Serial content is the secret sauce to content creation.

The most successful brands and businesses in the world have a few things in common. 

I could list those things out for days, but I’m going to cut to the chase:

One of those things — the one we’re going to talk about today — is consistency. Why consistency?

Because, by being consistent, you get that coveted top-of-mind-awareness (or TOMA). 

(You know… that force that opens the floodgates to massive and magical business growth? Yeah, that stuff.)

Good news: You don’t have to struggle to figure out how to get some sweet, delicious TOMA.

It’s far simpler than you’d think. (Simple, not necessarily easy.)

One of the best and most consistent ways to stay top of mind is through the power of SERIAL CONTENT.

By borrowing from the world of television, you can create content series for your business that build know-like-trust, stay top of mind, and establish your brand as the go-to in your niche.

But…. what is serial content? Why should you care? And how do you get started?

In this video, I cover ALL of that and more.

Ready to make content creation simple and consistent?

(Um, YES, duh, of course.)

Keep reading…

Let’s get back to consistency. 

Now, just to clarify, consistency is not trying something for just two weeks to see if it works. 

Many of the most famous actors, musicians, singers, and athletes will tell you: It’s not necessarily that they are the best at what they do. But rather, they are the most consistent. They are the ones that showed up over and over again and kept putting themselves out there over and over again. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. 

And unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this is also true for many of the most successful brands and businesses in the world. The products that might be the best aren’t always the ones that dominate the marketplace. Not at all.

It’s way more about consistency. It’s about top-of-mind-awareness, or TOMA.

You probably know like I know that some of the most talented people are wasting away in obscurity. By choosing to not put themselves out there, they’ll never really reach as many people as they could. They’ll never get that top-of-mind-awareness… or TOMA.

So, this all leads to the question: How does one stay top-of-mind?

In my experience, one of the best and most consistent ways to stay top of mind is through the power of serial content. 

(Another great example of serial content is my video series, The Courtney Show! And we have a video about this very topic. Watch the video here!)

(Want more episodes of The Courtney Show? Click here to check out our Youtube channel!)

The Best Examples of Serial Content

There are some examples of businesses doing this well, but let’s start with the BEST examples of serial content, and for that we need to look outside of the world of business…

…To television. Now, I know this is cringe-worthy for a lot of entrepreneurs, and it’s become this badge of honor to never watch television and to only read or listen to personal development books. I see this every day. 

BUT I’ll argue that if you’re a business owner in the 21st century and you’re doing video marketing or you’re making content marketing a priority — which most of us are — then you should learn from the best. And the BEST isn’t necessarily in your newsfeed, it’s on television. 

I don’t just mean the commercials, though there’s plenty of good there, too. I mean the actual TV shows. Which come to us in the form of a series.

Now here’s why TV series — and all series for that matter — work so well:

Humans are creatures of story and humans are creatures of habit.

Let’s talk about the first one: 

If you think about it, When we’re not working, when we have down time or even leisure time, we are seeking out story in one form or another. After all, oral history is the oldest form of recorded history, so it’s ingrained in us to seek out story in all its forms.

We scroll through a news feed and see snippets of Stories. We read magazines, we watch television, we listen to podcasts, or radio shows. All forms of story. We read books, we go to the movies, we listen to music. At all corners of our lives, story is present. and when we interact with other humans, many of those interactions are based around sharing stories. So, it would stand to reason that if we want to capture attention, doing so through story is a smart move. 

And, this is even more effective when we delivery stories in a recurring series.

Which brings us back to the second reason this works so well: humans are creatures of habit. 

We have habits, our habits form routines, and we thrive off of their predictability. That’s why anytime you deliver content in a consistent manner, on the same day of each week or the same day of each month, CONSISTENTLY, You’ll always grow an audience over time. The consistency causes a snowball effect. 

But of course, the focus here is doing it consistently. 

It’s for this reason that television shows are at their most successful when they are at the same time on the same night of the week, season after season, year after year. 

And it’s no secret that the kiss of death for a lot of television series has been simply switching the night of the week. Going from always appearing Thursday nights at 8 p.m. to suddenly moving into the 7 p.m. slot on  Monday. Sure, the die-hard fans will follow that TV series wherever it goes, but the more passive fans that could have become die-hard fans in time will stop following because it didn’t pop up at the previously scheduled time.  

It was out of their routine, which meant it was a habit that they could break more easily, and then suddenly they go from watching the TV series almost weekly to never watching it again. 

This is the same kind of thing that happens to us when we put out sporadic bursts of content. 

And it’s for this reason that the brands who are the most consistent, who show up when they say they’re going to show up over and over again, Those are the ones that we think of first. Those are the ones that are known. Those are the brands with true TOMA, or top-of-mind awareness. 

Of course, television is not the only form of story that utilizes series effectively. There are radio shows, podcast series, book anthologies, movie franchises, cereal series, and web series  — like my series, The Courtney Show.

And there are lots of ways to utilize this content for your own content.

The Benefits of Serial Content

But before we get to the how, let’s talk about a few more benefits with series for your business.

BENEFIT #1: 

Serial content builds know, like, and trust. Imagine how much more people will trust you if you show up week after week. Yes, consistency really is just showing up over and over again, but by doing that, you become a fixture in people’s lives and routines, you become something that is reliable, you become trustworthy. Simply by the act of showing up. 

By doing this, you become known, and when you resonate with the right people, they will like you, and in time, you will earn their trust. And when you’ve got someone’s trust, you are far more likely to convert them from browser into buyer. 

BENEFIT #2:

With serial content, you can convert someone from browser to buyer with the magic of what I call browse-binge-buy.

By producing consistent serial content, you start to build up a backlog of content that won’t go anywhere.  So, anytime someone is researching your business, trying to weigh a buying decision, they have this backlog of serial content available to binge. They can learn more about you more quickly, they develop KLT more quickly, and then they go from browsing to buying much more quickly. Thus, browse-binge-buy. 

And this is me speaking from experience. With one of our family businesses, we had such a backlog of serial content that had been developed that we were able to bypass a lot of the selling that our other competitors would have to do daily. 

Another great benefit of serial content is that it establishes your authority as an expert. Whether you feel like a true expert or not, the simple act of showing up consistently will give others that perception. 

And as a consumer, you get this too. If someone asks you for a recommendation for something, you go with the first person that comes to mind. The person who has the most top of mind awareness. TOMA.

BENEFIT #3:

The final benefit of a series is that you get to write the script. Literally and figuratively.

Do you wish that you could be known for something? Do you wish that you are perceived as the expert in a particular field? If you produce a series and do it consistently, you can position yourself as all of those things. Simply by showing up. Over and over again. 

And by doing so, you get to reap all of the benefits of a series — you build know, like, and trust faster, you get to serve before you sell, and you get to become a fixture in the routines of your followers.

Whether your series is a newsletter, a podcast, a web series, or just a weekly themed social media post, by putting out this high value content consistently, just once a week really, you get to write the script and decide how your business will be positioned in the marketplace.

Creating a Content Series

Now maybe you’re thinking “But what if my niche/industry doesn’t do this?” 

Just because others in your niche or industry don’t do something, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do that thing. It doesn’t speak to the relevance of the idea to an industry but rather to the immaturity of an industry. 

So, you don’t have to follow the herd. You can step out, create serial content, and innovate within your industry. 

And the best news of all? This doesn’t have to take a lot of time. This can be something you sit down and do for just a few minutes a week, or you can batch it and create a lot of serial content all at once, say once a month or even once a quarter. 

When you’ve got this one hero piece of content that you’re putting out each week, a lot of your other content takes care of itself. You begin to form a backlog of content, and that creates a most delightful domino effect.

Your serial content can become what you’re known for… or it can simply be a way to connect with your audience. Whatever it does for you, keep in mind: consistency is key.

Above all, remember that you write the script. You can make the choice to show up. And while it takes effort, when you show up over and over again, consistently, you shape the perception of your brand. You actually have the power to do that — for better or worse.

And when you seize that power and show up consistently, you can serve better and more fully. 

You just have to take the first step, and then the next, and keep going. 

HI, I’M COURTNEY!

I’m here to help you build, grow, and scale your business.

Check out my show here: