Building a Content Business for Coaching
Why Build a Content Business to Support Coaching
If you are a gaming coach or an expert in anything, you’ve probably thought about creating content before but considering it and actually doing correctly can make the difference in revenue from 4 to 5 figures and sometimes even 6 figures monthly. Extending your business with content and through content marketing isn’t always easy and obvious and can be very time consuming.
In this article I’m going to be showing you how to get started, what is the content creation process like and what tools and processes you need to have in place for success.
Advantages of Content Creation.
Adding content creation to your business can be a very powerful growth tool and is a model that has proven itself to be very valuable. So if you are interested in making a business from doing what you love (gaming in this case), then creating and publishing content on platforms like Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitch or Twitter brings you 4 advantages:
- Building and growing an audience
- Converting that audience into new customers
- Establish yourself as an expert.
- Increase Revenue
Choosing The Right Platform for You
Choosing the right platform for you and your gaming business is a very important step that can dictate wether or not your strategy has success. Every social media and content sharing platform is different and plays by different rules. Their algorithms might all care about the same thing and keeping their users on the platform engaged for as long as possible. In this article I’ll cover the 3 main content platforms used for growth and audience building in the gaming space: Youtube, Tiktok, Twitch.
Youtube - To this day, YouTube is still the greatest Platform for Discovery. You might argue that TikTok is better and it is for sure a great channel to get your face and name out there but getting people off TikTok to follow you on other platforms remains a challenge for many creators.
That's why when it comes to building a community and a cohesive ecosystem around your brand, YouTube remains the best platform.
Twitch - Twitch is another great content creation platform. While it's discoverability is rough, Twitch will be great for you if you are ALSO doing youtube. Twitch might be the easiest platform to start on as it only requires a 1 time setup and then your good to go. However, this content is very different from what you'll be putting on other platforms due to it's live nature so if you only had to choose on focusing only on one platform, I wouldn't recommend it.
TikTok- The latest trend when it comes to creating content. Tiktok is great for discoverability and creativity. To be honest with you, Tiktok is the platform I understand the least but it can be very powerful if your desire is to get your name out there. Be wary that getting people to perform actions off tiktok is going to be challenging. Most users open tiktok only for entertainment purposes. You never think about learning something and then opening tiktok.
Which Platform is for You?
TwitchTikTokYoutubeDiscoverability❌✅✅Community✅❌✅Monetization✅❌✅DifficultyLowMediumHigh
How To Start Creating Content
Once you’ve decided where you want to upload your content you will need to start thinking about how you can easily create this content and transform it into something worth watching.
⚠️ Remember: Content worth watching is:
- Exclusive - this type of content cannot be found anywhere else
- Valuable - provides something valuable to the viewer
- Personalized - includes the viewer in any way, shape or form.
Content creation is usually a simple 3 step process. In the filmmaking industry these terms are called pre-production or what i like the call idea generation, research and script writing. Basically, all the work that gets put in before the recording. Then comes the production phase, which is everything that has to do with the actual filming and being on camera. And lastly what is often the most time consuming part for many people, the editing or post production.
Big content creators have designated people assigned for each step of the process but if you are a smaller creator it’s very unlikely that you have the budget to afford to pay people to help out so if you are just starting out you will very likely have to do most of the work yourself.
The secret is to set up an easy process that compliments your other work so you spend your time more efficiently.
7 Steps of an Effective Content Strategy
If your goal is to expand your business through content creation you want to implement it directly into your day to day activities. If you’re a gaming coach and want to start creating content here’s how to do it.
Step 1 - Create a Content Plan
Everything starts with a plan and content creation is no different. Start out with a plan and really think of what you want your content and brand to be about. If you want to establish yourself as a top player or the best coach or wanna be an analyst it can work, but you wanna start tailoring and coming up with content ideas that match your goals. Try to think of repeatable formats that you can keep doing and perfecting. Write down your ideas and make sure when you start recording there is clear intent behind why the red dot is blinking.
Step 2 - Start recording your coaching sessions.
If you’re a coach, an easy way to gather a lot of content is simply recording all of your coaching sessions. Many times you will get a lot of golden nuggets while teaching others and you will be able to transform your main activity into content. That’s the goal. If you play a lot, start recording your games. Perhaps you have a really good game or strategy that you can use this footage to create a video afterwards. The goal is to be efficient with your time. If you’re a streamer, make sure you set up your vods to be downloadable in the right format.
Step 3 - Note valuable moments
Once you start recording hours and hours of sessions or gameplay, you’ll realise that not all footage is equally as valuable. Avoid haing to spend hours and hours shifting through all of your recordings to find good segments that can be transformed into videos by taking notes during the recording process. Are you in the middle of a session and a student asked a really good question? Did you just play a really good game? Have you made a crazy play? Take a note & write it down. Be as precise as you can be, that will make it easy for you or your editor in the future.
Step 4 - Organise your Recordings
Just like in any other field, being organized isn’t a necessity but it will help you tremendously. Make sure all of your recording files are named properly. I suggest using a kanban board or a tool like Notion to keep track of what stages your videos are in especially as you scale content output up. I recommend having at least 4 different columns to keep track of your videos. Ideas, recorded, edited & upload.
If you are working with at least one editor, I suggest you start using a file storage platform like google drive or dropbox to store and share the large files with your team. Having 2 separate folders for raw and edited footage is going to make your life a lot easier.
Step 5 - Edit Content Down
Editing is often the first part of the process that is outsourced because it is both time-consuming and difficult to master. There’s no real secret to this step. There are many editing tricks that you can use to accelerate this process such as having some templates ready and using some online libraries for go to effects and transitions but in general you want to find your preferred style and slowly refine it with time. Improving little by little with each video you upload is going to get you very far.
Step 6 - Create a library of resources
If you plan on releasing content regularly from coaching or gameplay, it’s probably a good idea to start creating a library with resources. By resources it can be anything from footage, gifs, memes, transitions, to soundbites or gameplay examples. You will often find yourself explaining the same thing or making the same joke or referencing a single moment a lot. Start building a library of resources so you can easily introduce these in your process whenever necessary. Not only will this make your post production work faster, it can also help you in the future if you find yourself changing or adding new editors to your team.
Step 7 - Measure and Analyse
Lastly, all platforms have an algorithm and analytics tools to help you understand how well your content is performing. While obsessing over the numbers is not always a good idea, completely ignoring them is also bad. You want to keep an eye on your analytics and always try to improve based on what is performing well and what isn’t.
Content creation is often boiled down to quality, consistency and innovation so it’s always a good idea to keep pushing out content, improve quality and try new things. If you are serious about giving content creation a chance, always try to make it a part of your routine rather than creating a brand new habit.
When to Scale to Multiple Platforms?
I always suggest starting with only one platform at a time but there are clear advantages of pushing out content on multiple platforms such as wider reach and more moentization options. You should look to expand to multiple social media once you feel you have a well functioning system in place for your first platform. You should be able to produce quality content on a consistent basis and experience growth before scaling.
How to Repurpose Content to Multiple Platforms?
The tile is somewhat giving away the solution to the problem. Once you create content for one platform, select the best moments and try to repurpose those videos for other platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Reddit or Discord. In that case, your process should look something like this.
1 Hour Coaching Session
→ 2x15 minute Youtube Videos
→ 10 x 30second Clips for Tiktok or Youtube Shorts
→ 1 Blog Post
→ 2 Reddit Posts
From one session, you end up creating more than 15 pieces of content. This is the power of repurposing. Many times you can simply cut out the same moments from Youtube, adjust them to vertical format and post them on Tiktok or Youtube Shorts.
As your business grows, you will understand that each platform is different and viewers use all social media with different intents. This is when you want to create specific strategies catered to the different audiences. My recommendation is to always have a different strategy and if possible, separate editors who are working for each platform individually adjusting the strategy and style to better accommodate the platform they are focused on.
