content creation

What Romain Virgo and The Mitchell can teach you about marketing.

There are a couple of jamaican artist I find interesting online. Romain Virgo and Tami and Wayne Mitchell.

I got introduce to them through my wife. She is a fan of their content on YouTube. The interesting thing about it is that she binge watch videos and the new ones that comes out.

The Mitchell’s vlog is Tami Chin and her husband Wayne Marshall talking about interesting stuff about their day. They include all aspect of their lives. Their children and so on.

After watching a few videos I became hooked at how they were able to rapidly grow their audience on YouTube to the point they have now become sought after host for various events.

Romain Virgo is the same. He build his YouTube audience taking us behind the scenes about his life as a musician and his daily interactions with his wife. It may seem boring on the surface but watching it will get you hooked.

Here are a couple marketing lessons I learnt from both of them.

Document what you do.

None of the content they post is planned. All they do is document there day and then edit and share. Nothing over complicated. All we are getting is access to their lives.

What we can learn from this is don’t over complicate your content strategy. Make it as simple as possible to go from idea to publish content. Make it apart of your daily routine to document something you want to share.

Later you can edit it down before publishing it online. And you can select what aspect to share.

Documenting also saves you time. Because it only takes a few minutes to record a video or write something down.

Share your struggles

For my wife she is attracted to what the children do. In adidition to that how the wives handle certain challenges which is also one other reason why she watches so often.

Wayne Marshall got me hooked with his various stories. He talked about how one of his friends put Marijuana in his bag and how he got caught with it in the US and how it affected his life.

There was another story about how he ended up in a difficult encounter with the law. These are true stories.

Romain shares about his early encounter in the music business. What life is like on tour.

My wife loves his wife and how she handles herself and the children. All they do is give us access to their lives.

What they share also helps others feel they are not alone in there struggles. Which builds the connection with the audience.

Engage your audience.

Tami and Wayne receive letters, gifts from people who watch their content. They also ask persons to help them support a worthy cause.

They also talk about current events. There was one video they were watching the elections in the US. I think they did a similar one for the local elections as well.

There was various videos about the lockdown and how they are dealing with school.

I remember once Wayne was working on a project and went to the hardware store to buy tools.

Embrace partnership to grow your reach.

Both Romain and the Mitchell’s embrace this concept. They are influencers in there own right but they also have an asset they can leverage.

Private sector companies reached out to them for various things.

In Christmas the Mitchell’s did a giveaway and one of the partners was grace Kennedy. They had others but that one I remember distinctly. And was able to reach there goal.

Romain did a entire video about a video shoot that involved his children. All of that came from documenting his journey.

The ad will be placed in various media outlets and lots more people will be exposed to his brand.

Conclusion

Don’t overcomplicate things when using online platforms to market yourself. Document what you do, edit and share.

Control the distribution

There is a popular saying that content is king. But I know alot of great content creators who are still trying to get the word out about their work.

They are even some that are highly dependent on others to do the distribution for them. This puts a restriction on what gets out and how often things can go out.

An example of this was in 2020 Tye Tribbett wanted to release a song. His label has reservations. He went on a rant on the internet about the issue.

I don’t know all the details except what I saw but my concern was this was a known headlining gospel artist that had little control of how his music is put out.

Compare that with Lacrae who has his own label. Even though he was signed to a major label for awhile he controls his distribution of his music.

Another example is Jamaican artist. They create lots of music but have little to no access to an audience. They have fans but they don’t control the method to reach them.

Think about it, you write and record a song. Shoot a video or whatever and then try to get other people to send it out for you. Part of that is what is known as influencer marketing.

Some try to get interviews on various platforms. Others get someone else to get the word out entirely.

What if there is a way that you can reach your audience directly. People who know you and want to here from you? Well you can. Build an audience for yourself and talk to them directly.

Seth Godin wrote about a concept called permission marketing. Which is simply get permission to contact someone who is interested in what you are doing.

The simplest way is email. The other is social media following. But the goal is to create a method to reach your fans directly that you control.

Though you may use other methods. Make sure you build an asset that you control.

Tyler perry built his empire organically collecting emails from persons who visited his plays.

Work at building that audience and overtime you will be in a position to expand your reach.

How to stop procrastination

There’s a popular Jamaican saying that says delay is danger.

The true meaning of that saying comes alive when you are working on a project and the deadline is fast approaching and you have not started.

Its not that you mean to but other things have caught your attention or starting maybe difficult.

I know this situation all too well and have found 4 things that help me overcome procrastination.

1. Do it now

If something needs to get done do it now.

For example, you need to set an appointment to speak to a client instead of putting it off do it now.

2. write ideas as they come

Another example, if you have a writing project and have a few ideas write them down as you get it.

Leaving it until later is dangerous because you may not remember what it is.

Outline it and flesh it out now. Whe you ready to sit down to right you already did most of the work.

3. Keep a journal

If you love to read keep track of quotes that inspire you. Similarly, keep photographs you like the look of, shots that inspire you and compositions.

If you are a designer you can keep a swipe file of flyers and other designs you like. They can give you ideas for starting projects.

4. Start before you are ready

Doing things before you need them can help you move quickly.

Have a project due in 2 months start it out. Finish it before it’s needed so that if any changes need to be made it can be done before it ships.

Do things in bulk and schedule them out. Write more than needed. Take more photos than necessary and put plans in place before you have a need for them.

In all cases don’t put things off for later get it done now. You may never get around to it.

5 software tools I can’t do without as a content creator

As a content creator software tools are my best friend. It’s the center of all I do.

These are 5 type of tools that I would recommend anybody to have and know how to use.

1. Audio editor

An audio editor such as Adobe audition is my best friend. It helps me clean up interview, pick out quotes for features and mix down podcasts and other projects.

Investing in an audio editor will make the world of difference to your videos and podcast.

2. Video editor

If you create tons of videos, whether for YouTube, Facebook or otherwise investing in a video will be necessary.

You can cut out mistakes, add titles, lower thirds and other graphics to polish off your video.

You can also cut and splice things together. Add music and other elements.

Adobe premier, Vegas pro, Wonderware fillmora and final cut pro are good options in this category.

3. Photo editing tool

Instagram has increase the use of photo online. So having an editor to tweak your photos will be good investment.

From creating flyers, info graphics and croping images a good photo editor is the next tool on this list.

You also use it to create images for blog post, book covers, carousel for Instagram and so on.

Photoshop, gimp, abode lightroom and affinity photo are great options in this category.

4. Desktop publisher

Desktop publishers can help you create books. Though you can do certain things in word or Google docs these tools can help you create pdf documents and fillable forms.

If you are looking to create ebooks, a desktop publisher will come in handy.

Affinity publisher, Adobe indesign and scribus are good options to look at.

5. Vector graphic

Vector graphic software can help you design logos useful shapes and icons that can be used in other design.

Illustrator, Inkscape and affinity designers are good options.

Though you may not use all of them but having access at somepoint will make your life easier. Knowing how to use them as well will be a blessing.

5 things that helped me improve my writing

Writing was one of the most difficult things for me to do.

Whenever I was to write a letter, compose an email and similar things I would always draw blanks.

It would be very frustrating and I would avoid it for a very long time.

The reason writing was so difficult 8s because I had trouble expressing myself verbally.

The following 5 things helped me improve my writing a lot.

1. Read widely

One thing that sky rocketed my writing was reading more books.

Expose yourself to different styles of writing. This will help you find what you like.

For me I love clear writing. I also gravitate to authors who get straight to the point.

Anything that uses a lot of metaphors usually annoys me because some of the books I have read the authors leave you hanging.

But the point is the more you read and the wider you read, the more ways you find to express yourself through writing.

2. Blogging

Staring a blog was the best decision I have made. It helped me practice in public.

It also helped build my confidence to try other forms of writing.

Another way to put it is practice writing down your thoughts.

Not just writing it down but sharing it to get feedback from others.

3. Have a structure

Nothing waste more time than trying out how to say what you want to say.

Learn how to structure your thoughts. Find something you like and stick with it.

One thing that helped me was following the structures that copywriters used to write advertisements.

These people know how to structure their thoughts in a logical format. Following these guys is a good way to learn how to structure your writing.

4. Don’t judge your ideas

One thing that increased my speed was trying all my ideas by faith. While writing just getting everything out of my head and onto the page.

If it works great if it doesn’t I learn from it and move on.

5. Practice everyday

Writers write. That’s what we do. If you don’t use it you’ll lose it.

Fund some time to write some thoughts down. Keep a journal, digital or physical.

The act of writing something down everyday, sharing it and having it edited by someone else helped me to improve the quality of my writing.

Conclusion

These are some of the things that helped to improve my writing.