Build In Public Challenge Week 2: A Step By Step Guide For Your First Post

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0:54Week two is our first post. Last week, we went through some really important foundational stuff. And if you missed that episode, please scroll back and watch it because you'll need it for today's show. So the whole premise of what we're doing today is creating your first post. And that is something that is going to be evergreen. And I also tried to make it the least scary thing that you can create. This was a big piece of feedback that I got during episode one. It was like, Jasmine, I don't want to sit and talk to the camera. One person actually wrote, I used to skydive for a living and this is scarier.

1:27I love being in front of the camera and I really like a microphone, but I understand that not everyone feels that way. So we're doing something that is not scary and we're finding a way to create content that feels brand aligned. It's going to tell you a story and it's going to perform well. A note on performing well. My goal through this series isn't to make you go viral. I want you to attract the right kind of people and to attract customers and not just attract everyone and random bots in Russia. We are trying to create a community through this content, not just a mass audience. This isn't a vanity metric.

1:57And so keep that in mind as we're going through, because it may sound a little bit different to some of the more clickbaity, coachy stuff that you're seeing on Instagram and TikTok. This challenge and this content is for founders who want to be a distribution engine for their brand. We're not just creating founder profiles because it's fun. I want you to attract people who are going to buy your product. Otherwise, there is no point in doing this. And so the best use cases for this, when you have created, and this is what so many people in the community have done, right? It's like you have created a product or brand based on a personal problem that you faced.

2:32Therefore, you are the best person to be an influencer or a creator for your brand, because you can truly personify the journey that your customer is going to go on as they enter your brand world and as they try your product. And that's the whole point of this content. It's not to like make you famous or make you a creator or make you an influencer. It is to become a distribution engine for your product. This week, we're creating something that's a little bit more evergreen. Next week and in some of the following weeks, content will be a little bit more trendy. But this week, I want it to feel like a post you can pin to your profile so that as you do start attracting more people to your account, they can see some content there that truly tells your brand story, helps them understand what they're going to get when they come to your account, and something that can just live forever pinned to the top of your profile on TikTok and Instagram in particular.

3:22If you listened to the group chat episode this week, you would have heard Nat, Paige, and I talking about this idea of founders embodying the lifestyle that they, or the aesthetic and the brand world that they want to create for their actual brand, rather than just sharing the like, I don't know, ups and downs of building a business. I do think that sometimes when you share your business advice that you've gained from actually building your company, that can attract business owners. And that obviously makes sense for me. We're a media company for entrepreneurs, but if you are selling a makeup product or, I don't know, a beverage or whatever, it probably doesn't make sense to just attract business owners.

4:03So we want to be a little bit more like targeted and pointed in the types of content that we're creating and having that kind of lens for all of our content of who is this for? What is that point of view? We spoke about that last week. What is that point of difference that we have in our category and bringing that to all of our content rather than just sharing the behind the scenes of building a company or our business advice that we've learned along the way? I think that's something that can really trip people up as well. When you go to post as, you know, trying to create that building in public content, you don't want to do that and you don't want to come across as like a business coach and you're kind of figuring it out as you go.

4:38So it can feel really inauthentic to be sharing that advice. And so we're actually steering away from that in this challenge. Nat on my team is just such a good example of someone who has created a lifestyle or created a brand through her personal account that is going to sell her product. She has a swimmer brand called Beach Street. She is a creator before. If you guys have been part of this community for a while, you know Nat. She is an influencer, has a profile already, but she doesn't live at the beach. she lives in New York City. But her account now, if you go to her personal account, it feels very much like this kind of like cool coastal girl that is very much reflective of the product that she sells.

5:20And if you're not watching this on video, like I do advise switching to YouTube or Spotify because this is very tutorial heavy. I want you to watch this as we're going. This is one of the posts that she went live with when she first launched the brand. And again, this is gonna be on my screen. In the background of my hectic life, I have been building a business for almost two years behind the scenes and it's almost ready to exist in the world. Most people who know me would not be shocked by the fact that I've decided to create a swimwear business. For years working for other people, I always knew, I always knew I would create something of my very, very own.

5:51So welcome to the world of Beach Street, which is my sustainable swimwear brand. It stemmed from my love of both coasts, but also never being able to find the perfect swimsuit. I grew up as a beach baby and it's such an important part of my story, but as my body changed and I was trying to wear really trendy swimsuits, I was compromising comfort and fit. And I felt like I was spending so much money on things that just did not fit me. I also noticed a lot of people were just buying cheap suits from overseas that would be terrible quality and horrible for the environment. And so I set out to create my own.

6:19Okay. I'm obviously just so proud of her as well. You can see it on my face. Like I just, yeah, I'm so proud of what she's built. Some things we're going to dissect and take from that video and create ourselves today. You can see that she has shared some behind the scenes footage of her actually building the company. A lot of what she shared is real girls having fun in swimwear. It is like very aesthetic coastal scenes. It is aesthetic imagery, her logos, her colors. She has put all of that in the video where she's created something that feels brand aligned, but also tells her story. When I talk about being the ultimate creator for your brand, the ultimate influencer for your brand, this is what I mean.

6:59And let's have a look at her feed as well. So you can see that the whole vibe of her feed actually like really matches really well with Beat Street with her brand account. And you can see how she's going to become inevitably a really strong distribution engine for the swimwear that she's selling. Now, Jasmine, this is what you're going to say. I know this is what you're thinking. My brand is aspirational and my life is not aspirational. I get it. You are creating something maybe that doesn't reflect exactly what your day-to-day life looks like. I want to reiterate, Natalie does not live at the beach.

7:32You would not get that from her video content here. So what I would say, what I want you to do, first of all, you're creating a folder on your phone. We're going to call it, mine is called literally like BIP, build in public. And you are going through and you are including some behind the scenes content. If you haven't created any, you need to go and just make some this weekend. You're adding that, what you've got to that folder. And then I want you to think about what aesthetically your brand looks like, what you would show on your brand account, on your website. If you're filming a photo shoot for your brand, where would you go?

8:06And I want you to look through your camera roll and find video that aligns with that. I don't care if it shows your product or not. It is about creating the brand world. It is about sharing visual cues that then map back into the brand that you're building and the person that this is for. If you don't have enough of that content, I'm going to use an example of this. So Alexa in our community has this beautiful art brand called Estelle. Let's just say, for example, I have not actually spoken to Alexa about this, but I know that she'll be listening. Hi, Alexa. If, for example, she wanted to create a personal profile that was all about history and heritage and art and beauty, and she's like, I live in a super modern apartment building in Brooklyn or whatever.

8:45I don't know where she lives. Let's just say that that is her situation. I would then say, hey Alexa, where can you go in your city this weekend and film content that is going to be able to be used in this kind of video? What is free and accessible to you? Can you go to a museum? Can you go to a heritage restaurant? Can you go with a friend, a partner, someone that you're paying like$50 on Airtasker to and go and make that B-roll kind of organic looking content in these spaces, even though it might not be every aspect of your life, it is a certain portion of your life, but we are prioritizing it as we're filming this content because you need to think of it as if you're going out and filming a photo shoot, where would you go?

9:27Go and film that for your behind the scenes content and go and film that now. Bonus points if you can incorporate your brand somehow. If you've got a fashion brand, wear the brand, take your product, take it out of your handbag at the museum, whatever you have to do. Now we've got a folder on our phone. I also recommend using like Dropbox so you can toggle between your computer and your phone. I like to edit on my computer personally. and you've got some video content in there. Beautiful. So first I want you to open, I don't care if it's like Microsoft or Google Doc, whatever you use, you can literally use the text, you know, notes app on your phone if you want.

9:58I have two columns. I've called this build in public week two, VO script, call it whatever you want, but make sure that you can refer back to it because you'll need it in future weeks. You've got your VO, your voiceover, which is what you're going to speak into the camera. We did not do a talking to camera video for the first time because lots of people are not comfy with that. So this is why we're doing a voiceover for week one. And then you have your text overlay. Your text overlay should really grab people in the beginning. It's really your hook. And then it should work to make people want to read the caption.

10:26And then when people are reading the caption, the video is kind of rolling. That's what I find people are doing quite a lot. So my voiceover and my text overlay is not going to be about me and my story necessarily of this business. That is the lowest hanging fruit and you could do that. but your video is going to perform better and speak more clearly to people if you make it about them. So I'm going to help you flip this in your head. So my voiceover script, you can see it on the screen now, it says, and again, this is for Female Founder World. This is for me sharing my story about how I built Female Founder World.

11:02My voiceover script is going to say, have you ever felt like you have the potential to build something great? I created an entire media company for you around that feeling. Then I'm going to go into my story. In 2022, I quit my job as a beauty and fashion editor, blah, blah, closed my beauty brand, saw this gap. I like to have kind of like each sentence in its own little row so that I can like block it out into each like part of the story. So it's something that Natalie also did really well in her video. She spoke a lot about that point of view and that point of difference that you have from other people in your category and the problem that people are facing.

11:36We spoke about this last week as we were building out our content pillars. She spoke about, you know, a lot of swimsuits she was wearing were like too skimpy and they were falling off and she had a curvy body and it was like not working. Also that she didn't want to just drop ship cheap bikinis because it was all about the quality and how that was important. She showed that through her video. Also about how it is for that like bi-coastal girl lifestyle, like she really showed and spoke to that point of difference. And that's what I want you to lead with in this first little box here. And if you listened to the first episode of the show, you'll know that my point of difference was very much around being a media business that was around reaching a potential entrepreneurship and the idea that anything was truly possible.

12:19And in a sea of very spammy course creators, knowing that this needed to be a media business because this content is ephemeral, it changes so quickly, and it needs to live with an editorial lens, not like a coachy lens. So that's why we create everything for free, blah, blah, blah. I talk about that through my video. So think about what are your points of view? What are your points of differences? And I want you to weave that into the voiceover. And then for your text overlay, I don't want you to do to default to something like POV, I built a swimwear brand or like day in the life. Like don't make it about you, make it about them.

12:57There's someone who I follow who's really great. Her name's Julia Broom. She had a post about this that I will also link. And she did this deep dive post in the art of the headline typography. One of the really great pieces of advice that she had in that was using, not using me-centric language, using we-centric language, like who is this for? And for example, instead of sharing like my favorite things from June, the text might be for the cool girls, I don't gatekeep or creative girl starter pack or it girl dopamine menu. Like who is it for? Who is your girl? Who is this content for? And what are you creating for them?

13:32So for example, for me, my text overlay on this like intro video that I'm doing will be, you're meant to build something great. It's about you. It's not about me. It's about this business that I built for you. And I just want you to reframe that in your head as you're thinking what your text overlay is. So now you have a loose idea about what your structure is. I want you to just record a voice member on your phone. You don't need a mic. We're just looking at how long we're speaking for. And that's going to give us a rough idea about how long our video needs to be. so then we're opening up adobe express you can use the app on your phone and or you can use the web browser just go to create video it's like the little purple icon there super easy it'll tell you all the different options that you have there i start with instagram real my biggest channel i default with that and then you are just uploading you go add content media and you're uploading your videos and that's why it can be quite good to do it from your phone because you can have everything on your camera roll there and then edit on your computer because i just feel like you've got more control on a desktop personally, but it's up to you.

14:32I've already pre-uploaded all of this. So everything is living in uploads and I am, I'm just selecting the videos that I want and you can see them all there. So once you've uploaded all of your videos, you're going to order them, like put them in the order that you want. What I quite like to do is to make the first few seconds of my video, just like really quick. I want it to just be super pacey for that beginning. and I'm going to show a snippet like very quickly less than a second of all of the videos that you'll see later so then I'll play each of them for like three seconds later in the clip so it looks something like this and this will be what you see as you're hearing have you ever felt like you have the potential to build something great I've created an entire media company for you around that feeling and on text you'll see you're meant to build something great so once you've dragged everything into the order that you want it to be just click show timing and you can see all layers and you can like zoom in if you need to.

15:29And you just, it's like very easy. You just drag it to however long you want it to be. Literally couldn't be more simple. And that's all you need to do. That's, that's you editing the video. One piece of advice that I have, I don't want to show my kids in the videos. I like to blur out their faces, but you might have your packaging arriving from, you know, wherever you ordered it from. You might have the details of your suppliers on that packaging. You might have your address. You want to blur that stuff out. And I'm going to show you very quickly how to do that. You don't want to be sharing that information with the entire internet.

16:05As an example, let's pretend here that my laptop is some package that you've received that you want to blur out. So you're going to get the video, click it, control C, control V. See, we're duplicating it. Great. Put it over the top.

16:21Jasmine:What we're doing is we want to adjust this video

16:29Jasmine:and then you're clicking blur and we are blurring it. Great. So now it's blurred the whole thing, right? And you're like, okay, Jasmine, that's not helpful. You just blurred the whole video. No, that's why we have two layers. So now we crop it and you just pick, okay, let's say it's a square package. You know, you've got a box or whatever. You click that and then you drag it to the size that you want.

16:56Jasmine:And now part of your video is blurred. Super easy, very important. And then you can just adjust it if you need to. Please do that. Please don't show your home address and your manufacturing partners to the internet. Imagine this is going viral and someone's watching it back in 10 years. Once we've created the video, you can either open it on your Adobe Express app, or you can do it in the web browser and just download. So now you have the video, it's on your phone. What we're doing is we're opening it in whatever app you're using, and you are just speaking. If you've got a mic, that's beautiful.

17:32If not, just speak into your phone like this, and you are reading out your voiceover and you're just kind of like adjusting it as you're pacing with the video. Easy, easy. And then we're adding the text overlay. We're adding a caption and the caption could be something that is pulled from your voiceover script. I like a lengthy caption. I do find that people read it and then the video just plays. If your text overlay is like hooky enough, they'll like want to click on and read the caption and then your video continues to play. And that's just great for views and for how the content performs. Once it's live, I want you to send it to me.

18:04So you can tag Female Founder World. You can just send it to us in our DMs or you can put it in the group chat. If you're not sure about any of this, if you're not sure about what your text overlay should be, if you're feeling like, oh, I don't think this could be stronger, whatever, put it in the chat. We've got a week two thread going and we're giving feedback. We're amplifying each other's posts. We're engaging. That's the space to workshop all of this together. Okay, friends, that is it for week two of the challenge. I'm going to be back next week with another post next week. We're being a little bit more trendy.

18:34This week was very evergreen. We're creating something pretty short next week, but it is going to be building on your skills and also just like getting those reps in and feeling more comfortable making this type of content. Between now and then, please create that folder of your content. Go and shoot some more stuff if you need content. And I want you to get that first post live, please. We've got to get those reps in. Otherwise, there's no point in doing the challenge and just listening. We need to actually take action. Otherwise, things are not going to get any better. All right. I'll see you next week.