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Foreign. I am your host, Shannon McKinstry. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never ending content creation, guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked. Good Content. I cannot believe I'm saying this, but we are recording good Content from our beach house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I'm actually looking at my grandmother's beach house right now. They bought two lots in the 1970s, Milepost 7 and Kill Devil Hills, and built a tiny beach cottage right. 1978. And they never built on the other lot. This other lot was just trees forever. And when my grandma passed, you know, she was basically, almost, basically a mother to me. And because I wasn't far from her growing up and, you know, I'd come down here to the beach house in the summers with my cousins and she's a huge part of my life and was just. She was just the best. She passed, gosh, three years ago now. And I knew we couldn't afford to buy the beach house. I was devastated. It was, you know, the family decided no one wanted it, and I was just like, I was devastated. We said goodbye to the beach house. My dad was here, we all drove away. And I was. And I remember looking at the lot and going, I'm going to get that lot. I'm going to get that lot. I can't afford this beach house. And my dad even said, he was like, shannon, not only can't, you know, is it expensive to buy, but it also needs probably $200,000 of work because it's, it's old. Okay. And, yeah. And so I drove away and I was just like, I'm. I'm going to get that lot. I don't know how I'm going to get that lot, but I'm going to get that lot. And the crazy story. So I didn't know what I was going to talk about today, but here we go. I. I put my head down. Grief is weird. I just worked myself to the bones, really. And I was doing Instagram audits and Instagram audits and Instagram audits. And I just was working, working, working. I hadn't started the reels lab yet, but I was doing a ton of audits and was just. I don't know, I was. Ryan was like, you are literally like. I was working till midnight, till 1am getting up, working before the kids were up, working when Chloe and Camera at school, you know, I was just. Every free moment of my life, I was working because I'd love what I do. So I decided, well, instead of sit around and cry about losing my grandma, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna pour into work. All of a sudden, Ryan goes, you know. Cause he. I'm not the money. I don't do money. It's not my specialty. And he's looking at my bank account and he's like, you know, I just feel like as much as you're working, there should be some more money. And I just. I also remember I just released Grow, your Instagram guide. And all of a sudden, Ryan's like, you. You've sold a lot of those. Like, where is this money going? All of a sudden, we're sitting there on the couch. It's like 8 o' clock at night, kids are in bed. And I go, oh, my gosh. I had a VA before my current va. And I go, she had opened a stripe account for me. For my. And again, I can't remember. It was either a dubsado. It was something where all. I think it was dubsado. So all the money going through Dubsado. So if anyone bought a audit or whatever, the money was going into the stripe account that I had forgotten about. Now, again, you guys are probably listening to this, going, this is this. If you know me and you grew up. Like, my girlfriends are, if they're listening to this, they're going, yep, this is so Shannon. I'm like, type B to a T. So I'm like, oh, my gosh. So my dad told us the amount of money we needed for the lot. The exact dollar amount when we opened that stripe account. And I had to go to old email address Boutique Social. It was back when my business was called Boutique Social. I mean, when my actual agency was called that. And I had to find this old email that this VA had sent out created for me. Like, we're talking like six years ago or five years ago. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, my gosh, what was it? So I go to the email. I find the email. I have to, like, you know, get the password res. All of a sudden, find the stripe account that exact. I goosebumps. That exact dollar amount was in that stripe account. And I joke that my grandma knew how bad I was about money that she made this happen. I was like, she knew that one day I. So anyway, long story short, we were able to buy this lot we couldn't build right away, right? But Reels Lab, by the grace of God and by all the support and Everyone inside the Rails lab who love it. I was able to get enough money to build this meal and it's a dream. And we named it Kitty's cottage after my grandma. So here we are. This is our first official weekend staying here. We are going to decorate. Obviously there's not much to see right now. This is, this is going to be Cam and Chloe's room. But we're just ecstatic. And it just shows what happens when you post online. I could have let the comparison get to me thousands of times. I could have let the people copying, stealing my content get to me and quit and throw it away. I could have let the embarrassment of being cringe on video make me go, you know what? The same for me. I could have let a lot of stuff stop me and I didn't because I truly do love what I do. And I hope you guys can feel that. It's. This is again, I didn't make a dime doing this for five years. I really didn't make any money doing social media management. It was, it was, you know, $300 a month. I was like, I'm ballin' so trust me, it's been a grind and it's been a journey and I'm just, I just, it, look, it still doesn't hit me. Do you know what I mean? I'm still like, is this, is this for real? Is this real life? So thank you again. I just, I don't know if you. That story was cool, but it's just, it just, just shows what happens when you keep posting. You guys, I hit six figures in my business before I hit 10,000 followers, okay? So do not think you need a million bajillion followers. There are people in my world, in my Instagram world with way more followers than me. But it doesn't matter. I'm going to keep going. And in. You just keep going. You just keep going. Okay? So with that said, why don't we just do an old fashioned episode of good content and scroll the gram and look at what's going on now. I actually just did a show, Jerry Potter, his social media marketing talk show just now. I just got off of it and we did a lot about like updates in Instagram world. You know, they've. They just launched blends, which is super fun. So if you have a group chat, you can now merge your algorithms in a way and scroll reels tab. So and it's funny because at the bottom it will say like, I just did it with my friends Carly, Marissa and Autumn. And so at the bottom, it'll say, this reel was suggested to Carly. This reel was suggested to Autumn, and Carly, this reel was suggested to Marissa. And so as you're scrolling it, you're seeing what the algorithm is feeding your friends. And I was thinking for a marketing perspective, for a business perspective, maybe you have a team where you guys kind of brainstorm ideas. That would be a really cool way, because now you're not just seeing your little bubble of the Internet, you're seeing other reels that you're not seeing. Right. If I open my husband's reels tab, it's going to look totally different than mine. It's going to be golf, sports. Right? But there's stuff in there I would see going, wow, that's actually a genius hook. Or, wow, I bet that's why that went viral. And I can use it. So that's kind of cool. So if you are like me and a nerd and want to kind of look at what reels are performing well and why, really cool. So check out blends. Very, very exciting. Okay. Like I said, I just want to help you guys. Last week, we talked about the rep hook, and I did a reel yesterday about how, you know, stop posting so much like a brand and start posting like a person. And I've talked about this a lot. But that's why the rep hook, which is using something relatable and then noting your expert and also putting something in that's personable. Because we want to follow humans. And even if you look at Touchland, Taco Bell, like all these big brands, their content looks like creators, right? It looks like humans, and they are using words in their hooks, like me. I literally, if I go to Taco Bell right now, there's a real. And I feel like I even talked about this on the podcast a few weeks ago, but it says my Zen garden, and obviously they're joking. It's like queso dip and their tortilla and their tortilla chip. It's just silly. But again, it doesn't. When you first see it, you think it's a casual reel or a casual Instagram story from a friend. That is what is working right now. So the more that you can add in my I, here's how I do things. Here's what. Or again, when you're doing POV reels, whatever it is, we want to follow more. So humans and people than brands. So doesn't mean that this is the only way to do reels. I'm just saying the more that your content looks like it's from a person, the better. We're on social, we'd like to send things to our friends. I always call it the group chat heroes. So here's a great example. Two player board games. We can't stop playing. So this is like a couple, right. Tabletop family. Obviously it'll be in the show notes but again it's like suggestions, ideas, fun things that like, they're like you want to share with your friends and family or people you work with. I love this one from a brewery. Person with this initial owes you a beer and they put literally the entire Alphabet. Oh my gosh, that's really funny. So again we're on here to have fun. What can you do to make your content? Obviously a lot of people have heavy stuff they need to share and that's different. But what are some ways that you can make it feel like a human touch? Right. Don't hide your face, don't hide your employees faces. And I love this one and I gave this actually to my Rails lab students last week. The solution to my problems may not be inside a cheese shop, but we should probably check, right? And I'll give you one more example. Tate's cookies. They have, they're literally someone is at the grocery store scanning the cookies and it says me at 10pm after eating a salad for dinner. That's actually from the brand Tates. So this is just to show you that we are going back to basics. We do not need fancy, we do not need, we need relatable. We need to know who you are as a human and that's the content that's going to do well. Because the more we got away from creating content that was deeply rooted in our life. Right. So what happened then was the human kind of disappeared and then we got bored and everything just looked like, just didn't look like there was a person behind it. And all this faceless marketing. And of course there can be faceless accounts. There's tons of funny meme accounts that are faceless. There's jewelry accounts that are faceless. But what I mean is like if you want to create good content, what is something that you can say that your person is going to attach to? That's where that rep comes into. And also when I mentioned these reels of like it's something you want to send to a friend, it's something that you relate to, it's something that you want to follow the person to see more of. And we're going to end on this because this is a brilliant hook and I'LL give you the whole, like, why I'm saying all this to you in just a second. It says, this is brilliant. 60,000 likes, it says, and the mom's demoing. Right. I always say, if you can do a POV and demo what you're saying, brilliant pov. You set up a color mixing station and suddenly you're the coolest mama ever. Now, why is that brilliant? Because she got down to what the actual desire is. Yeah, the kids will have fun. Yeah, it'll be a cute memory. No, at the end of the day, I always joke, like perfume. It's not that you want to smell good. Sure, you want to smell good. You want people to ask what perfume you're wearing. You want people to come over and be like, wow, where'd you get that piece of art? You want people to look at your outfit and say, where'd you get it? You want to be the coolest mom on the block. And maybe you're listening to be like, I don't, I don't. It's what is something that you're like, you would love that feeling. That's what needs to be in your reel. So again, funny. Taco Bell, My Zen garden. Silly funny. You send it. That's the humor category, right? The one about the paint, the one about the mom. That's actually helpful because they're giving you an idea and she's showing you exactly how she does it. That's helpful. And the herd actually is. Is humorous too. Right? The whole. The solution to my problems may not be inside a cheese shop, but we should probably check. It's funny, but it also makes them go, yeah, this account is for me. I get them the. The beer. And that's also humor. Tabletop Family, the two player board games. We can't stop playing. We can't stop playing. So they know it's an actual suggestion. It's rooted in their life. They didn't have to go create content. They had to. They didn't have to go think of something. They're like, oh, my family and I are obsessed with these board games. Let's tell it to people. Oh, I'm at Taco Bell. Let's make this funny. Real. Obviously, Taco Bell made it, but still, you're at a brewery, you're already poured the beer. Create the content. You're walking to a cheese shop. Take the B roll. You'll think of the idea later. You're setting this up with your kids. Record it. All of these reels did not take a lot of time and did not stress them out because it was rooted in their life. It was part of their life. It was part of their day. So with this whole thing, this is a long episode. Sorry. My point is, it's time to get back to creating content that is already happening in our life so that it isn't so stressful. You had an aha moment with a coaching call with a. With a client on a coaching call. Talk to us about it. You just design a new website for your client and they already are converting 10 times what they were. Tell me about it. You discovered this cool restaurant down the street, and you are a local blogger or a realtor. Tell me about it. Take the pictures, document as you go. You can always create the content later. You don't have to do it on the spot if you don't want to. And trust me, when I'm creating content this weekend, it's going to be here at the beach and about stuff that we're already doing. Because I'm not spending more than 30 minutes on a piece of content, and neither should you. Okay, so we need to get back to the basics. We need to get back to knowing that we're following humans. We want content from you that is in a. That aligns with what you're already doing in your life and in your business. It's going to feel a lot more fun to create. And I had someone say, you know, Shannon, but no one's interested. Your people are out there. Maybe the wrong people are following you right now. Your people are out there. I promise you that. When you keep posting and sharing things about your life, because that's all I was doing in the beginning, was documenting my journey of being a business owner. And then I started sharing more tips and tricks and things like that, But I still all in stories. It's documenting my life. You guys know what I have for breakfast? Or that I probably skipped breakfast. You all know where I'm taking my kids. You all know about this beach house. That's why a lot of people follow me. They don't only follow me for Instagram tips, right? Anyone? There's tons of people out there giving Instagram tips. What makes you different as a plumber, a realtor, a boutique owner, a karate coach, whatever it is, we want to know you, the human behind it. And the more that your content is about your day, what you did, what you learned, your perspective, the better. I love you, friend.