How to Squeeze the Lemon with Your Juicy Online Content
What can you do with a plain old lemon?
The other week I was hosting a juicy (see what I did there?) Zoom masterclass about creating content and squeezing as much value as you possibly can out of it for; remote masterclasses, speeches and coaching sessions. The audience were coaches from all over the world from the AC (Association for Coaching). They showered me with their hundreds of ripe responses to this question…
What can you do with a tangy lemon?
….it makes my mouth water just thinking of it…can you add to the list?
This is a small slice of the zesty answers …. guess what comes out on top?
You’ve guessed right G&T!
Amanda, Stuart, Mari & Dee - G&T with ice and a slice (love the fact gin came in top!)
Olwyn, Anne & Peter - lemon drizzle cake
Emma & Petra – bleach your hair when you’re a teenager (LOL, this option is clearly out for the over 19s)
Brigid - Fling it at my husband
Peter – Cheesecake or throw it at someone
Claire & Brigid - lemonade
Hetti - lemon Juice
Katherine - Sour Cream
Jan - Grow it
Lesa – Lemon zest spaghetti (Nigella recipe!)
Anne – Lemon mousse, suck it, clean with it, freeze it
Could you add to the juicy list? Please do comment below or drop me a message, I’d love to gather at least 101 things to do with the sour fruit.
I’m already thinking; lemon souffle and our New Year’s Eve speciality ‘lemon naughty pots’ you might know them as “Lemon Possets” (my friend, Gordon’s favourite).
The learning point here is, if you put your mind to it you can think of many things do with a simple yellow lemon.
When it comes to content or a content chunk, there are also many ways you can slice, dice, squeeze and cook your articles, stories, lessons and posts.
As a former BBC producer, creating fresh content every day is in my blood. Recently I did the maths (math in the US!) and can you believe I’ve produced more than 12,500 hours of live programming across my broadcasting career? So, content churn is something I do instinctively.
Now, more than ever before on our virtual world, it’s fruity, juicy, ripe and ready for picking content that your audience needs. So the question is….
Do you have some juicy content chunks ready to be squeezed into lots of things?
Maybe you have a career success story where you won over a difficult client, or you have an achievement like the moment you became VP. Or perhaps you have presented recently online. It might be something more technical like…
“Three Ways the Internal Audit Committee Could be More Effective Post COVID-19”
Now, this could be a lovely big lemon, an article on LinkedIn maybe? Or how about a short post on social media? Perhaps you could create a short video clip or interview for your internal Exec Committee meeting on this subject?
When you put your mind to it, you have lots of content up your sleeve, in your bottom draw, archived in files or just sitting there on a hard drive waiting to be made into lemonade. You could be using this content in so many more ways. You could be maximising and optimising your existing content.
How?
I remember a few years back, my brilliant business coach Kim Duke shared this pearl of juicy wisdom with me….
“You gotta squeeze the lemon Esther, you gotta squeeze every little drop out of your content”
What she meant was this….use, re-use, re-version, re-write and post on many platforms.
At first, I found it tricky to re-use and re-version my content into bite-sized chunks of tasty bits. Often, I found myself re-writing everything from scratch and re-inventing the wheel on a daily basis from blogs, chapters in my book and newsletters to website copy and presentation slides.
Once you get the hang of squeezing the lemon, you’ll love the efficiency of it.
You’ll also realise that when it comes to making an impact in your career, online, in remote conference calls, on video or in our virtual world of streamed town hall meetings – your lemon squeezing will come in very handy.
Your content, (your lemon) needs to be made into lots and lots of tasty dishes..
A story chunk could become a;
- blog
- press article
- speech segment
- section in your remote masterclass or webinar
- guest column in your industry magazine
- presentation or pitch deck section
- LinkedIn post or article
- social media post
- anecdote at a networking event
- story in your panel interview
- chapter in your next book
- podcast
- video clip on Youtube or in the media
- TV interview
- Q&A material
You can add to this list …we haven’t even scratched the surface!
Let’s look at an example of one of my own content chunks…to see if I have really taken Kim’s advice and squeezed the hell out of a lemon!
Take my tip about Barak Obama’s ‘View and Spew’ method when it comes to handling a script…
Here’s the original blog…
It also appears in Chapter 14 of my award winning book Goodbye Glossophobia – banish your fear of public speaking (thank you to Patrick from LMPP studio who designed the images)
Look, here’s another use of the content on my AC remote masterclass slide…
This angle about whether to use a script or not, also appears here, in another blog on my website and you’ll find it if you scroll to the right on my Linkedin profile featured section here.
I’ve spoken about Obama’s view and spew method in keynote speeches, at the BBC, on radio and TV, in podcasts, at networking events, in pitches and come to think of it, all over social media.
This is just one if my chunks of content, but it’s been shared and re-versioned many times to keep it zesty fresh with an extra twist.
By the way, Obama’s method of dealing with a script and looking natural when reading an autocue is VERY useful. Have you read about it? LOL.
If you want me to help you create juicy content chunks, I’m pretty good at it.
I can help you and your team brainstorm brilliant ideas, successes, past failures and learning points or you may want to bring your company journey to life. That’s what I do, no matter what the subject. From VAT to internal audit issues, I help teams come up with content and stories with a fresh and zesty twist. Let’s chat over a virtual lemon tea.