Why I Still Create All My Own Content (+ My Time-Saving Tools)
Got my content creation plan in place for the year and am already underway putting it in action.
Sharing some of the “secret sauce” below.
I talk about this a lot, but before I get into the sauce, I have to say it again; I think creating genuine, valuable content and building an email list behind it is the best marketing strategy right now.
SEO is hurting and more expensive thanks to AI. Cold outbound is hard/mostly ignored. So much content is AI generated and turns people off.
That’s why I focus on genuine, interesting, helpful, written-by-me content, then I leverage tools and AI to repurpose and promote it (see below).
The beauty is you can do it for any kind of business, from tech company to service business to widget seller. It’s why I use it for all of mine too - tech startup, law firm - and always will.
Is content creation on your 2025 action plan?
If so, here’s a few things that may help in no particular order.
Don’t outsource content creation
As I said above, I still create all of our content. No marketing company knows my industry, market, ICP, etc., more than I do.
If you can find a good, reliable marketing company that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg (good luck!), then sure, maybe work with them closely to produce and post content, but I always recommend doing it in house and using tools or contractors to do the rest.
Video content and chopping up clips
Video is king right now and probably will continue to be. Don’t lie, you’re probably finishing this email then opening up Tiktok or Youtube Shorts to fit a few clips in…
Video is also amazing for brand building because your audience can see your face, hear your voice, etc.
What’s worked for me?
recording longer form videos and then chopping them up into shorter clips
I usually do this in the form of a podcast or show. For example, here’s my biweekly Visto Show where every 2 weeks I share immigration news/tech stories for my immigration tech startup, and here’s the Solopreneur Grind podcast where I interview successful solopreneurs to learn their tips, tricks, advice, etc.
I do this because it’s efficient. I can sit down for 20-40 minutes in 1 sitting and I get 1) a long form video, and 2) weeks worth of short form content (see the next bullet)
Then I use an AI tool called Opus that takes a youtube video link and automatically finds short clips that you can review, edit and post on multiple platforms in just a few clicks. I tried it over a year ago along with a few others and they weren’t that good, but tried it again a month ago and wow - it’s incredible. Because the AI models and features have improved so much, it’s 10x better already. Affiliate link here if you want to give it a try and support the substack!
All of the above means I can record 1 long form video and post it, as well as 10+ short form videos in about ~1 hour total. Wild times we live in.
Repurposing written content
Here’s something I’m still working on because the first time I tried it, it failed. Badly.
You might remember my post from last year where I talked about how I was using AI to repurpose these substack posts. To make a long story short, I tried it for a month and it was so bad that I actually lost like 50 twitter followers.
You heard me right - posting more on twitter actually lost me subscribers.
Oops.
But I diagnosed the problem which was pretty obvious - the AI generated summaries and posts sucked. I was using AI to pull interesting quotes from the substack email, convert them into short twitter posts and auto-post them. Great idea, but the output quality sucked.
So I’m going to tinker with the AI prompts/workflow this week and really focus on whether it can actually create compelling posts before sharing them.
As always, I’ll share the results with you.
That’s it for today, just a few (of the many) things I’m doing and tools I’m using to continue growth in 2025. And if you have any questions or need any help, hit “reply” and let me know.
Have a great day,
- Josh Schachnow
Canadian lawyer, CEO at Visto.ai