628: (Solo) The Content Playbook I Wish I Had When I Started

0:01Hey founder fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50.

0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey, Founder fam, Nathan here. Welcome back to another solid founder podcast episode where I share all the lessons that I'm learning building founder for the past decade. So if you've been building a brand from scratch right now or you're looking to start to create content for your company and you're staring in an empty social feed going what the hell do I even post and this episode is for you. This comes up a lot for students in our community that are in the early stages of starting and growing their e-commerce brand or perhaps you're doing really well on the retail side but you want to really work out this online digital marketing thing.

1:28So if you're building from scratch, you're thinking, what do I even post? This episode is for you. And I want to walk you through a simple but powerful method for figuring out what content to start with, even if you have zero followers. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:56where credit is due to someone I really respect, a good buddy of mine in the branding space, Dane Walker. His first book, 90 Day Personal Brand, was really a big foundation. And so much of this strategy came from him around building an online presence with intention. And I took this and I ran with it this year when I started building my personal brand, because I knew it was so important. Like founder-led content is where it's at. And so many of you guys go, okay, well it's something I want to do Nathan but how do I know what to post and once you get over this hurdle I promise you you'll be far better off now first things first before you start posting we've got to study the landscape we've got to do that recon we've got to look at the research so the first thing you want to do is you want to look at the top like 10 or 20 accounts or founders or businesses in your market in your niche in your industry the thought leaders and I'm talking about you know brands or personal creators who have the kind of audience that you want that are clearly doing very very well they've worked this social media thing out like what are they doing what kind of content are they posting what are the themes that they're posting but what you want to look for the key is don't just look at the average look at the outliers you want to look for pieces of content that clearly were outliers and that are clearly working and you want to look at views, saves, and shares.

3:21You know, what reels of theirs went viral? What quote posts got a lot of engagement? What product posts? What stories? What were they doing? What was the hook? What was the first thing that you see? What happens in the first three seconds? What did the tile look like for the cover tile art? That's evidence-based content that will perform. Now, don't get me wrong. This is not about copying. It's about modeling what is working and taking that same formula and making it work for you. Then you want to pick two or three formats that actually resonate with you. Now, I'm not saying you have to do absolutely everything, but I promise you once you study 10 or 20 accounts in your market, in your niche and thought leaders, you'll start to see a pattern here of styles and themes and types of content that is working, speaking to your ideal customer audience.

4:15Now, one mistake that I see early founders make is trying to be everywhere. Every format all at once on so many different platforms. You only want to pick, you know, maximum two to three formats. And then you only want to focus on one social channel. So maybe it's video, short form or long form. Maybe it's carousel, static images. Or maybe you could do behind the scenes photos. Or maybe it's bold quotes or product demos. Whatever is more your style. But you want to choose something that fits your energy, fits your brand. But most importantly, your skill set, what you natively and naturally lean towards when it comes to even creating content in your own personal life.

4:54Because I've seen people fall into this trap of doing something just because everyone else is doing it. And when we look at Founder, one of our most important channels for content is this podcast. But I've seen thousands of podcasts from influencers and brands start and fail, but their short form video content just kills it, right? So the lesson here is make what works for you. The next thing you want to do, as I shared, is start with one channel. Once you've picked a couple of formats and you start with one channel and you master it. Where most people go wrong, like I said, is they spread themselves way too thin on different formats.

5:33And they don't focus on just one channel. My personal take is go all in on one channel and just start. Maybe it's Reels on Instagram. Maybe it's TikTok. maybe it's LinkedIn, maybe it's X. Just nail that one thing, master it, make it your content superpower. And then over time, what you will find is you can add in another medium. So as an example, only for the past year, I've been really, really focused on Instagram. In the next six months, I'm gonna start working on YouTube. I'm super excited. I'm working on YouTube. Once we get a really strong grip on Instagram, I've found one format that's working really, really well for us is story-based carousels.

6:15In the new year, I really want to start getting into reels more than ever, creating custom reels, really working out that side of the table for content. Because once you've chosen that format and channel, this is what you need to do next. You want to find the top performing content in your market, aka what we call the unicorn strategy, and these are the pieces that blow up, right? So now we know what kind of content we're going to post, where we're going to post it, the format. Then you want to go out and find the content that is absolutely crushing it and model it. Just like I talked about before.

6:47Remember we did that recon at the start. This is what I call the unicorn strategy. But don't copy. Don't plagiarize. You want to reverse engineer. Why did this content work? What was the hook? What was the structure? What emotions did it tap into? You're not reinventing the wheel. You're learning from what already works. So I'll give you an example. So with the Healthish brand, we saw like a different water bottle brand create this kind of content where they showed how the product didn't break. So we've modeled the exact way that they did it. And what do you know, when we post it on TikTok, when we post it on Reels, you've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views, drove a lot of sales.

7:29If you see Mr. Beast, he did this iconic short form piece of content where it's him running with one bag of Feastables, then two bags of Feastables, then three, and then four, then 10, and then he just kept running. Actually, so it wasn't Feastables, it was bags of money. And then I've seen other people take that same method of, you know, my friend Sabri, he did it with his books. He's got his incredible book, Sell Like Crazy. It was him carrying one book, then 20, then 30, then 50, then 100, then off you go, right? So he modeled that piece of content. I've seen so many people do it. For us at Founder, we're seeing that carousels for podcasts, telling stories is a really good one.

8:08Or even carousels for me, story-based carousels, I find do really, really, really good. And then what you want to do is you want to make sure you're consistent with your content. Don't stop. I promise you, you will lose momentum if you stop. You have to be consistent. And you want to just give it a crack for 90 days. And that's what I did at the start of this year. Your first 90 days. post consistently, track what is working, and then use the build, measure, learn process. So launch that piece of content, measure it, learn, then go again and do that for 90 days. If you put out 90 pieces of content, one per day, I promise you after 90 days, it will have rocked your world, change your world.

8:50For me, I was like, oh my God, I should do this 10 years ago. If I did, I'll be maybe not a billionaire, but oh my God, like found it would be probably 10 times bigger business than what it is right now. So I should have done that a long time ago. So I'll tell you guys a story. When I first got into Instagram for founder, growing founder, one thing I did is I looked at the top magazines, Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine. I saw on their Instagram that they're all posting quotes. And I saw what kind of quotes. I was like, you know what? I can work this out, do a better job. I was the king of quotes back in the day.

9:22And so I got millions of followers and it was a game changer for the brand. We built a massive, massive brand. Now we don't really post that many quotes anymore. a little bit here and there, but the point is, I worked out what content worked in my market and my niche, and I just doubled downed on it. So I'm not going to lie, guys, starting from zero is hard, but it's also the most powerful fact because it forces you to focus, adapt, and really build that muscle. And if you do this with consistency and curiosity, you will grow a real and engaged audience for your brand. And I promise you, it will pay off over time.

9:54So thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want more help on content creation, growing your brand, your e-commerce business, make sure you go to founder.com forward slash membership. We've got a dollar trial of our incredible Founder Plus membership. It is the membership for e-commerce founders. You wanna start or grow your e-commerce brand. All right, that's it from me. I'll speak to you soon.