business, a virtual assistant, or maybe just someone else in your life, be it family, friends or colleagues. In that moment, you need to be able to write it down, because you need to tell them what they're doing, and also you need to be able to tell your future self what you're doing. So when you don't have time, I'm going to say, do these following things, not just for your marketing, but in life, batch create content so you're not scrambling daily. Or create a series of contents or series of answering questions for easy pieces of content that you can reuse over and over and over again. My usual go to amount is about 12 to 15. Now that may seem a lot. Don't worry. Don't panic. This is, this is a quick answer video, but what you can do that is that once you get to the end of that 12 to 15 pieces of content, you can start again. You can start again. You can reuse that content again. And I've had many, many clients, even now, who are using content that I created for them four or five years ago, and it's still in rotation. Why? Because it's easy and they have enough time to be able to schedule that content in they set aside one day a month where they can plan and schedule their posts. Yes, maybe a full day is an out of the question for you, because you don't have time, but you do have an hour, especially as something as crucial as marketing your brand. You do have time. You can repurpose, as I mentioned before, you can repurpose old content. And let's be honest, no one remembers a Instagram post from six months ago. You can tweak it a little bit, in the description, in the post, in the edit, whatever you feel would make you feel better, but not everyone is going to see everything that you post. So let's take a step back, and when you come up with the objection I should say about I don't have enough time for this. Zo, let's start by making one solid week worth of posts. This can be one, this can be two, this could be three. Quality is better than quantity, and in those moments, even if you do it for one week, you will still have a couple of posts that you can use again. And you're no longer out of time, are you because you've already done it? So the next challenge, which you may run into if you start putting aside your fears or worries about not having enough time. Your next one usually is, I've run out of ideas. I haven't even started yet. Zo and I've run out of ideas. Or maybe you've been going at this for a couple of weeks, and now you're starting to run out of ideas. The reality is, the ideas themselves are not the issue. It's capturing them before they disappear. Because the mind, especially your mind, is very good at generating ideas. It's coming up with creative problem solving, ways to fix the issues that they are experiencing in their life, in their problem, in their brand and especially with the people that you want to work with. You are constantly thinking about how you can better help serve them, how you can better, better help them. And in that moment, we need to write those ideas down. Your brain is not very good at storing things. Your brain is very good at coming up with ideas. So the way that you fix that is by having a running list of content ideas, either in your phone, in a notebook, like a physical notebook or a online wiki, like a notion or a Evernote, turn those ideas into FAQs, so frequently asked questions from clients into posts, if one person is asking a question. Of you five people want to know the answer to they're just wondering. And if you make it easier to then answer those questions, awesome. They don't need to ask the question, and they get another objection taken down, and they're more likely to say yes to whatever your next offer is, because they've had their questions answered. And also, if you're repurposing content that you've already created. So one example is I worked with a company who spent 25 grand on creating all of these videos. They put the videos in the corner of their website and did nothing with them. We turned those videos into blog posts, into other videos, into LinkedIn posts, and so on and so forth. We used content that way. They already put the money, the energy and the time in, and they've got plenty of ideas from that content. They can just use it again. And that's the same thing for you, too. If you put the time and effort to create their content once. You can use it again, or you can change it around and then use it again. Always look at your top performing posts, or your most engaged with post and giving them a fresh spin, because if people love them once, they'll love it again. The next thing that I usually come across with a lot with my
clients, who are specifically women. Now, of course, this isn't, you know, this isn't for everyone, but I'm going to tell you now that this happens a lot more with my women than my non binary clients. Is you overthink every post. Perfectionism is procrastination in disguise. That's what's happening. You overthink everything that you want to post, or you're trying to post, because you're worried about the backlash, you're worried about what other people will say. You're worried about how it will make you look will it make you look unprofessional, or will you will it mean that you'll lose clients? I'm going to tell you now that there's a higher chance of you losing clients from not doing anything than from doing something. Why? Because if people don't think you're off top of mind, they're going to forget who you are. So the way that you fix this is thinking or resetting your mind. Of Done is better than perfect, posting it and moving on, answering any questions that people have for you. Awesome. But then moving on to the next thing. Recommendation I give to a lot of clients is setting yourself a time limit for content creation. So don't give yourself weeks to get something done. You you have an hour to come up with the Idea, script it, film it, edit it, post it. That is your hour. Any more than that? No. So I want you to give yourself a little bit of that limitation for yourself, no more tweaking. Give yourself a chance to get it done, and you've got an hour to do it. And also, one thing that I always give my clients and remind myself clients of, is most people scroll past content in seconds. They're not analysing every single word choice that you make in your messages. So if a post flops, it's not a failure, it's data. So learn it, tweak it, edit it, and give it another go. Maybe it was just the algorithm that day, or maybe it was just the clients not feeling up to it that day. Whatever it is, it's okay, you can always do it again. And the last challenge that a lot of my clients face when talking about not just what they can do to stay consistent, but also ways that they avert themselves from doing any marketing at all, is the algorithm hates me. I've tried a couple of times and I haven't, and my posts haven't gone viral. They haven't gone gangbusters. So the algorithm, in turn, hates me, and the algorithm is the big robot that decides what people see. And the reality is that this algorithm, this robot in the cloud, rewards consistency, not just viral moments, it rewards people posting and consistently helping and serving people over a long period of time. One or two posts does not make a social media marketing plan. So to fix that and to make it easier on yourself. Try, start. Try start by posting at a steady pace. What are what is easier and what is better for you than not posting at all is posting three times a week, or maybe even two times a week. It's better than posting 10 times and then nothing at all. What is easy enough for you? Can you reuse all the posts? Again? I've mentioned that multiple times in this video. Can you reuse all the posts? Can you engage with comments or messages, not just post and peace out? Do. Yeah, people want to engage with you, especially if you have something to say, and that is why you're building your brand, hopefully, because you have something to say and you want to help and serve people, so in turn, making sure that you engage with any comments or messages that you get, and making sure that you share those comments and messages, again, more ideas for content or There you go, and making sure that you experiment and adapt. The algorithm is always changing for better or for worse, and that's normal. So in those moments, for you to be able to think about not chasing trends, but being consistent and going against yourself. You're not trying to become viral, because arguably, virality is not the thing that. It's not all that is crept up to be I'm going to tell you that now being consistent, being there and being able to answer people's questions with a simple video. Oh, you have no idea what that feeling is until you felt it. I'm going to tell you that now. So I want to finish up today's video with showing up, even if it's not perfect. The secret to personal brand building is being there regularly, not just when you feel inspired or when business is slow, telling you that now it's having something that builds consistency credibility, and in turn, that credibility building trust. So I'm going to ask you now in the comments to let me know what your biggest challenge with consistency is, and what's one thing this week that you can do to fix it. Can you reuse some older content? Can you start that ball rolling again so that you are there for your audience? Because people don't care if they saw you six months ago, people care if they see you now, and I look forward to seeing you online. So you've heard that the algorithm on many socials favours faces, and yes, that is definitely true, because humans like to connect with faces. We like to see other faces, and we like to see what they look like, what they're about, and on social media that and especially the algorithm, is based on our actions and the actions, or whatever the social media or the Lord wants us to do. But I digress. So if you are able to get your face onto camera and you're confident about having your face out there, then do it practice a couple of times, maybe even film a different couple of videos before you put anything out there. And then once you put that video out there, make sure that you share it with the community like us here, or you share the video to other groups that you're a part of, maybe just to get some feedback on what you can improve on in a nice way. Of course, because people are willing to support other people, and the algorithm favours a lot of things at any different time, I highly recommend that you don't dictate your actions of creating content or videos based entirely on what the algorithm is going to do, because, unfortunately, it's a beast all in itself, and Nobody knows what it's doing at any given time. Foreign music.
Thank you everyone for your comments and your questions, your thoughts and ideas during today's video, confidence, connect. We are all done. So thank you everyone in the comments or in the hashtag, replay squad. If you missed any part of this stream, you can watch or listen this back again on YouTube or LinkedIn, and again you can find all the show notes, so a detailed description of everything that we discussed today at VCC, dot training slash video, dash confidence, dash connect. So thank you everyone for joining me this week, and thank you all for your patience during my sickness and my coughing fits. Now, of course, hopefully you didn't hear many of them, but I'm gonna be gonna tell you now I can definitely look it, and I want to thank everyone for your energy and your time today. The video confidence coach emboldens women and non binary superstars with killer Video Marketing Strategies empowering them to stand out, show up and smash their goals, and hopefully next week, I will be less coffee and more focused for you. See you next week, same time you.
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Feeling stuck trying to build a personal brand that actually turns heads? Women and non-binary super-stars deserve more than just a cookie-cutter approach to their worries. Zoë Wood the Video Confidence Coach untangles your marketing mayhem, helping you own the camera, craft killer video strategies, and connect with your audience like never before. You’ll leave with the tools to show up, stand out, and smash your goals.
Find out more about how to grow your personal brand with the power of video right here on vcc.training
Smashing Your Marketing Mayhem With Killer Video Strategies 🧡
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