What is Shortcut Content’s Story?
This podcast audio served as the source for the blog post “Shortcut Content: Who? What? Why?”
The transcript was rewritten to produce the blog post, which is the cornerstone of the Shortcut Content system.
Shayla: Thank you for joining us today for the Shortcut Content Podcast. I’m talking with Dave Young who is the founder of Shortcut Content. And, Dave, I just want to learn a little bit more about you, about Shortcut Content and what you’re all about?
Dave: I’ve said many times, we started this company and one of my Wizard of Ads partners, Paul Boomer, was involved in the founding of Shortcut Blogging, at the time, and Paul decided a year or two ago to go another direction and we’re still great friends, talked to him yesterday. Anyway, we decided that we would start this little boutique, content production company. We’re not a full service content marketing agency, at least not at the time being, but what we had were advertising clients, we’re both ad consultants, and we had these advertising clients who we knew they needed to be blogging, they needed to be creating content for social media, for their website, and a whole host of other things that everybody ought to be creating content for, but we couldn’t get them to do it, and we couldn’t write it for them. I think one of the biggest challenges people have is they think somebody can just step in and write content for them, write blog posts and that kind of thing, and it’s not the easiest thing to do when you’re really trying to fill in for an expert.
And that was the situation that we were facing, and what we stumbled on was the idea that, hey, if we know the topic that we want them to write about, and we know that they’re an expert at it, so they’re going to have to do is talk about it. So we decided to start recording them. And it ended up working out really well. And we turned it into a system that we can use for just about anybody that’s an expert. I’ve said it before, if you’re not an expert at what you do and for the content that we’re going to help you record, this process won’t work, because you’re going to have to think on your feet, you’re going to have to answer questions on the fly, and that’s actually pretty easy for an expert to do. I mean, if you’ve ever sat down and talked to a scientist or a doctor, or even your family physician, they’re used to explaining things to their patients, it’s called bedside manner, they’re used to explaining things to their patients in terms that their patients can understand. You might have a very complicated illness or an injury. But the doctor, if they’re good at what they do, and they’re an expert, they’re able to explain it to you in terms that you understand, have some empathy toward you and actually communicate what’s going on with you in a way that you understand.
And so if you’re an expert, we can use an interview or just a conversational process, which is what we’re doing right now to create this content. So that’s a long story to tell you about how we got started in this, but what we’ve found is that we’ve been able to do this for people that were writing books, for people that just wanted to communicate their cause, we’ve helped people who were recording video at one of our client locations, and we can always install more. It’s an area that we’re really trying to grow and get the technical details fine tuned. But long story short, that’s how Shortcut Content came about and why we started it.
Shayla: What I’m really curious about, Dave, why do you think our customers are so drawn to this method, as opposed to hiring out a firm or someone else to create the content for them? What do you think value is in using your own stories?
Dave: So to me the value in using your own stories for the content, as opposed to hiring a writer and having them go out and do research is if you’re the expert, if you’re the business owner, if you’re the scientist, if you’re the founder of the company, you’re the one that knows the stories, you’re the one that lived the experiences, and we would much rather hear about your experience from you than we would reading about it second or third-hand from some other source. Something that pops into mind right away is Buzz Aldrin is still alive. He’s the second guy to walk on the moon. Now would you rather hear me tell you what Buzz Aldrin says about walking on the moon and maybe read some quotes from Neil Armstrong or would you rather have Buzz standing right here answering your questions and having a conversation with you, and hearing about it in his words, from his experience? He’s the guy that lived it, he’s the guy that was there, and that’s why I think people like this system is that, as opposed to a ghost writer, even, that’s going to try to put it in your words, we’re actually pulling your words out of your mouth, and turning them into content that we can use in other ways.
Shayla: Alright, if someone wants to figure out more and learn more about this directly from you, how do they get a hold of you?
Dave: We’re pretty easy to find at ShortcutContent.com. I put my phone number on there. That rings straight through to me. We’ve got a contact form on our site. And one of the things that we take a lot of pride in is that we have an exercise that will actually help you figure out the topics that you are prepared to talk about, that you know inside and out, and that you would have great stories to share about, and it’s an outline exercise that will take you under an hour to do and it’s free, and at the end of it, you’ll have enough topics that will last you a year, if you produce once a week. So check it out at ShortcutContent.com, and it’s a good way to get started and understand what our process is all about.
Shayla: Alright. Thanks, Dave.
Dave: Thank you.