78. 5 Hot Takes on Creating Educational Content
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When it comes to creating educational content, there are a lot of conflicting opinions floating around. Some say creating educational content needs to be the biggest part of your content strategy; others say we should ditch it all together.
What do I say? I say…it’s a little less black-and-white than that.
It’s my turn to share my own hot takes when it comes to creating educational content. Let’s start with this…
You Don’t Have to Be An “Educator” to Educate
Hot take number one: even if you're not a coach, a thought leader, a personal brand, or whatever you consider to be a “traditional” educator, you’re still capable of creating educational content. Educational content is as simple as someone coming across your video and leaving it better than they found it.
No matter what industry niche you fall under, even if you don't consider yourself to be an educator, your educational content can still be valuable. Here’s an example…
One of my favorite creators actually just created a reel where she brought us behind the scenes of how she makes friends. She shared how she prepped, how they met, what they talked about, and what her feelings and fears were, and then she made those things into a reel. But instead of simply talking about it, she laid it out as a process for how to make friends.
Some of her tips? Go out to coffee shops alone. Make sure you look accessible. Compliment people. Whatever those tips happened to be, they count as education. This is a great example of how even a general lifestyle creator can still lean into creating educational content.
Once we start to think about educational content as an exchange of value from you to your followers, it’s clear that you can and should be creating educational content of your own.
2. Micro > Macro
Hot take number two: tips, tricks, and hacks? They are out. Instead, when you’re creating educational content, you should be helping people think or do something differently. Consider these as micro-transformations.
The reason I say this is because when you share a video that has five hacks or five tips, it naturally performs well, because it plays into that click-bait category of content. Those numbers look good on paper, but at the core of it, people are tired of consuming content and leaving it feeling more overwhelmed than ever.
So instead of creating educational content where you share ten tips or hacks, try going deep instead. Try focusing on adding a ton of value with just one tip or hack.
The concept of a tip or hack is that you're giving them something small and quick they can do, but we don’t have to play small like that when creating educational content. We really want to change something for them in order to prove value—we want to change how they’re thinking about something, how they’re doing something, how they’re approaching things, how they’re looking at the solutions for the problems that they have in their life, etcetera. Otherwise, we’re just another tiny wave in the shallow sea of content.
3. Problem Awareness
Hot take number three: when creating educational content, you need to understand, for your specific industry or niche, whether your audience needs specific education to have problem awareness.
What is problem awareness? Essentially, this means knowing what pain point you’re experiencing so you can start looking for a solution. Sometimes people don't actually know what the specific pain point is that they’re experiencing; sometimes, all they know is that they’re feeling a certain way or struggling with a certain experience, and they need to find a solution for it.
Sometimes creating educational content is about offering a solution that they might have never been introduced to or identifying a problem that they didn't even know they had.
I’ll use my friend Berri as an example. She is a period and hormone coach, and if I were to guess, I would say probably 50% of her audience or people that come to her Instagram page have no clue what cycle-syncing even is. So before they can understand that their problems with their periods and hormonal acne or low energy are actually tied to the fact that they're not cycle-syncing, they will never be able to see that as a solution.
In this example of creating educational content, it’s really important that she's providing education on why things are happening, what the real problem is, and when people need to change things. Sometimes your educational content needs to go a little bit deeper, and we need to make sure we're not assuming that people already know what we know.
In fact, more often than not, they don't know what we know, and we need to fill them in. That’s where creating educational content becomes a necessity.
4. Free Content Pays Off
Hot take number four: free educational content can help you sell your products, your services, and your offers.
I know a lot of people struggle with wondering how much free content is too much free content, but I truly think that we can never be too generous with what we're sharing on social media.
Here’s how you should play with creating educational content and offering it for free: free content should be a simple or easy win that they can implement almost right away. Then, when they're purchasing your product, investing in your course, or signing up to work with you, you offer a deeper transformation.
That’s why providing really great free content will actually show them what is possible with your brand. In their minds, if you’re offering this much value for free, just imagine how much value there is in the paid program!
5. Education Should Be Part Of Your Platform, Not the Whole
Final hot take: you shouldn’t only be creating educational content. It should be just one of the elements within your content pillars.
The way that I teach content pillars inside of my programs and inside of my signature Shine Framework is that there are typically five topics or categories that you're going to build out, and those will make up your content strategy.
You sit down and lay out the topics and themes you're going to consistently lean into, so instead of having a niche where you only talk about one thing, or being super multi-passionate and talking about a million things, content pillars really meet in the middle.
Chances are, out of your five content pillars, a few of them might be educational. However, some of them might be more connection-building or relationship-building or community-building. Not everything needs to be a hard-hitting piece of educational content for it to be strategic and intentional.
That’s why content pillars are so important, because we're not just creating content; we are creating brands with our video strategy. That's why educational content is just one piece of the puzzle.
Three Questions to Ask Yourself About Creating Educational Content
I’m going to end on three questions that you can reflect on to create better educational content.
Firstly: what is your unique point of view as it relates to your area of expertise or your industry? People need to see and hear things differently in order for them to stand out, and that is where it is okay to lean into the thing that you haven't seen anyone else talking about or talk about it in a way that you haven't really seen before.
This is what's going to help your brand stand out, and this is what's going to differentiate you from other options that people might have when they're choosing who to invest in.
I know it can feel really intimidating to lean into your own POV, but this is really where strategic content comes into play. And I guarantee you, once you start ruffling some feathers, sharing some unpopular opinions, sharing some hot takes, sharing things people haven't seen, you'll see such a big difference in how people view you as an authority.
Secondly: what are the possibilities your ideal follower needs to see to solve their problems?
At the core of this, you need to know your ideal follower super well. What are their habits? What are their interests? What do they care about? And most importantly, what are those problems they are experiencing and what are the possibilities they need to see?
Thirdly: What is a new, different or better way that you can share a concept with your video content?
Sit down and look at your current content. Look at your industry space and see how you can disrupt the current educational content that is going out and offer better educational content for your followers.
Ultimately, the answer to whether you should include education in your content is absolutely yes. You just need to be strategic with how you use it and how much you use it.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
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Want to know more about my method for video content creation, including content pillars? Get an inside look at my signature Shine Framework: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5o75i4l3GcLzz4LcyVtQlY
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