In the next 15 minutes, we’re going to talk to the dead to determine exactly why your content isn’t working and how to fix it.
Why Your Content Might Be For Ghosts
I might be getting ready for Halloween a little too early, but this is called the Ghost Test. The Ghost Test is going to help you diagnose what’s wrong with your feed, with your social content, with your YouTube, any sort of content, written content, if you’re blogging or doing anything like that. This will apply to anything that you’re doing.
The desired outcome is that you’re doing something that someone is going to want to consume because it adds value to what they’re doing. It’s useful to them.
But what’s the opposite of someone wanting to consume it? It’s for no one. It’s for a ghost.
Quality Over Consistency
Which is really unfortunate because we’re very big on consistency. If you’ve listened to this podcast or if you’re new here, welcome to the cult. But we’re so big on being very consistent with your content. But that cannot come before the quality of the content.
So if you’re just posting to stay consistent and you’re posting really bad content, that’s not okay. And that’s a really bad strategy.
And by bad, it isn’t that the video quality is poor, that the audio quality is poor. It’s that the actual substance has no purpose. The substance of the content is purposeless. It’s not for anyone. It is for the ghosts.
The Real Estate Example
So something that could qualify for that, let’s say—we work with a lot of realtors. We fly all over the country to film with realtors in their market. Something that a lot of realtors post are just “sold” or “for sale.” And that’s fine because that is your outlet.
But if that’s the only content that you’re posting, nobody cares. You need to look at the actual value that you’re bringing to someone. So if somebody’s scrolling through their feed and they see this, what do you want that reaction to be?
Besides “I want to buy this house,” which let’s be honest, how many people actually want to do that? Especially when you get higher up in price point, it’s very few. I’m not scrolling through feeds and being like “Wow, I should go look at that house.”
We’re building brand. So as a realtor, for example, you’re trying to build a brand that people think about you when you’re not around and when they say “I need a realtor.” Or their neighbor says “Do you know a realtor?” You want to fulfill that in their mind.
Brand is what people think and say about you when you’re not around. So if someone is thinking about you and it’s like “Oh, there’s that person. They just post a lot of photos of houses that they sold.” Nobody’s thinking about that. That’s not even a thing.
Making House Posts Better
Now this is just a very simple answer to that. But if you really want to post houses that have been sold, how about you create a story about the couple or person who bought it or family or whatever it is?
Suddenly that has value to at least someone. If no one else, it has value to the person or people who bought it because it makes them feel good that you highlighted them.
Or even if you do have a house for sale, make it exciting and interesting. “You’re never going to guess what’s in the basement of this house. It is so weird.” And it could just be two fireplaces or something. But if you pizzazz it up a little bit, nobody’s going to get mad if you do.
And even if they do, that’s perfect because they’ll comment and then that boosts your post up and then they’ll share it and be like “Look what this idiot realtor posted. Look how scary this is.” Or whatever. That’s perfect.
That’s exactly what you want—you want people sharing and saving your videos. That’s the most important thing that you can be doing right now is making content that people want to share or save.
And by people, we mean not ghosts—the living.
The AI Problem
It’s so hard to make content that why would you even waste your time making things that are for no one? It has no purpose. It adds nothing to your brand and your feed when literally you don’t even know what you posted because ChatGPT wrote it and you copied and pasted it.
It leads with “of course I can help you with that” and then it closes with “let me know if you want any changes” and your post says that. That is something that happens and it happens a lot on social media now on all platforms because people aren’t using their brain to then get assistance from AI. They’re offloading their brain to AI, which is a huge difference.
Personal Content vs. Generic Content
And if it’s not even content that is something about you—if you want to share your family, that’s still not my personal favorite type of content to consume. But if it’s between shitty Canva graphics and ChatGPT or photos of you and your family, 100 million percent photos of your family.
Because at least there’s something in there for you. You feel good posting it and you get something out of it. Whether or not I do, that’s neither here nor there because it’s not really for me. It’s for you or your friends or your family or whatever to see.
So I would much rather prefer that versus “just sold” without any sort of substance or anything to it.
Even though that wouldn’t necessarily be for someone else, it does add to the brand—who you are. So I don’t get a “wow.” I get “oh cute. They’re together. Fun.”
What We’ve Been Up To
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The Pomodoro Timer Discovery
So we use a Pomodoro timer for when we work. And basically what that is—you can do different sets of time, but we do 25 minutes of work time and then five minutes break time. We have an app on our phones and it’s really great. It’s Focus Keeper, I think is the name of it.
What I’ve realized is on my five-minute breaks, what I want to do is do a little workout, jump on our little trampoline that we have in the house or do a couple minutes of squats, go outside and ground, get some sunlight, whatever.
I realized though, the first thing I was doing was going to grab my phone because my timer was on my phone. And I want to spend zero minutes on my phone every day because I feel so much better not being on my phone, not being on social media.
If you don’t hear from me, that’s pretty typical because my phone is in the other room away from me because I don’t want to be on it.
The Focus Technique
Just to clarify, the Pomodoro technique is a technique for focus. So we want deep work. We don’t want shallow work. What it is is 25 minutes of work, 5-minute break, 25 minutes of work, 5-minute break. And I think that’s four cycles. And then after four cycles, you take a 25-minute break.
The effectiveness of that technique is amazing. It is so effective because we all know that we can be doing something but not really doing it at a certain point. We are just sort of moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic. We’re not actually moving forward and improving anything. We’re just shifting stuff around because we lost our ability for focus.
Having time away—much like someone—I wish I remember who now—there was an author from—I want to say Hemingway. I think it was Hemingway who would write and always stop mid-sentence to go to sleep because then they knew that while they were asleep, their subconscious lizard brain was going to solve the next thing that needed to be solved.
So they’d wake up refreshed, not even thinking about it. They’d be excited to get back to their chair to write first thing in the morning. And they didn’t have to worry about “okay, now where was I? What am I doing?” It’s like “oh, I literally did not finish this thought yet. I know exactly where I was.”
And you have that kind of feeling when you come back from a five-minute break. You see everything through a new lens.
The Opposite Problem
And I have the opposite problem where I’ll work for 17 hours straight and not move. And that’s a problem. So I need to actually get up. Even if I’m standing at my standing desk, I’ll just stand there for hours. So I need to actually walk and move around a little bit.
My focus never wavers. But you can get in the weeds on something that you suddenly realize “oh wait, why was I spending so much time on this?” You take five minutes away and then you can be like “Oh, I just need to do this, this, and this and I’m done there.” But I just spent 90 minutes working on it and it was 5 minutes more of work.
Physical Timer Benefits
The timer though has been amazing to use in person instead of on my phone. Our physical timer. Because I’m not tempted to be on my phone. And I don’t know, it’s just been very rejuvenating and I can just let my mind wander in my little break time instead of just being like “Oh, let me see how my post is doing.”
Let me not—let me take a break. “Oh, that means I should answer all these text messages.” Or all these DMs. I have a ton of DMs to answer, but I’m like “I’ll get to that when I get to it.” You’re asking for my time. I will get to that on my time.
Tomorrow’s Adventure
And we have so much going on right now. Tomorrow we have a first for us. We are round-tripping a Top Banana flight. We are flying out in the morning, filming, flying home at night for a very specific client project that isn’t like the normal Top Banana stuff.
We normally fly out, film for two days, fly home. This is a one-off special thing that they needed. So we’re doing that. And that’s going to be a little adventure for us. It’s going to be so random. And she’s going to pick us up from the airport. So it’s cute.
Our Top Bananas are our clients. Our Top Bananas are who we film with all over the country.
If you want to learn more about being a Top Banana, go to whatismaven.com or subscribe to our newsletter. And you can scroll down and in the Top Banana section you can just click a little contact link which now you can actually contact us to talk about it. That’s part of the stuff we’ve been doing. Just those little things that sit on your to-do list forever.
Because people could always reach us, but DMs get a little lost because there’s a lot. And especially now that we have multiple platforms and not just our personal, building our local platform, too, that is growing so fast, tremendously. I need to show you the growth because I track it every single week, which I should have been doing for everybody else we work with, but I digress.
How to Do Your Own Ghost Test
So the Ghost Test—you know what it is, but now actually practically what is it? What are the steps someone takes to perform a Ghost Test on their own content?
The Three-Question Test
Pick your profile of choice. That could be Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts. I feel like Instagram or TikTok are probably the main two that people would choose. I don’t think they’d be like Facebook reels. But whatever your main profile is, look at your last 10 posts that you’ve posted.
I want you to ask yourself three questions:
- Would someone save this post?
- Would someone share this with a friend?
- Would someone comment with more than an emoji?
If that post doesn’t get at least one of those, it’s ghost content.
And it’s not that it had to have received that, but you need to be very real with yourself. You need to look at this and say “would I, if I wasn’t me, is there any reason to share this with someone? Is there any reason to comment?”
The B-Roll Problem
Is this difficult to consume? You either hooked us instantly with whatever it is so we have a reason to stay around, or this is going to be ghost content.
Or is it one of those B-roll videos where it’s you driving in your car and then it says “how to save $75 million” below in the caption and it’s a novel in your description? That is so bad because you’re making someone work so incredibly hard instead of you doing the work ahead of time.
“Okay, I just synthesized this entire novel of text that I had and this is the only thing that you need to know.” That is such a great hook where I’d be like “oh thank you, I feel taken care of” instead of “you do the work.” That is incredibly lazy.
You’re giving them work to do, but the part that you didn’t say was work that they will never do. Nobody is reading, is engaging, is doing whatever it is that you want them to do unless you give them a reason to want to do it.
The Hook Formula
We have a template for our hooks. It always works. We can use it over and over and over again. Obviously, we have a lot of different permutations, but there’s one that we always go back to because contrast is one of the hooks.
Basically, you want to give someone interest. There’s various ways you can do it, but you set something up where someone is like “Yes, that’s me.”
If we apply the brand opener to everything and we’re like our only customer that we’re seeking is realtors, we can start and maybe we will start every video “Hey realtors”—so quick, so snappy. But then that’s someone that then they can say “oh yeah, that’s for me.”
Now the next thing is why would they want to stick around? And then that’s where your hook goes. So it’s very simple. Very, very simple. Not easy. And that’s a really important distinction.
Better Content Tactics
Remember, tactics make up a strategy. A strategy is everything together, your entire machine, which we’ll have more about that soon, which is very exciting. But the tactics are basically just the things that work right now that will be part of your strategy.
Personal Stories with Lessons
Some tactics that you could choose to do would be personal stories with a lesson, but making it obviously engaging for somebody to watch and participate in so that it’s not just “me me.” Nobody cares.
And value again—useful 100%. Specific actionable advice, not generic tips.
The amount of similar advice I see people give means that they’re using ChatGPT to tell them what they already know about their profession. That is so silly. Especially as people who have 10, 20, 30, 40 years of experience in these fields and they’re having AI tell them what they know more about and they have more personal stories.
It’s silly to be using the AI when you already have that knowledge in you.
Skip the AI, Use Your Brain
How would you do it otherwise versus using ChatGPT? I would sit down, get rid of all my electronics, take an old piece of paper, if you remember what that is, and then take a pen and write down one thing, whatever you want to post about where you would go to ChatGPT and be like “can you give me three whatevers about whatever?”
Like “can you give me three tips for new home buyers?” You sit there, you think about the last first-time home buyer you worked with, and you write out “Okay, well, it was Bobby and Susie and they had this question. So now, how can I turn that into a piece of content?”
And you sit there for 10 minutes instead of 10 seconds like with ChatGPT. It’s not going to kill you. And you write out a little story of what happened, what question they had, how you helped solve it for them.
Because that’s the thing that you will never get from AI. You won’t get that same personal story. ChatGPT can write you a personal story, but it won’t have the same feeling. And I’m sorry, but none of y’all are good enough actors where it feels like it’s actually a real story.
So you want to just have it be a real story that you’ve already experienced because also every transaction, specifically for realtors, is going to be different from each other. So what happened in yours and how did you solve that problem? Or maybe it just didn’t go well, but now you know for the future. “Okay, this didn’t work out, but in the future, I’m going to change it a little bit.”
The Power of “But”
And that’s the important part. “Therefore” and “but”—a story requires “therefore.” But, although, it requires contrast. Not “then, and then and then.” That’s not a story, that’s a list.
So it’s not “I worked with Bobby and Susie and then we went to the closing table and then…” It’s “we worked with Bobby and Susie and despite being at the closing table, we didn’t expect this. But when that happened, what we did instead was this.”
That’s a story that is so much more engaging because I’m like “what happened?” And “how do I avoid that?” Even though I’m never probably buying a house ever. But it’s something where I’d be like “I never want to have to go through that.”
We all love cautionary tales. That’s why mythology exists because it was an explanation for “here’s what happens. Make sure you don’t eat those berries because then you’re going to turn into a leprechaun.”
Storytelling on Social Media
There are people who are phenomenal storytellers and can’t tell a story to save their lives on social media. That could be you listening right now and that is completely fair. But it is important to understand and be like “I recorded this and this is not how I would have told my friend.”
You want to be telling your friends. We like to tell our friends to pretend like you’re telling Amara this story. She’s the camera. Don’t think “how is this going to play on camera.” Just be like “I want to tell this story.”
There will be contrast. There will be “but,” “therefore.” It will be moving along. I don’t just have a bulleted list I’m going through to recite because nobody cares about that.
And mind you, that is a very difficult skill. So don’t be—I still can’t quite get the hang of it. I can’t do the whole—I’m trying to get much better with the storytelling thing. And we’ve been doing this for years now.
So don’t be upset if it’s something that doesn’t come immediately to you because this takes a ton of practice. It’s not going to come with five videos, 10 videos, even a hundred videos. It’s not really going to be quite there yet. But if you keep doing it, you can get there.
Think how much better you’ll be at video 100 than you are at video one. And the only difference between video one and 100 is that you started and you kept going.
Keep going.
With that, I think we’ll wrap. If you like this episode, be sure to screenshot, take a photo, just post something about this podcast because it’s the only way it’ll grow.