You're Wasting Your Time Creating Content That Doesn't Convert, Get Seen, Or Fuel Your Sales Funnel: Here's How to 10X It with Kelsey Shumway

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Hustle Daily. Today, we'll be breaking down how you are wasting your time creating content that doesn't convert, get seen, or fuel your sales funnel. Here's how to 10X it, Fire Nation. To drop these value bombs, I brought Kelsey Shumway into EO Fire Studios. Kelsey's the Director of Sales and Strategy at Repurpose House, the world's leading content recycling agency. She helps entrepreneurs best strategize how to best show up on social and get the most out of their content.

0:39And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about omnipresence. We'll talk about perfectionism. Oh, you know how I feel about that word. We'll talk about optimizing your content, clear and trending CTAs, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kelsey and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

1:12A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Kelsey, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:52Love to. Hey, Fire Nation. Thank you so much for having me. to me I think one of the things people forget the most about success which again I know is totally personal to people but I think if you're looking at success as kind of climbing this mountain and getting to the peak is peak success for you I think a lot of times people stop right before what I define as success which I think is turning around seeing who's behind you seeing their needs, seeing what resources or information you can share with them, to not add that in your list of things that make you successful, I think you're stopping short of your full capability.

2:32So I'm sure, I hope a lot of people would agree that that makes people successful, but nonetheless, something I think people should think more about. Value bombs, Fire Nation, and we know that your time is valuable. That's why, as you heard from the title, we're going to tell you how to stop wasting your time creating content that doesn't convert, doesn't get seen, doesn't fuel your sales. We're going to talk about how to 10x this. And you are a big believer, Kelsey, in omnipresence. So first off, what is omnipresence and how do we implement this into our lives? Great question. So my definition of omnipresence when it comes to social media is staying prevalent in front of your audience, regardless of what platform they're on.

3:17I think it was Gary Vee that said, you know, my favorite platform to be on is the one that my audience is on right in that second. So if it's YouTube in the morning and then it's TikTok at night, I want to follow them to those platforms. So my mentality, I think in terms of getting better social success would be to create a lot of content that can be used on all of these different platforms. And I get that, you know, not all the same copy can include or can be included on all of those posts. But nonetheless, your copy and your content should show up exactly where your audience is. And the vast majority of the times, it's more than one platform.

3:53So you limit yourself and you miss opportunities when you shrink yourself down to just one platform. So what's like a example of something you would love to see people do more of when it comes to omnipresence? Like give us like a step by step process. Yeah. I mean, I work with a lot of people who are creating video content to start. And that's a great, great place to start. People are loving really authentic, not super heavily designed videos these days. And that's what's performing best. So starting there is definitely what I would recommend. When it comes to cutting that all up, that's definitely something my team can help with.

4:29But nonetheless, get these short form pieces of content available. From there, take that content and put that on every platform you can imagine. I would get that content up on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, wherever you could guess your audience might be showing up, show up there and then decide after you see what kind of performance you bring in from those assets. Narrow it down from there. Focus your intentions once you start to know where you're building a community. But nonetheless, follow them to the platforms they go to. And that's something you can find out by polling your audience or just by testing it straight off the bat.

5:04Create the content, post it to these different platforms, change the copy up, change the hashtags, search for your audience on these platforms and go from there. Fire Nation, we talk about avatars. We talk about your perfect customer, your perfect clients, the perfect consumer of your content. Who is that person? Who's that ideal individual? You need to have them in your mind. Then you need to know where they are and then you just serve them there. And then once those people become real, then you start talking to them, engaging you with them, asking them what they like, what they don't like, how they found you the first time, why do they come back, all these things.

5:39It's always about that engagement as much as possible. Now, Kelsey, the word perfectionism is actually my least favorite word. It gives people an excuse to not take action. And I'm actually going to get deeper into this in a second, but I want to give this over to you first, which is you're a big advocate of posting over perfection. What do you mean by this? Great question. Yeah, I think that a lot of the times the hesitancy to show up on social media for yourself or for your brand comes from thinking that your content needs to be perfect. It does not. As a matter of fact, I can't even tell you how many stories I hear of, I created this really quick reel or this really quick TikTok just showing off one of the products I made yesterday.

6:24And I cannot believe how it blew up. There's no captions. There's nothing on it. I cannot believe it. That's a story that is becoming more and more frequent and more and more prevalent. So it just goes to show, just post it, create the asset, create the content. Your audience is waiting to hear from you and to spend time creating a video or any information about what you're selling and then spending time perfectly designing it or cutting it up to where it's only bits and pieces, all of which can help performance. I think when you start to focus though so specifically on like how you might look or messing up in bits and pieces, what you actually end up doing is taking away from the authenticity you have and the authority you have within your space.

7:12People expect you to mess up. People don't expect you to speak like a robot and to just focus on posting your content instead of perfecting it, I think not only gives the algorithms what they want because they want you to be posting frequently, gives your audience what they want as well, which is visibility, which is your authentic self, which is transparency with your brand. So I think all in all, prioritizing posting over perfection gets you further in so many different ways. Okay, that was a really kind and awesome way of putting it. I'm going to take it a step further because that's just what I want to do.

7:49Fire Nation, if you ever hear somebody say that they're waiting until what they're creating is perfect before they release it to the world, or if you ever hear yourself saying, I'm just a perfectionist, that's why I'm waiting until X, Y, or Z is ready before I do this, replace the word perfectionism with coward because that's the reality. You are not a perfectionist. You are a coward. You're not trying to be perfect. You're being a coward. And I'm saying that because I've been there. I'm raising my hand too. So I'm admitting to the fact that that does happen to us. We are scared to launch. We are scared to share.

8:26We're scared of feedback. We love living in this world of what might happen, of pre-launch. Like I might press this button and it might go viral and I might become an overnight sensation slash millionaire slash whatever it is that your dreams are. Fire Nation, perfectionism is just being a coward. You are obligated to put your message, your mission, your voice out into the world. So erase that word from your vocabulary and just get it out there. Now we have a lot to talk about around really important topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The new year is upon us, and that means new goals, more growth, and upgrading your day-to-day workflow.

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12:09That's thought-leader.com slash fire. Kelsey, we're back. And hopefully you're done sweating with the awkwardness that I brought right at the end of the break there because I like to just tell it how it is sometimes. And again, I was admitting that I've been there. I have been that coward before. But moving on, you're adamant about using clear and trending CTAs, calls to action. Tell us more about this and give us a few examples. The content portion is already hard enough for people to just jump in and start creating. And then they start wondering, what do I do in terms of writing this caption?

12:46What do I do in terms of getting the scene by people? There's actually kind of a foolproof way to write a really good call to action. A call to action should include three things. One, it should ask for engagement to happen on that post. So let's say I create a video. It's talking about one of my products. I want to create like a question around that. Have you ever experienced X, Y, and Z? Or tell me the last time you went through X, Y, and Z. Some kind of engagement so interaction can happen with that post. This way, the platforms start to notice that you're getting engagement. people are commenting.

13:19That's a great thing. Second portion of that call to action should be a description of what you're talking about. Your product should have, if you're creating a product and you're showcasing it, you should detail what's happening there. The last portion is where we really start to get clear into call to actions. What is your goal with this content? Are you selling a course? Then the route should be from this piece of content to your course. A lot of people do that through tools like link trees in their bio, which I think is a great way to go about it. People are super familiar with it now. It's become really popular on places like TikTok and Reels, and I think people should do it more often.

13:55But that third portion of the caption should be a really clear call to action. If you're interested in learning more about this, or you're interested in joining the hundreds of people that I've helped, or the hundreds of people who have gotten great results, check the link in my bio, check out my website, sign up for emails, whatever that might be, have a very clear call to action so people know what you want them to do. It allows your audience to not only become familiarized with you and your product through social media, it also familiarizes them with what you're selling and your products so that when the need arises for what you are selling or what you're creating, you're top of mind.

14:30You've stayed in front of them. You're omnipresent on all those platforms. Your cult actions have been clear. Your details of your captions encapsulate what you've done not only for this product, but for your other clients, your other customers. I think it's really that simple, that three-step process and creating great captions, but also that call to action has got to be crystal clear. Use a link tree and go from there. Let's talk through a specific example of this. It can be something that you've done, maybe one of your clients, maybe somebody that you admire that's like a authority figure online that's done this well.

15:05Your choice, dealer's choice, guest choice, take it away. Yeah. I have a client who's in the real estate business. More specifically, he helps people sublease either retail space or storage space. He had a woman come in and tell him, you know, I can't find anybody to partner with me on this. Everyone has kind of fallen through the cracks. He basically created a podcast about how he met this woman and was able to 4X what she expected to get, brought her in a partner who's introduced her to more partners. And now not only she's been able to find what she looked for initially, but now she's been able to branch out and create more business for herself using these other partners.

15:48So what he did is he did a podcast and it kind of was like a soft brag, which I think is, is so underplayed and people should do it more brag about what you're doing for your clients, please. Um, he, he bragged a little bit about what he did, but basically he got a really great testimonial or great case study in his podcast. So what he did, he came to us, he had this really incredible podcast. We went through it and cut out that portion because we knew if the goal was to find more success stories, highlighting one and then trying to copy it from there was exactly what we needed to do. So we went through his podcast episode, we cut it down into the bits that we think made the most sense.

16:26And then the copy that we wrote sounded something like, real estate agents or developers, have you ever had an instance where your clients, where you absolutely crush it for your clients. Here's my example. I just absolutely crushed it for Mary Kate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She did really incredible things. Here's what I was able to do for her. I want to be able to help you do this. I want to be able to help your customers do the same. Here's where you can learn more about my courses. Here's my podcast link. If you want to check out this episode and learn more about it in full, this is where you can find me looking forward to hearing from you.

16:56That I think was a really good example of doing that entire playbook and utilizing a success story as a humble brag, as a piece of content, and then also writing a really good caption and having a great call to action as well. Okay, that was perfect. I literally can see you, Fire Nation, hitting the rewind 30 second button a few times right now to kind of go through that again, because this is an exact playbook that you can follow in your business and your content production and repurposing. Now, we are talking about optimizing content. I mean, that's what we've been talking about today. But I want to talk about some ways that you're really excited about today that we can use to optimize the content that we're creating.

17:36So often people are just so frantic to get something posted that they're not really thinking through what might make sense in ways that they could optimize it. For the most part, what I find is that people are creating some form of content and aren't even aware that it could act as social content as well. And I mean, you know, people are creating podcasts and books and blogs and articles, newsletters, PR releases, whatever it is that you are creating with video, audio, or text, you should be finding ways to turn that content into short form video and utilizing it to show up in front of your audience on social.

18:15So what, what, what I'm able to do a lot of the times when I meet with entrepreneurs and people who are creating content, let's look through everything that's been created. Let's talk about what's still evergreen. And let's talk about where we're missing the mark on social. What we know about social media is that when we all kind of came to the platforms initially, you could be posting one or two times a week and that was sufficient. That was a lot. And now if you're not really, if you're not posting one to two times a day, you're kind of missing the mark in terms of what the algorithms say performs, right?

18:48Which a lot of people hate and a lot of people don't have time for it. That's okay. What a lot of people forget, though, is that they probably already have a pretty big archive of things that they've created or have had created for them that they're not repurposing, whether that's copy on your website, whether that's a really incredible testimonial from your clients. Anything along those lines can be taken, turned into different kind of blogs. They can also be turned in different videos. They should also be put on your social media. So I think we're really kind of forgetting that there's content that exists and can be utilized.

19:22And we don't have to keep on this content creation hamster wheel where I'm creating a piece, posting it, and then creating another piece and posting that one. I have an archive of things I can go through and save myself some time and be able to focus on my business. You know? Yes, I do know because I've been on that hamster wheel, Fire Nation, and it's not fun. It's time to get off. And Kelsey, I want you to take us home. What is the one thing that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today? I think we really hit it on the posting instead of focusing on perfection.

19:58You've got content that exists. You've got an audience that is searching for your wisdom, for your content, for your products. To not stay in front of them is such a big missed opportunity when we know business can be driven through social media. And to not be doing all of these things is such a big missed opportunity. It's so much easier than you think. It's so much easier to kind of create some ideas, write some content, get some video content created out of it. My team is able to help kind of go through that, pick the best pieces, create content for you if that's needed, but just stay in front of your audience.

20:33It's such a missed opportunity not to do so. That's when your competition gets to sneak in and take them away. And that's never the goal. And we can use social to make sure that that doesn't happen. So stay posting. Stay happy. Stay posting Fire Nation. And Kelsey, you mentioned your team. Give us a call to action. If you want, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to connect with your team, wants to learn more, wants to maybe take action, what is that call to action? Yeah, we'd love to chat with you about what kind of content you might have that you're not repurposing. Let us do the deep dive into your archives, see what you have.

21:06I'd also love to do a social media audit to see where you're kind of missing the mark or where we can kind of overcome some challenges that you might be facing when it comes to getting the best presence on social. So that sounds like any interest, or if anyone wants to kind of have a call with me to discuss those things, head to repurposehouse.com, schedule a call, you'll get to meet with me, we'll dive into all those details, and we'll get you rocking with some good content from there. Fire Nation will get you rocking for sure, because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, You've been hanging out with Kelsey and JLD today.

21:39So keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Kelsey in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Kelsey, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Kelsey for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days and we're talking step by step.

22:15Visit thefreedomjournal.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn. Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there.

22:57Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.