Starting your own business can be exciting, however, with limited resources and budget, it can be difficult to scale. Shockingly, around 48 per cent of all new Australian business start-ups fail within the first four years, and just 77 per cent make it to their first anniversary.
I have been through it all, starting with my first business Cup 49 in 2019, one of Australia’s first-ever DIY bubble tea kits to enjoy at home. I replicated my winning strategy with my second business Gellae in 2022, a beauty brand that offers DIY gel nails in sticker form so that everyone can enjoy beautiful nails at home, for a fraction of the cost.
After almost five years of growing my skills and knowledge as an entrepreneur, I have scaled both businesses to seven figures and I can safely assure you the most potent factor that helped achieve these milestones was content creation, specifically short-form content creation. Videos, between five to sixty seconds that are favoured by TikTok, Instagram and Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts, are game-changers in capturing virality and reaching global audiences.
Signs that you may need to start content creation
- When you have limited marketing budget (or none).
- When your business has a small or one-man operation.
In our early days of starting Cup 49 with a smaller operation, our marketing budget was non-existent. Yet, I knew that my bubble tea kits had incredible potential. So, I took what I knew and filmed myself talking to a camera about our products.
We tried a variety of content ideas focusing on differing pain points that our customers had. As a result, we were able to engineer our content strategy to success. Creating and posting consistently meant that we were well-versed with how each platform worked. Our content kept showing up on social media, ultimately building the foundations of an engaged community that love our products and can recognise us from a mile away.
Here’s why a business of any size should get into content creation
Short-form video content offers a multitude of benefits, including increased brand visibility through its ability to swiftly capture attention in the digital landscape. Gen Z’s social media habits have significantly changed consumer behaviour with 98 per cent of Gen Z using social media, especially TikTok, to research products online before purchasing. Additionally, content creation is recyclable, so you can repurpose what you have created across your platforms (significantly reducing workload and the pressure of generating new content ideas).
As paid ad costs rise (Facebook by 89 per cent and TikTok by 92 per cent) short-form content creation emerges as a cost-effective alternative for businesses, especially amidst the complexity of traditional advertising campaigns.
My top tips on getting into content creation:
All you need is a phone with a decent camera, and a few hours a week!
- Prioritising value: create content that your audience will be interested in! Provide videos that are both entertaining and informative without coming across as “sales-y”.
- Consistent testing and feedback: try exploring differing concepts, video formats like hooks, captions, and more. Use your audience’s feedback (comments, likes, reshares and saves) to refine your content strategy.
- Content pillars: establishing a maximum of three content pillars builds consistency and familiarity with your audience on delivering what your audience wants.
- Engagement strategies: use features like responding to comments, trending audios and attention-grabbing hooks within the first few seconds of your videos to capture your audience’s interest.
- Optimised video length: the shorter, the better, because that means higher retention rate and watched full video rate. Try and aim for less than 40 seconds.
