082 – Keeping Content Real

Biography:

Helen Pollock is an Amazon-bestselling ghostwriter, non-fiction book coach, and business content specialist. Working as The Content Doc these days, Helen’s been writing professionally for around two decades during a career in Marketing and, mostly, PR. Having worked for organisations as diverse as Aston Martin, The Royal Shakespeare Company, computer games companies, and Plumb Center, Helen’s passion is writing lively and engaging copy about…well…just about anything.

Now, Helen has transitioned to helping business people to write better. She ghostwrites business books and also content like blog posts and articles. Coaching people to write better copy, from a blog post to a book, is something Helen is incredibly committed to. She believes that everyone can become a better writer and that creating a simple framework for content creation is the key to great business writing. If Helen had to sum herself up in three words, they would be as follows: writer, feeder, fighter.

Main talking points include:

Helen wanted to work for herself to have a “portfolio lifestyle” – found working in a corporate job really boring… 

Helen lived in Dubai as a child and took to learning languages. This progressed to getting a degree in French and German. After the birth of her child, Helen wanted to become self-employed, and found a gap in the market for teaching Mandarin in a fun way… the only issue was that she didn’t speak mandarin. 

Helen overcame this by employing mandarin speakers and working with them to put the curriculum together. After five years of tweaking the business plan and running the company alongside a part-time job, Helen faced a number of challenges, and in the end, wound this stream of income down. 

Just because a business idea doesn’t work, don’t mean you’re a failure:

1. Helen learned a lot about running a business
   
2. Helen and her team reached thousands of children with learning mandarin in a fun way – where are they now?
   

The Content Doc brought aspects of her corporate job and what she’d learned from running her language school. 

Keeping content real

Finding the “story” within the topic and understanding the audience.

You start writing content by sorting some “lenses” 

• Who is your audience?
  
• What are their pain points?
  
• What’s the outcome of your product that will help them?
  

Finding the “thread” in your messaging

Understanding what’s in your content for your audience.

Before you put “pen to paper” think about how are you going to use the content you create? 

• Helen likes using videos, especially short videos on LinkedIn
  

An example structure: 

• A long-form article
  
  • On LinkedIn
    
  • On your blog (maybe an abridged version)
    
• A 3-minute video
  
  • On LinkedIn
    
  • On YouTube
    
  • On Facebook
    
• Taking individual points from a blog post and putting those out on social media.
  

Start of by doing ONE THING and DOING IT WELL – you will know which one by doing your research.

John Espirian – Linkedin training

The biggest lesson that has come out of this for Helen through her entire entrepreneurial journey is the consistency of creating content.

The Content Structure Buster – Mini-Course
www.thecontentdoc.com

Shoutouts:

Bob Gentle
Amy Woods
Alex Curtis

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