Content Queen Mariah

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249: Life is content… it is time to start living it 

Mariah MacInnes

“I don’t have anything interesting to share”... 

Lies. 

Content is everywhere. 

When you open your eyes to all the things that happen in your “personal life” … not your “private life” you will have endless engaging things to share. 

Remember, life is content, it is all around us, start living your life and you will always have something interesting to talk about. 

If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah. ⁠⁠⁠

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KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • The 3 things you can do to create engaging content 

  • How to record and use the everyday things in your content 

  • The ONE important thing to do to be aware of the content ideas around you 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇 

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode  249 and I'm talking all about life is content. It's time to start living it. Welcome to the Content Queen podcast. I'm your host, Mariah, entrepreneur, storyteller, digital nomad, creator of Content Bootcamp and founder of Content Queen. I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content and market your business with strategy through the channels that work for you.

Each week I'll deliver a story to help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing, business, and content creation. I'll also be joined by amazing souls and entrepreneurs who are here to share their own journey along with actual steps to help you take your business to a whole new level through amazing storytelling, powerful aligned marketing and content strategy.

Let's do it. Hello.  I'm back in the podcast studio. Correct.  Very excited to be in this studio.  Oh my God. So fun. So yeah, I booked another day.  In the studio filming and recording the podcast and today I want to talk about this very thing Life is content. It's time to start living it now This came to me  sort of in the  early days of Content Queen.

I'm going to take you back to the start of 2020. So, Content Queen was my side hustle and it was just literally the week before we went into lockdown and I lived with a Scottish girl, shout out to Jenna, and I was like, I was like, let's go to Wilson's Promontory, which is, if you Google it, it's a beautiful part of the world, uh, in Gippsland, kind of, well, just out of, I think it's still technically Gippsland.

I don't know. Um, but I was from Gippsland in country Victoria and I lived in Melbourne and I was like, let's go for the weekend. We can stay at my mom and dad's. It's like two hour drive from mom and dad's. We can go there. It'll be really beautiful.  So we did, we headed down there on the Saturday morning and went to Wilson's prom and did um, one of the hikes and then we sort of edged around to one, from one beach to the other.

And we sat on these rocks and we were just reflecting and, you know, taking some pictures with our phones and she turned to me and she said, life is content. And of course, content. Yes, but she meant content because we were taking so many pictures and really enjoying it and It's so true. And I've said this so many times, uh, since, so thank you for that, Jenna.

And I have people say all the time, I have nothing to share. I've got nothing to say. I don't want to share too much of my life with people, but one very awesome marketer. Her name is Elisa and she is the founder of Brandover. And she said to me as we were working together  to help a finance, uh, company launch, relaunch kind of thing.

And she said, you know, one thing I learned from a mentor of mine was there's a difference between your personal life and your private life. So you can share your personal life on social media. And I think that's what makes you relatable, but you don't have to share your private life. So personal life is kind of like, yeah, the things you do on your day to day, the behind the scenes of your business, um, stories and bits and pieces that come up in your life.

You know, how. Did the moment I stubbed my toe on the couch, help me with my business, you know, things like that, things that are happening in your personal life, but you don't have to share your private life, which is like your dirty laundry, so to speak. So  when you understand that content is everywhere, then you'll have endless ideas and stories to share with your audience.

And I think that's what really helps us connect more with the people around us, even you. Bigger businesses, you know, sharing a little bit more behind the scenes, sharing more about the team, things like that is so much more powerful, right? Than just sharing what you have to sell all the time or sharing what you know, even sharing what you know with a link of a story or something about you is I think way more powerful.

Okay. So I'm going to go through three things you can do to blend more content into your life.  Business that is engaging and connecting. So the first thing I want you to think about is listen to the things your clients tell you, listen to the things that come up when you network,  listen,  just listen.

There is so much gold when you listen and it's so awesome to develop this skill. I had a client who commented on  the content I was making and said, I feel like you're just listening to me and you, you take my little nuggets of, you know, voice notes or whatever, and you create something from them because I'm listening.

I'm listening to obviously what she's saying, but she's listening to her audience and what they're saying.  And together we create good content. So reflect after you have a session with a client or a meeting with a client or a workshop that you run or anything, WhatsApp sort of back and forth with your client.

Listen. and reflect. So I don't know, I had a client that used to schedule 15 minutes after a meeting, generally to have like a cup of tea and a downtime before heading into the next task, and that could be a great time to just jot some things down and reflect on what was said, because that's the stuff that becomes content.

That story that I just shared  from a client.  Was obviously me reflecting on the voice notes that we had back and forth. Can do this after networking, just general conversations. And this is, you know, why it's so important to create space so that you can have those times to reflect on what is my audience telling me?

What is coming up when I'm talking in networking sessions or workshops? So have that downtime to reflect.  And then the second one is record it all.  Journal consistently. So,  Whether it's journaling after a session, whether it's journaling in the morning or night, I have journaled since  2017, I'm going to say.

I've been reading a journal from 2019, which is wild. I was sick all the time.  Every second day, I was unwell.  But if you record these things down, then you have a chance of using them, right? So this is where life becomes content. If you're consistently journaling about what's going on in your life, what's happening in your days, you can go back and reflect on those and create content from them.

I journaled when I was in hospital, when I had my surgery. And when I got out of surgery, And I was creating content on Tik Tok to connect with people that had had a whipples before I was able to go back over some of those journal entries and really share what I was going through in that moment, because what happens is after the fact, yeah, of course, we remember and things are raw,  but it's harder to connect with it.

So if you're always journaling. You can go back and connect to those moments and it's easy to create content because it's kind of already written for you. So whether it's, you know, obviously after a client session, after networking, and then in your day to day, writing this down is so powerful.  Because then you can always go back and have things to go over.

And also it trains your brain to share these stories with other people in your content.  Because I've consistently journaled for so long, I've been able to create a skill that has allowed me To tell stories more frequently to retain information and then share it in my content so that when I'm thinking of  a piece of value that I want to share with my audience or a point I can go back and go what story can connect to that because i've journaled for so long They come really quickly.

I don't have to go back over my journals or go back over my notes But even having a place to store these As content ideas is powerful because that's the third one is embed them into your strategies. So it doesn't get confusing and always practice this. So if you're consistently writing these things down, you're going to get better at using these in your content.

So, for example, um, if I am consistently journaling and then I can go back over and go, Oh, that could be really good point that I want to make that X, Y, Z.  And as I said, now I don't have to think they just come and because I have a content marketing strategy, it's so much easier for me to connect it in with what I'm sharing and what I'm selling at that given moment.

So I can go.  Okay, what does that story about Jenna on the beach in Wilson's prom telling me life is content have anything to do with what I share now? Well, a lot. And then I can go back and go, Oh, well, I can connect that to a podcast episode because I want to prep people into being more inquisitive around the content that's in their lives, because that's going to help them free up time and space, because They know what they're going to talk about.

They know what they're going to say. And pairing that with a content strategy blends in the two things that I'm known for, which is storytelling and strategy. So that really makes up my goal in my business being known for those things. So you can see how something so small can then have a ripple effect into my strategy, what I want to be known for and building my brand.

So this becomes habit, but it doesn't come habit until we start doing it. It's just like going to the gym. You don't have to put it into your calendar or you don't have to pack your gym bag at the door when you've built that habit. And I've got an episode on habits from a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to say two, four, seven or two, four,  five.

Three, five, two, four, five, or two, four, seven. I'll put it in the show notes, but basically you want to build this habit in yourself to always be linking these stories back to content. And you'll get so good at it that the really mundane stories in your day will become things that you can connect to your business, but it doesn't happen until you get started.

And side note,  I really,  Want to create something that can help us Connect these content ideas to our strategy if we do struggle with that I know it comes with practice, but I want to create a little tool So it's something i'm working on in the background is how can we because? My pain point is I'm out and about and an idea comes to me and I chuck it in my notes or email it to myself and I have no idea what I just said.

And I think I mentioned this in the last episode. So basically I want to create something that can collect these ideas and store them and then remind us to use them in our strategy. So  really it's about listening, keeping, and practicing, and of course embedding it into our strategy. Listen to what's happening around us.

Keep a journal.  Of all of these things and then practice using them and embedding them into your content strategy. And of course, the first place to start, if you don't have a content marketing strategy is there, don't put it off. It's something so simple and so easy, but I think the word strategy gets us all like, Oh my God, I don't know what that is.

I'm just not going to do it. I have a workshop explaining it. And in the new year, I'm going to create something really easy for you. Have it in your pocket to listen to it when you need and to learn strategy.  But really life is content. It's time to start living it comes down to one really key piece that I want to tie together,  and that is  going out there and doing things.

So whilst building a business is, takes time and a lot of our energy.  It is also important to create space. I have a mentor that talks about it all the time. I did an email on this. But going on that holiday, just a couple of weeks ago, just freed up some space for more stories to come. But that's why it's always important to go to networking events, to be in community groups, to, you know, Spend time with your family to go outside like just live life because that will also create endless content ideas when we travel I find the most inspiration because I'm just out and about  when I'm you know spending time in meetings with my clients or networking I find content ideas and stories and things just come naturally.

But it's those moments where you just know you've got to get work done and you're sitting at the computer trying to think of content ideas and nothing's going to come. So that's the best time to go and get out there and do things and have a break. And it's something I think we are always consistently learning  is the power of space.

Um, but it's that balance between building a business and giving yourself space for it to grow. So also getting out there is super powerful.  And that's kind of it. It's not, there's no secret to creating great content. It's just having those ideas and consistent flow of things happening that you can share and connect with your audience.

And I've been watching this Netflix series. Um,  I can't think of the name now. It's  Seth from the OC. in it, um, Adam Brody and I can't remember the other actress's name. It's new on Netflix. Anyway, he is a rabbi and he gives a sermon and in that sermon he talks about, um,  You know,  one of his key messages was we're always waiting for the key thing, and we think that everyone else is in on it, and we are not, but we are all in on it, and there's signs and things coming to us all the time.

We're just not listening to them. So if you are waiting for this moment where, oh, I feel like everyone knows that they're marketing and their content and they just feel like they're so much better at me. better at it than me and I just don't think that I've got it yet and it's, I'm not in on it. Like you are, you just got to listen and open your eyes and see that there's content all around us and  you just got to use it at your disposal.

But you can't if you don't see it. So  listen,  Log it, keep a journal of it and practice using them.  And that's it.  But remember to be a content queen or king and that developing your strategy and story develops your business. Thank you so much for joining me today and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends.

You can do this by adding it to your Insta stories and tagging us at contentqueenmariah or just tell them about it. If you do rate and review, it does allow me to get amazing guests. I've got a great campaign coming up and the more ratings and reviews and we'll guess we can have come on the show and chat with us, follow us on Instagram and let me know if there are any topics you want me to talk about.

I would absolutely love to hear them, but I'll talk to you next week. Bye. 

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