#65 - Higher ed, this is why you’re not growing on social media
w/ John Azoni
Podcast Host
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SHOW NOTES
John Azoni is the founder of the Higher Ed Storytelling Podcast and Unveild, a video branding agency that helps colleges and universities tell compelling institutional stories. In this solo episode, John discusses effective content creation strategies for higher education institutions. He covers several key points:
The Podcast Format Change John announces the podcast is moving to an every-other-week release schedule to allow more time to promote each episode. He encourages a "quality over quantity" mindset for content.
Upcoming Webinar with Rob Clark of "That Tall Family" John previews an upcoming webinar on June 27th with Rob Clark, the creator behind the popular "That Tall Family" accounts, on mastering short-form video content for higher ed.
Who is Your Content For? John emphasizes the importance of creating content that provides widespread benefit beyond just your existing students/alumni. Successful content resonates with and gets spread by a broader audience you want to attract.
Treat Your Platform Like a Business For platforms you want to prioritize, treat it like a business by studying what resonates with your audience, iterating, and delivering more of that content. Don't just use it as a hosting shelf.
Organic Reach Insights From researching higher ed video content, John found self-promotional "commercials" don't gain much organic traction. More successful are videos that entertain, inform, or cater to niche interests.
The "Who is This For?" Mindset Consistently ask yourself who you're creating a piece of content for. Is it genuinely exciting/beneficial for your target audience, or just for existing supporters like alumni?
Balance Promotion with Value While some straightforward promotional content is okay, the bulk should provide real value and interest for your desired audience. Experiment to find the right mix.
Key Takeaways:
Focus content on benefiting your target audience, not just talking about yourself
Study what content resonates organically and iterate to provide more of that
Find the right balance of entertainment/information and self-promotion
Consistently ask "who is this for?" when creating content
Register for the Live Webinar:
Mastering Tiktok, Reels, and Shorts: A Guide for Higher Ed Marketers - https://www.crowdcast.io/c/shortformvideo
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:17:06
John Azoni
Welcome to this episode. This is a solo episode this week, and we're going to talk about a lot of good stuff regarding content creation. But I wanted to give you a couple of housekeeping items before we hop in here. Number one is the podcasts moving to and or it has moved to an every other week format. Here's the thing.
00:00:17:07 - 00:00:44:18
John Azoni
It's a lot of work to keep up with the podcast every single week. You know, we're a small team over here at Unveiled, and so I'm wearing a lot of hats and I love doing the podcast. It's one of my favorite things about the work that we do. And if I could just do the podcasts and, you know, write the newsletter and stuff like that, like that would be that would be super fun.
00:00:44:19 - 00:01:10:00
John Azoni
I'd be happy with that. But, you know, I do also need to make videos for clients, and I enjoy that as well. So we're moving down to every other week format and that's going to give me more time to promote each episode, lean into each episode a little more. And on that note, just a little word of encouragement, you know, quality over quantity.
00:01:10:00 - 00:01:38:12
John Azoni
Folks like you don't need to continually pepper the Internet with with a constant barrage of content. You know, take some time, just post less. You know, I'm in this group. It's like a cohort for content repurposing and it's called distribution First. It's a really cool content repurposing community. And the big thing is like do less, but just do more with the less stuff that you did.
00:01:38:21 - 00:02:02:13
John Azoni
You know, get more use out of less stuff. And that's kind of the running thread in that community. And we talk a lot about how to do that. So in that spirit, that's what I'm doing. I'm going to do half as much episodes on this podcast, but do more with each episode, repurpose more things like that. So you know, if you want to join me in doing that on your own content, you know what?
00:02:03:12 - 00:02:42:16
John Azoni
Don't post that reel today. It's fine. You know, you're going to be fine. Grab a coffee, enjoy the birds chirping. Enjoy the nice sunny weather. You're fine. We're all on this big rock called Earth. When you zoom out, none of this is that important. You know, we're just on a big spinning rock that's spinning around the sun. Life will go on with or without that LinkedIn post or that real or that Tik tok that you feel pressure to get up today.
00:02:43:23 - 00:03:09:17
John Azoni
So that's my word of encouragement for you. But the other thing I wanted to mention is live webinar coming up June 27th with Rob Clark. Rob is the main creator behind that tall family. A You know, it's gone viral many times. It's it's a he's been on this podcast earlier in the episode and he's been on a lot of other higher ed podcasts, too.
00:03:09:17 - 00:03:34:03
John Azoni
But he's got him and his family are just they're all very tall. And so they make like, you know, fun videos about being tall. But then they also do other like, you know, training sounds and stuff that you do and growing, you know, a TikTok reels, shorts kind of community. He's got 3.8 million followers across all the short form video channels, over 4 billion views.
00:03:34:22 - 00:04:13:05
John Azoni
And he works in higher ed. He works for Greenville University and so we're going to be talking about mastering the art of TikTok reels and shorts for higher ed specifically. So if you want to learn about that stuff, if you got questions, if you're maybe on the fence about getting into one of these platforms, how to do it, how to build systems around, how to do it, what kind of stuff to create, if you're just a little bit kind of in the weeds about how to implement this, this stuff for your school, this is the perf act way to get up to speed on that.
00:04:13:05 - 00:04:40:14
John Azoni
We're going to answer everyone's questions. We're going to give you a presentation about what's working, what's not working, how to get the most out of your content, all that stuff. And so and then also, you know, I like to go to webinars for is the chat you'll see me and a lot of higher ed webinars. And the main purpose I'm there is just to network with other people in the chat because I've built some really good relationships with people that I've just met in the chat at webinars and people are very open to connecting with one another.
00:04:40:14 - 00:05:00:00
John Azoni
It's a very communal kind of experience when you're all learning this thing together. So I would encourage you, if nothing else, just come for the chat, come hang out, come drop your LinkedIn profile link or wherever you want people to follow you out. You know, don't spam the chat, but come on, you know, let's get you some some new friends here.
00:05:00:23 - 00:05:31:01
John Azoni
Okay. So that's June 27th at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Central and Hope to see you there. You can register at crowd. Let me pull it up here on my crowdcast dot io slash c slash short form video. All one word that's crowdcast audio slash C slash short form video and I'll put the link to in the show notes.
00:05:31:09 - 00:05:53:07
John Azoni
All right. On with the episode. So I've been doing a lot of research for an upcoming presentation on what's working in higher ed video. So I'm freshly steeped in all of your videos. You know, assuming that you're listening, you represent college or university or something like that. I've watched a lot of your videos. There are a lot of great ones.
00:05:53:07 - 00:06:17:17
John Azoni
I'm very encouraged to see what some of these schools have been doing. And I've just spent days kind of just poring through different tiktoks and reels and long form YouTube videos and stuff like that. So, you know, kudos to a lot of colleges out there who are really being intentional about this stuff. I haven't given the presentation yet, so I won't spoil everything as far as what is getting a lot of organic reach.
00:06:17:17 - 00:06:49:16
John Azoni
But here's what I can tell you. What's not getting much organic love across the board, whether it's YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and both long and short formats is stuff that has no widespread benefit to anyone else, or at least that's really only relevant for a very small, specific audience like people at the very bottom of your funnel who might be more open to being directly influenced by a commercial or, you know, some sort of promotional piece of content or people who already attend your school or are alumni.
00:06:50:00 - 00:07:17:12
John Azoni
You know, the stuff that just isn't working is stuff that's just too niche for a certain type of person in your core sphere, whatever. So that event recap video, the president giving a random speech somewhere of that drone footage of your campus with poetic, scripted voiceover saying, you know, things like your journey starts here. You know, they were like this really soft voice, like your journey starts here.
00:07:17:20 - 00:07:51:16
John Azoni
Or sometimes it's like more thought. Your journey starts here. You know, that stuff isn't bad. It's just it's just not going to be the stuff that moves the needle in terms of organic reach and engagement. Because it's a commercial. People don't go on social video platforms to consume commercials, but we'll talk about some of the ways that type of content is good is fine, but I just wanted to kind of lay that groundwork of the really self-serving stuff just isn't moving the needle.
00:07:52:02 - 00:08:10:18
John Azoni
There are several points I want to make in this episode, and here they are. Number one, you will see growth when you start asking yourself, Who is this for? So that's number one, and we'll get more into that in a minute. And then number two is you will see growth if you treat your chosen platform like a business.
00:08:10:18 - 00:08:30:16
John Azoni
And we'll get into what I mean by that in a few minutes. But those are the two. I said several points I want to make. There's two points, but there's probably other points that will make in between the lines here. So let's dive into the who is this for? I saw a post recently in my LinkedIn newsfeed that really got me thinking about this.
00:08:30:16 - 00:08:55:04
John Azoni
It was someone that started their post with, quote, exciting news, unquote. And then it was three paragraphs or so about like how they got a new client. Like I had to read it again to figure out what was the news that I missed. Like, did I miss something? And then when I realized there was no exciting new or no news that I was excited about, I read it again to figure out where was it that they thought the exciting news was?
00:08:55:04 - 00:09:16:17
John Azoni
And then I found it. It was it was the we got a new client which made me go, okay, cool for you, but exciting for who you know. And not that this post was inherently bad. There's nothing wrong with wanting, you know, wanting people to share in your excitement about some professional achievement, especially on LinkedIn. I mean, that's where, you know, that's where that stuff makes sense.
00:09:17:07 - 00:09:45:20
John Azoni
But it just got me thinking about why it didn't excite me and how many organizations and institutions treat content marketing like this across the board. They regularly put out stuff that's exciting for them and they put a dramatic song underneath it or a poetic voiceover or something. And then, you know, they put some drone shots in there and then whatever they do to sort of dress it up as trying to come off as exciting for you.
00:09:46:10 - 00:10:13:16
John Azoni
It's like the fact that our school is great, isn't that so exciting? And it's like, I like going back to this LinkedIn post. If I'm not getting a percentage of the money from this new client or this wasn't a hire, this wasn't like a higher ed business, if I'm not getting a percentage of the money from this new client or if this new partnership that you've created isn't somehow benefiting me in some significant way, I'm not excited.
00:10:14:08 - 00:10:49:01
John Azoni
You got to think like, what does it take to get excited? Really? What does it take to get excited these days? Like it's funny, Like you send a you know, you send a funny reel or something to your spouse that's in the same room and they respond back with like the laugh you face, like three laughing face emojis, but you're watching them watch this the whole time in their face didn't even budge like they did, and they barely cracked a smile because it takes a lot to get excited or to genuinely laugh about something.
00:10:49:10 - 00:11:09:06
John Azoni
I mean, I'm I'm turning 40 this year. I don't take my birthday too seriously. My next door neighbor is the exact opposite. She's one of those like birthday week people. Her and her husband go go out to a new restaurant seven nights in a row on her birthday week. She's such a sweetheart. They're both really great. We love them as neighbors.
00:11:09:17 - 00:11:25:22
John Azoni
But it's you know, it's just more of an excuse to have a bunch of date nights and, like, kind of make it a thing that they look forward to as a married couple. So it's not like she's super stuck on her birthday and everyone has to celebrate her. You know, everyone knows someone like that. But but she gets excited for her birthday.
00:11:26:12 - 00:11:50:09
John Azoni
To me, my birthday is a slightly elevated good day. I'm a generally happy guy, usually in a decent mood. I'm not depressed or anything. It's not like I'm depressed. And that's why, like I'm getting older and my I like, I don't really get down about like getting older that much, you know, unless it's really starting to show I'm having some low back issues.
00:11:50:09 - 00:12:09:08
John Azoni
So in a practical sense, I do get down about it like that. But just because I turned another year, that doesn't really get me down. You know, it's usually just kind of like a whatever. It's a normal day for me. Some people tell me happy birthday on, you know, my Facebook and, you know, my in-laws text me and stuff like that.
00:12:09:08 - 00:12:28:17
John Azoni
And I get money from my parents and my in-laws and that's nice. I usually don't spend money on myself that much, so I usually buy something fun. But like by and large, it's another day on the calendar, except for turning 40, because I actually am a little bit excited about that. My wife and I are planning a trip, just the two of us, to go hiking or something, and we never really get to do that kind of thing.
00:12:28:17 - 00:12:53:17
John Azoni
Like go. I like sort of more adventurous vacations. And adventurous vacations are a little bit different When you have kids with you, it's it's a little harder. It becomes about the kids. So I am excited for me and Laura to just go hiking somewhere in the mountains and just talk and stuff because I love walking. I don't know if you love walking, I love going for walks around my neighborhood and just looking at stuff and it just is inspiring.
00:12:53:17 - 00:13:15:11
John Azoni
Gives me new ideas. Anyway, I'm getting off track, so back to the links in post. So from my perspective, I wouldn't even couch my 39th birthday in the exciting category. Like you're telling me that your news of getting a new client is more remarkable than my 39th birthday was? I mean, think about the last time you got, like, really genuinely excited.
00:13:15:11 - 00:13:38:14
John Azoni
It was probably because something benefited you dramatically. There was a spike of emotion that you felt. You booked a vacation, you got a raise, you got a promotion, you got called on stage on the price is Right and got to spin the wheel. You know the guy you have a crush on texted you back and and he used the red heart emoji, not the purple ones.
00:13:38:14 - 00:14:05:08
John Azoni
The purple one's for friends. Red is for more than friends. If you didn't know that, you should probably start implementing that knowledge. All of that is because your life suddenly experienced a spike of improvement. You know, you, the recipient of this information of the event, got a dopamine spike and I don't get the same dopamine spike about someone else's dopamine spike, you know, but let's be honest, there is a small group of people that would be excited by that type of news.
00:14:05:08 - 00:14:26:08
John Azoni
Your mom, your dad, your aunts, your uncles, your siblings, your close friends. All of those people are those the people that you want to excite, You know, maybe send them a text or posted on Facebook don't cause your audience to tune you out by failing to deliver on the expectations of excitement that you set with your piece of content.
00:14:26:22 - 00:14:43:13
John Azoni
Not that that's bad, but if that's kind of your regular approach to content, which in this case this person, this is not their regular approach. I just kind of zeroed in on this post and I was like, Why am I not excited? And why is this kind of irking me a little bit? But on LinkedIn I go to benefit me.
00:14:43:13 - 00:15:07:03
John Azoni
I go on there to make new connections that benefit my life or even to help someone else, and that has no real benefit to me. But because that makes me feel good that I made a difference for someone like I love that, you know, I like to give not just receive, but in a lot of ways it's like whether giving or receiving it benefits me because it it spikes my emotions.
00:15:07:03 - 00:15:27:18
John Azoni
It makes me feel good. And I go on to engage in thoughtful conversations and learn new insights about things that I care about. I collect things that I want to share in my newsletter with my audience, which, by the way, you should go sign up for unveiled TV slash newsletter, unveil this builder unveiled and then. But that's the stuff I go on LinkedIn for, right?
00:15:28:01 - 00:15:57:07
John Azoni
And according to a poll posted by Jamie Hunt, former CMO at Old Dominion University, she went out on her own, started a consulting company, so she's no longer there. Let me pull this up here. Okay. She posted a poll as of today, May 23rd is the day that I'm recording this. 254 people have voted on this poll. And the poll is what type of content do you most like to see others post on LinkedIn?
00:15:57:07 - 00:16:33:22
John Azoni
And the options were thoughts and insights, professional accomplishments, personal accomplishments and news about their employer. So 85% of the 254 votes shows thoughts and insights against stuff that benefits them, stuff that helps them grow. Number two, 12% was professional accomplishments. Number three with 2% was news about their employer and number four was personal accomplishments. Number as 1%. I don't even know maybe one person voted for that or something.
00:16:33:22 - 00:16:55:13
John Azoni
I don't know if you can get a 1% from zero people voting, but it's like very far down there. So personal and professional accomplishments are very low. 85% go on this platform to benefit themselves. So that's LinkedIn, right? You go over to YouTube. I want to talk a little bit about video. Now. You go over to YouTube and the pattern is the same.
00:16:55:13 - 00:17:22:20
John Azoni
The top performing YouTube content is stuff that benefits other people and more specifically, a broader range of other people, not just stuff that would be worth watching for your friends and family or someone who's already pretty invested in your school. In other words, it's not the commercials for your college. In fact, I had a really hard time finding a commercial campaign, you know, like a 32nd spot or something like that that had any significant organic reach behind it.
00:17:22:20 - 00:17:43:23
John Azoni
It's lots of paid views. I mean, you can find tons of college commercials that have like half a million views, and you might look at that on the surface and go, Wow, this is viral. But you look and it's comments are turned off or there's zero comments. And I believe that people turn off the comments so that you can't actually see that this has no engagement to it.
00:17:44:18 - 00:18:24:23
John Azoni
So that's all paid reach. People didn't watch it because it was interesting or relevant content. They watched it because you paid for it to show up in front of their faces just like you would on TV. Now commercials have their place. They're great. There's nothing wrong with them. But I couch those as something separate from content marketing and growing a YouTube channel or an Instagram channel and building a following of raving fans, or of following a prospective students who are really strongly considering your school commercials for TV, YouTube pre-roll ads, Facebook ads, All that stuff is a super important part of a well-rounded lead generation, you know, system.
00:18:24:23 - 00:18:44:11
John Azoni
And those are the times where you should talk about you like it makes sense. Like give me the features of benefits, Why should I care? How does this help me? What's the problem you're going to solve? Tell me point blank, A great example of this is I'm part of an accountability program that I pay for every month called commit action, and it's for entrepreneurs to set goals for themselves.
00:18:44:11 - 00:19:04:13
John Azoni
And they have a weekly call with an accountability coach. And you just set quarterly, yearly and then weekly goals, and then we're just making sure that we're hitting these. So like, I mean, this podcast, any of my content, so much of what I do would not be where it is today without this accountability. Coach I pay a lot of money per month for this.
00:19:04:13 - 00:19:24:10
John Azoni
And you know how I found them? A random Facebook ad that popped up in my newsfeed that was just like, boom, like, this is what we do. This is the problem we solve. This is how it's going to benefit you, you know? So like, it wasn't like some long blog article that got me. It was like I just happened to be looking.
00:19:24:10 - 00:19:41:10
John Azoni
In fact, the day before, I had written out goals like long term goals for myself and spent like a bunch of time thinking about where is it that I want to take unveiled? What is that that I want to be doing? And the next day I'm drinking my coffee at the breakfast table and I get fed this ad and I'm like, Let's go.
00:19:42:02 - 00:20:02:12
John Azoni
So commercials are great and they have their place, but content's different. A content strategy helps other people get better. You may say, Well, our school helps people get better, so we got to talk about it all over our YouTube page. No, your content is not the product. Your content is the bait to interest people in discovering your products.
00:20:02:12 - 00:20:30:15
John Azoni
So your content needs to make a light bulb go off in someone's head or spike their dopamine in some way, like maybe that's entertaining them or making them laugh, you know, leave them with something useful that they can remember or that's worth sharing with others. That's a good barometer. It's like, is this piece of content, this video, this Facebook post, this blog, is some reader going to come along and share this with their broad audience?
00:20:30:15 - 00:21:01:17
John Azoni
And that would be applicable to a lot of people in their audience. Like that's content that spreads. It's like that kind of stuff. It's like it's not just for this really, really niche, niche audience of someone that's like really ready to buy at your school or something like that. And that's you should have content for that. But I'm just saying like by and large, the stuff that's you know, there's a difference between like, what's a tool for getting to someone to convert and what's content at the top of the funnel that's going to really spread awareness of your school.
00:21:02:00 - 00:21:24:05
John Azoni
Both are important in your content strategy, but the growth, the social following growth happens more, I think at the top of the funnel where the content is relevant to a larger number of people than people that just already go to your school or are alumni or are really seriously looking at your college on their short list of colleges.
00:21:25:00 - 00:21:50:21
John Azoni
So should you never have any self-promoting content on your YouTube page or your Instagram page? No, but if that's your idea of a solid content strategy, you're missing the point. You're wasting a lot of people's. On your team's time in the school's budget. Now, here's another truth about YouTube. Let's just zero in on YouTube for a second. There are two types of people, people that treat YouTube with great intention, and they're actively doing things to encourage subscriber growth.
00:21:50:21 - 00:22:17:14
John Azoni
And then there are people who use YouTube as sort of a storage shelf for content they can access later to send to someone. And if maybe a stranger happens upon it in their search query, Cool. Truth be told, like, I'll be totally honest, I'm the second one. LinkedIn is where I give all my effort. I'm really intentional about LinkedIn because that makes the most sense for my business, but it might not make sense for your institution.
00:22:17:14 - 00:22:43:21
John Azoni
But everything else for me is secondary at least. Or at least it's a fun experiment. Like YouTube mostly is where I house episodes of this podcast and it's more of a tool for creating a link that I can share. It's like a housing, you know, hosting area where now I have a link that I can share and I can send this around and repurpose and whatever, but I'm not necessarily trying to obtain subscribers on YouTube.
00:22:43:21 - 00:23:12:14
John Azoni
I really don't even pay attention to my subscriber count that much. So I'm the second one or maybe it's like tick tock, tick tock. Right now I'm kind of experimenting with. On the higher ed storytelling university, Tik Tok starting to experiment with like using trending sounds and like getting away from just posting snippets from this podcast in like start, start to have fun with like, you know, using templates and using trending sounds and just like creating like funny, entertaining stuff that is relevant to a higher ed marketing audience.
00:23:13:00 - 00:23:30:15
John Azoni
But that's not like I'm not paying attention really to my TikTok growth. I do like to experiment, though, with like, Oh, did this resonate? Oh cool. That got more. Or maybe I'll do more like that. Like it's a fun experiment, but if you are the second type of person, like this certain platform is just kind of an afterthought for you.
00:23:30:15 - 00:23:49:23
John Azoni
Meaning like if you're the second type of person on all platforms, like every platform is sort of a half hearted lobbing of content over the fence. Then I would argue you don't have a content strategy and maybe you don't even need one. You know, does everyone have to make tiktoks and reels every day to be successful?
00:23:50:14 - 00:24:19:23
John Azoni
You know? Do you have to post blogs all the time? Do you have to keep up with x slash Twitter and or threads or whatever it is and just keep jamming content down people's throat every day? No, if you don't like doing that or if it's just not how you attract people to your school, then keep lobbing stuff over the fence as as long as it's low effort, you know, like I like to think about certain acts of content creation as a slot machine, very low effort to pull that lever.
00:24:20:17 - 00:24:43:07
John Azoni
But it's a lever that you can pull repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, because it's maybe like an output of a system. You know, a content system or something like for me, it's snippets from this podcast. They'll go up on TikTok, YouTube shorts, reels, and it's just a lever that I pull. It's just part of our workflow with my team. And if one hits, cool, awesome.
00:24:43:23 - 00:24:59:13
John Azoni
But that's not really the point. So that's kind of like this slot me and machine approach and that's fine. Like there are going to be things in your content workflow that are just like a slot machine. Like we're not we're don't care so much about this, but we're just going to keep pulling this lever and if something hits, cool.
00:24:59:13 - 00:25:14:03
John Azoni
And then maybe, maybe if something really hits will pay more attention to that. But you know, but if as long as it's low effort, it's like it's someone get something out of it, cool or otherwise it's a tool for housing videos or blog articles that that I can link to when I want to directly send to another person.
00:25:14:03 - 00:25:37:10
John Azoni
But, you know, that's fine. But the colleges and universities that have, you know, like like 75,000 followers or subscribers and end up tend to take a different approach and be more like the first type of person that I mentioned. They're actively thinking what is resonating and how can we do more of that. And this is how you treat a content creation platform like a business.
00:25:38:03 - 00:26:07:08
John Azoni
Some businesses start up catch fire, a market for their products just appears. People just start buying it and then they kind of figure it out after the fact who their buyers are, and they just take off and ride off into the sunset of success. And if you buy that person's course on how to start a, you know, six figure business in three months and 30 X year growth and whatever, they'll tell you that if you follow the steps that they followed, you'll succeed.
00:26:08:03 - 00:26:32:08
John Azoni
What they won't acknowledge is how much of that is luck. In the same way, some people can lob a video over the fence or a tweet or blog post and it goes viral. And there are a superstar influencer now, and that's mostly luck. There's a really good book that I'm reading right now called Fooled by Randomness, and I don't have the book on me to tell you.
00:26:32:08 - 00:27:03:20
John Azoni
The author, Oh, here it is, Fooled by Randomness, the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets. I'm going to I don't know if this is pronouncing his name right. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Sorry, Nassim Nassim, if I pronounce your name wrong. But I love you. You wrote a good book. So the whole book is just about like the role of chance, you know, in like, the people that think that they had everything to do with the success because they follow these certain steps.
00:27:04:04 - 00:27:36:04
John Azoni
This book looks at what actually was just a roll of the dice here. Anyway. Tangent All right. But back to the point here. Most businesses are not like that. They're not instant overnight successes. There are daily grinds and constant small bits of improvement that add up over time, you know, paying attention to what your customer wants, what they need to hear, what motivates them, where are they in the buying process, what do they need at that time in order to move closer to a purchase decision?
00:27:36:11 - 00:28:10:21
John Azoni
You make small improvements over time. You build systems to make processes easier. That's what business is like for 99% of entrepreneurs, and that's how you should be treating social media and content platforms. It's all customer centric. So if there's a platform you want to be really serious about, you got to stop treating it like a brochure for your college and start to experiment with content that benefits your audience and causes them to spread that content even further.
00:28:11:08 - 00:28:39:19
John Azoni
Intriguing lectures on niche topics, answering people's curiosity about a particular question, making information or research entertaining, telling stories. Actually good, compelling stories told in a remarkable way. I'm not talking about the stuff that you couch is stories that are just some student on camera saying, I always wanted to be engineer, and I went to this engineer college and it was great.
00:28:39:19 - 00:29:23:02
John Azoni
Five stars would recommend and then boom, the URL to enroll or something like that. That's not a story I'm talking about, actually. Good, compelling narratives told in a remarkable way. Now, here's a little just a free piece of advice here. Let's look at these intriguing lectures. They don't even have to be that interesting. You'd be surprised how many the you know, in my research I'm doing for this presentation, there's a lot of really boring lectures that are like an hour and a half long that have like half a million views and tons of like a thousand comments and tons of likes and stuff like that.
00:29:23:10 - 00:29:48:23
John Azoni
And that's because it's a niche lecture, sharing some research or something remarkable with a niche community. And that's great. You know, it's not just about creating stuff that like everyone would like. That's definitely like not what I'm trying to say here, but there's a large population is people that are interested in I know nothing about engineering, but we'll just keep rolling with this example, some sort of specific type of engineering technique.
00:29:50:12 - 00:30:18:09
John Azoni
And here's some new findings on how to be successful with that technique. You know, there's gonna be a lot of people that are really interested in that, and then they're going to associate, you know, your brand with that knowledge. So, yeah, I mean, just, just to tell you, like it doesn't have to be tons of animation all over the place and stuff like that, like point a camera at something interesting, like someone saying something that is going to be novel information for a certain group of people that you're trying to target.
00:30:18:09 - 00:30:50:20
John Azoni
So anyway, ask yourself when you're planning this content, who is this for and is this actually delivering on my promise? Is this largely a commercial for us, or is it actually exciting or beneficial for anyone besides a very small group of people like your personal family and friends or people who already went to the school? They're going to be like, Yeah, I love my alma mater, You know, is this actually exciting or beneficial to the people that you are trying to attract?
00:30:51:08 - 00:31:10:11
John Azoni
Are you trying to attract pats on the back from alumni? I think you'll do that. But if you're trying to attract prospective students, that message that's going to result in pats on the back from alumni is not going to resonate because they are not in the same position in life. They haven't experienced your school, they have different set of questions and needs.
00:31:11:00 - 00:31:42:16
John Azoni
So is it exciting really? Is it actually exciting or are you just excited? Content marketing is not the place to, on a regular basis, go. Here's what we're doing, here's what we accomplished, here's why we're great. Do that sometimes. Sure. Like maybe 20% of the time. I definitely think like one of the things that I struggle with as a business owner is like I put out a lot of content and one of the things I work with my accountability coach, is like at some point you actually do have to tell people what they can buy from you.
00:31:42:22 - 00:32:03:04
John Azoni
It's like, I just get like in this habit of thinking about I love creating content and so I just create all this content, content, content. And then, you know, every few weeks I have to sort of like tether myself to like, okay, I should, I should like posted link in post. That's like, here's talking about a subscription, you know, model that you know of storytelling that we do for colleges.
00:32:03:17 - 00:32:26:07
John Azoni
So you do have to do that sometimes you do have to talk about yourself. Otherwise, you know, it's the content isn't benefiting your bottom line of your institution, you know, of getting butts in classrooms, then it probably isn't the best use of your budget, you know, But so sell your institution, but your content on a whole should be largely focused on what's going to benefit the students you're trying to attract.
00:32:26:14 - 00:32:47:08
John Azoni
And if your answer to that is, well, this program will benefit them, you're going about it wrong. So that's kind of my brain dump of thoughts around what colleges should be thinking more realistically about in their content strategy. I think we hear this token advice of know your audience or speak to your audience. You hear that a lot, blah, blah.
00:32:48:06 - 00:33:11:20
John Azoni
And it's good advice, right? But it's not always clear what that actually looks like in a content marketing context. Do they want to be entertained? Do they want to be informed? You know, should I tell them about our cool new program? Yes, to all of that. But you got to experiment to find the right mix to double down on the content that is hitting with your audience and do more of that and do that better and better and better.
00:33:12:06 - 00:33:53:23
John Azoni
And then also to balance that with talking about yourself or your school, but be realistic. Understand that most people aren't excited about the things that you're excited about. Understand that most people just don't care, aren't thinking about your school, aren't going out of their way to find out about your school, to consume content from your school, what you're doing, what haven't you just had, you know, the scripted little address to the camera that your president is reading off a teleprompter that's written to try to sound inspiring, like when you realize that most people just don't give a crap about that stuff, it forces you to find the leverage points where your time spent making content
00:33:54:08 - 00:34:40:23
John Azoni
is actually creating observable growth. So that's all I have for you today, see, in a couple of weeks. But next up, in a couple of weeks on the podcast, we have Dr. Sina Howard. She wrote a book called Academic Branding A Step by Step Guide to Increased Visibility, Authority and Income, and she is the founder of Power. Your research, a academic branding company that works with tenured professors and PhDs to help them get their research out there, build a following get it should specifically teach you how to build, how to get it, how to land a TED Talk, how to monetize your community, how to get more eyeballs on your school through your, you know,
00:34:40:23 - 00:35:08:18
John Azoni
the professors, you know, talks and content and stuff like that. So it's going to be a really great episode. We're going to really going to gear it towards marketing directors and CMO's that really want to use professors as a point of leverage for content growth and helps them because when you help them build a following, you're going to see a return on people wanting to enroll at your school and talking about your school in a positive way and things like that.
00:35:08:18 - 00:35:15:06
John Azoni
So come back in a couple of weeks and check that out. But until then, see you later. Thanks.
