PODCAST
The Uncorked Conversation
EPISODE #33
We live in the Information Age. That means we are consuming more content on a given day than any other time in human history. So if you’re the creator of the content, the question becomes: How can I rise above the noise?
Content includes everything from blog posts to podcast episodes to Facebook Lives to newsletters. It’s the information we send to our audience so they can get to know us and what we offer. It’s a huge part of building a successful business in the 21st century.
Creating content that rises above the noise and sings to your ideal audience is the topic of this week’s episode. It’s all about getting clear about who we’re creating for, asking the right questions, and infusing our core gifts.
In today’s episode we explore:
- Clearly defining your ideal audience
- Creating content directly in service to your ideal audience that sings
- Infusing your core gifts into your content + taking it to the next level
Listen + Subscribe on iTunes or PodBean.
References & Resources:
- Click HERE to listen to Ep#17 about the engaging the 4-step core gift process
- Click HERE to get my FREE 4-step planning guide to the perfectly productive workweek
- Click HERE to join my private FB Group, The Uncorked Cabal
The Uncorked Conversation Podcast with Allyson Scammell
Ep #33: Creating Content That Sings to Your Ideal Audience
Allyson Scammell: You are listening to the uncorked conversation podcast with Allyson Scammell.
Episode number 33.
Allyson: Hello and welcome to the Uncorked Conversation, a podcast for soul-guided, passion-filled women entrepreneurs who want to uncork big magic in life and business without burning out. We’ll get to the truth of how to uncork our core gifts, the ones we keep hidden inside and how to infuse those gifts into our personal and professional life in a way that feels like magic. We’ll also uncover how to truly experience the joy of the journey through smart time management and planning. I’m your host, Allyson Scammell. Let’s uncork.
Well hello, Shanti Pax nation. How are we? I’m feeling a very strong desire to complain about the weather, because I really want warm spring weather where I live in Maine, and it hasn’t arrived the way I would wish it to look. But, you know, I just really like to keep my content positive, truthful, real, authentic, and uplifting. So, I’m getting us warmed up for today’s episode, which is all about content. And I enjoy positive, inspiring, uplifting motivational content, so I will not complain about the weather even though I really want to.
To talk to you instead about something positive and fun and exciting, if you’re a soul guided entrepreneur, this is really, to me, one of the most exciting parts of being a soul guided entrepreneur, and that is creating content that sings to your ideal audience. What I mean by content, and I’m focusing this episode specifically on the content we create to connect to our ideal audience, not necessarily what we are selling.
I’m gonna get to that in a future episode, but for today we’re talking about blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, Facebook lives, newsletters, emails, anything that you communicate on a relatively consistent basis or at least from time to time to your audience so they can get to know you. They can get to know your products and your services, and they can start to like you. This is how the audience builds. This is how you build your tribe.
If you’re not creating content with some sort of consistency, I recommend you start. It actually really does work, and if you find the right content and you connect that content to your ideal audience and you find out where your ideal audience hangs out, it is a very thrilling and rewarding part of the entrepreneurial journey.
So in today’s episode we’re gonna talk about the never ending conversation about how to get clear or clearer about who your ideal client or customer is, how you can create content that is in service to him or her, that really sings, and certainly you won’t be surprised to hear I will also chat about how to engage your core gifts and infuse them into your content so that they really start to sing. So let’s get started.
In order for you to create content that sings, you have to really get to know your ideal client or customer. Who is this person? Who are these people? If you’re at the beginning of your journey, it is likely that this will be a hard question to answer because you just haven’t engaged with enough of them. So if that is you, take your best guess and then, and we’re gonna talk about this more, start talking to them. Start engaging them. Start working with them. The more you engage and talk to your ideal people, the clearer it gets.
That is something that will never ever ever change as long as you’re in business. As long as you’re in business, you’re going to have a target audience and you will need to consistently be engaging and communicating with that audience to know what it is they really want and to know what it is they’re really struggling with.
So let’s unpack this. What do we need to know about our ideal audience? Well, to me the first and most important thing no matter what product or service you’re selling is to understand their pain points. Understand their pain points. What are they struggling with? What are their problems? What hurts them? That is going to be the number one question you can ask to get to know them and to understand how it is you can help them and support them in those pain points.
It’s also helpful to know what are their dreams? What are their desires? What are their wants? This may sound obvious, but it’s a friendly reminder. I think we can get so caught up in the day to day work, the sales, the creating of content, to always step back and take some time to genuinely care. Genuinely care about their pain points. Genuinely care about their desires. Tune into that caring, that connection, that desire to serve them. That is always connected to your why, why it is you do what you do, why you get up in the morning and put all this time and attention into serving these people.
Then there are a lot of other questions you can ask regarding their personality, their tendencies, their yearnings, their idiosyncrasies. You want to delve into that with relation to what it is you’re offering. In my case, my ideal audience are soul guided women entrepreneurs, and to be honest, an ideal, ideal client of mine is a bit of a risk taker. She’s ready to go deep. She’s ready to really look inside of herself and say, “What needs to be cleaned out in here? Where is the resistance and how can I clean that up? How can I take my life, my business to the next level?”
I love working with clients who are ready to level up. That doesn’t necessarily mean earning twice as much money. That could mean leveling up your spirituality, your personal growth. You’re putting yourself out there, talking about things that are deeper or rawer. Those are all ideal client traits that I love to work with. I always give my clients the homework of either drafting or refreshing their ideal client avatar. So, this is the ideal client or customer that they wake up in the morning to serve.
When I do this with clients, I often hear, “Well, I am serving my old self, me five years ago when I used to struggle with this issue, but I learned to overcome it.” I say that is a great place to start. Absolutely great place to start. Where were you sometime in the past? You learned to overcome that or you learned, you developed a service or a product that helped you to overcome that and now you’re selling that to other people. But you need to infuse other things and other people into that client or customer avatar. It can’t be all a former version of you, because other people will have a hard time relating to that.
When you’re envisioning your ideal client or customer, you want to either think of someone you know, and maybe you know a real live person who you consider very ideal, and that person can be your ideal client or customer avatar, or you can do what I do, and I have a composite. I have a little piece of my former self, I have pieces of all of my ideal clients that I’ve worked with. I have some other pieces that I’m infusing all, and I’ve created Leila.
Leila is my ideal client. She lives in California and she’s in her late 30s, and she wants a family. She’s not quite there yet. She has a very heart based business. She’s a very soul guided entrepreneur, likes to take risks, ready to go deep, wants to go to the next level, all those things. So Leila, if you’re out there, I’m waiting for you. Please book a free consultation with me. I’ve been waiting for you for some time. This is the person who is my ideal avatar, and she is the person I create to, so that brings me to the next point.
How can I create content that is in service to her, to my ideal audience? Well, this is one thing that I learned from Martha Beck when I was doing my Master Coach Certification, and I’ve heard it from a lot of different sources. So it’s not only Martha Beck who’s saying that. But during the Master Coach Certification, we spent a lot of time with her on the writing portion, like how to write in a way that’s in service to your clients or that really gets your voice across, all those things.
I think Martha is an incredible writer, and I love her writing. One thing she kept saying over and over again is that you’re writing for one person. It’s that ideal reader, not a composite, not a group, not only your former self. You’re writing for someone else, and for one person only. I believe that that should be always the focus in any content you’re creating. So right now I’m creating this podcast for Leila, and of course I want to have more than just one person listen to this podcast, but if you are listening to this and it’s speaking to you, then there’s a piece of you infused into Leila.
I’m really focused on creating for her, and in doing that I am creating at my best because she is the person who gets me fired up to help, and you are a piece of her if this content is speaking to you. If you’re not digging on this and you find it strange or too spiritual, or you’re not buying it, then you’re not a piece of Leila. And that’s okay, because the thing about attracting ideal audiences is you want to attract the right people and invite the wrong people to find a different tribe. I think especially when we’re on the newer side of our entrepreneurial journey, we want everybody in. We get sad when someone leaves.
It still happens to me. There’s been someone who’s been in my tribe for a long time. She’s a former client of mine, and I normally don’t look at this, but I happened to notice she unsubscribed from my newsletter. Now, I was kind of hurt, and I normally don’t get hurt anymore by unsubscribes, but she is someone I consider an ideal client. I would definitely consider … She’s got all the traits that I’ve already mentioned, so why did she leave? Well there’s probably a million reasons. Maybe she was just doing a spring cleaning email declutter. Maybe she just follows me on Facebook now. Maybe there’s something I’m saying that’s not speaking to her anymore.
So I have to learn, and I recommend you learn and continue to learn, to be okay with that. We attract people in our tribe, and as we get more authentic and more on point, we are gonna not speak to certain other people in our tribe and they are gonna move on. That’s beautiful. So, please know that your ideal audience is always gonna be ebbing and flowing. People will always be coming and going. Your voice is gonna change, and as you change you’re gonna attract in new people and detract old people. And that is beautiful.
So how do we create content that sings? First, we are very clear as we possibly can be about our ideal audience. Then we ask one of two questions. The first is how can I create content that is in service to her, and/or depending on the nature of the content, how can I be an example of what is possible? So unpacking the first question, how can I create content that is in service, this means you want to create content that provides solutions to her problems, insights, motivation, perspective, ideas, inspiration, or education. Any of those things are in service to her on her path.
Regarding the second question, being an example of what’s possible, a lot of my clients will come to me and say, “Allyson, I want to talk about myself. I want to write about my story or talk about my story, but I feel like it’s self indulgent. I feel like it’s all about me.” What I say to them is, “Yes. It can be. I mean, we can share content about our lives that is indeed self indulgent, but how you shift away from that self indulgent is to be clear about your ideal audience and then say, ‘How can I share my story that is in service to her or that is an example of what is possible?'” And that is so powerful.
If you have learned to overcome something that your ideal client is struggling with, do you know how relieving that can be, how inspiring, how motivating? To know that, one, they’re not alone. Two, other people are struggling with it and have learned to overcome it. Then maybe you sharing your story how you overcame it or what you did to overcome it. So your stories, your stories of struggle, of triumph, all of the things that make you who you are, all of the things that you infuse in your products and services, your ideal clients and customers want to know that. They want to get to know you.
It doesn’t matter what you offer. You don’t have to be a coach. You can be a singer. You can be an artist. People are going to respond to your personal stories, however you want to share them. So if you start writing for one person and one person only, and that person is your ideal client or customer avatar, and when you create for them you say, “How can I create this in service to her? Or how can I be an example of what’s possible,” your content will start to sing.
Last but not least, if you want to supercharge your content and really take things to the next level, then you want to engage your core gifts. Now, you’ll be doing this anyway. Core gifts are a natural part of who you are, but why not infuse some intention? Why not purposefully, intentionally try to amp up your core gifts in service to your ideal audience? For example, before I recorded this podcast, I asked myself, “What gift do I really want to share?” The gift that came to me is truth. This is the raw truth of it. We’re not here to serve everyone. We are here to serve a sliver. And when we truly serve that sliver, that niche, more and more people feel it and want a piece of it. That’s how we grow and get bigger.
If you’ve been a listener to this podcast for some time, you may recall the four step formula for offering up your gifts with greater intention. The first step is to ask which gift wants to express itself right now, gift and/or gifts. If you’re not sure what your core gifts are, you can hire me and I will help you pinpoint them with clarity, or you can hire someone else, or you can take your best guess. Any of those things work. Take your best guess about your core gifts. In the work I’ve done with myself and with clients, we normally come up with three core gifts. I’m not talking strengths here, I’m talking superpowers, the unique abilities you were born to share. So what gift in the content you’re creating wants to express itself? It can be more than one.
The second question is what’s the action? Are you writing, speaking, teaching, walking? Well, maybe walking isn’t relevant to content creation, but you never know. Number three, what’s the medium? Is it a podcast? Is it a classroom? Is it a YouTube video? Is it a blog post? Is it a book? Where is the content going to appear? Last but not least, and so important, who is your ideal audience? Who is your target? So if you spend a second, which I did before this podcast episode, and tune into those four questions, what’s the gift, what’s the action, and in the action will also come the type of content. So what specific content you want to communicate. Number three is the medium, number four is the audience. That will help you to infuse your core gifts into your content and really set the intention to offer the very best of yourself to the people you feel called to serve.
The last thing I want to mention is consistency. How consistent do you need to be or should you be in creating content for your ideal audience? I say that really depends. There are different schools of thought. You need to tune into and be aligned with how consistent you can be, but bare in mind if you are being very inconsistent, it is just harder to gain more momentum. And that is okay. So if you want to grow slower and be a little bit more inconsistent, then that is fine, but don’t be hard on yourself if you’re putting content out inconsistently … So maybe you’re writing blog posts and you write three in a month and then you don’t write a blog post for three months. That will likely affect your growth rate, not always. Sometimes people have been inconsistent and have been able to grow, but that is the exception to the rule.
The rule very clearly shows, and I’ve seen it with other people, I’ve seen it with myself, that the more consistently you create content, the faster you grow, because people start to expect it. It’s the compound effect. If I drop a new podcast episode every Thursday, you start to expect it. If you like this content, you start to want it. You start to wait for it. You’re ready to share it with your friends. You will consistently show up to consume it. If I drop a podcast once in awhile, a couple times here, then I take a long break, you will still like it if you’re an ideal audience, but you won’t have that compound effect that leads to faster growth.
That is something … I’ve been creating content now for a long time, whether it be blogs, videos, podcasts, I’ve had a lot of different mediums. And that’s one thing that I’ve seen consistently, is the more consistent I am, the faster I grow. So you just have to decide where you are, what is realistic, and if you can’t be really prolific or consistent right now, then give yourself permission to possibly, and you can always be the exception of course, grow a bit slower. Find peace in that, because slow growth is just as beautiful as fast growth.
I really enjoyed doing this podcast episode, so I really hope that you, Leila, and if there’s a little piece of Leila in you, I really hope that this was in service to you in some way, shape, or form. And to recap, it is such an investment of your time and effort to always always be checking in. Always, always be getting clear about who your ideal audience is. When you find them, talk to them as much as possible. What are their pain points? What are their desires? What are their pain points? What are their desires? The more you get to know that, the greater and more powerfully you’ll be able to serve them.
Number two, always create content that is in service to them and/or is you are sharing a story about being an example of what is possible. When you create that content, create for one person, your ideal person, and that person only. Last but not least, engage your core gifts and infuse them into your content. You can do that through the four step process. I go into deeper detail about the four step process in episode number 17, and I will put a link to number 17 in the show notes, so if you want to listen to more.
Be as consistent as you can be at this point in your life. Just know that the general rule is the more consistent you are and the more you create, the faster your audience grows. But if you are pushing yourself to create content and you’re exhausted and you’re heart’s not there, you’re not gonna be creating at your best. Therefore, that will also affect your growth rates, so it’s important to be true and honor where you are today, and if you need to, give yourself permission to grow a little bit slower.
All right my dear friends, that’s all I have for today. If you’re feeling like you’re part of my ideal audience, I’d be super grateful for you to give this episode a rating and a review. Say a few nice words about it and share it with a few friends, and subscribe. That’s how more people can get ahold of this content for themselves. As always, until next time, stay uncorked.
Looking for a tribe to call your own? Then join us at the Uncorked Cabal. We’re a group of soul guided women entrepreneurs who are finding new ways to take our skills, sales, and satisfaction to the next level. Find the link to join on my website shantipax.com. That’s S-H-A-N-T-I P-A-X .com.
