SPI 864: From Content Chaos to Conversion Machine—The Approach Smart Creators Use

SPI 864: From Content Chaos to Conversion Machine—The Approach Smart Creators Use

Pat Flynn: Most people do this wrong and I’ve done it wrong for years, and when we figured out how to do it right, everything changed. How’s that for a hook? Well, I’m just gonna tell you upfront the way that you’re supposed to do it. When you create a piece of content, start with the title first. This is all long form type of content, blog posts, podcasts, videos, and I’m going to include emails. Social posts can work as well.

However, this does not pertain or is not relevant to short form video. Well, why not? I. Short form video, when you think about it, the first time a person sees your video is when your video is playing across a person’s feed when they swipe to it. And so what is important for short form, it is the first two seconds or how you set the tone or the story that you begin with. That is the hook in the beginning.

But for these other pieces of content in email. You have your subject line. That’s what people see first. A video, people see your title and thumbnail first. For a blog post, they’re reading the title, and if the title does not intrigue them, it doesn’t matter what you’ve written, even if it’s the best thing in the world.

The secret to success as a content creator for any long form channel is to start with the title first, and it’s so opposite the way that I’ve been doing and most people do it. I had been doing that since the beginning. Ever since I started blogging in 2008, it was write the blog post, figure out the title.

Ever since I started writing emails in 2010, it was write the email, then figure out the subject line. But it makes sense to start with the title first, right? Because that’s the first thing people see that is the point of decision as to whether or not they should consume what it is that you have now to offer.

It is so important. If there was one skill I could give all of you right now that you could instantly get better at to see immediate results in what it is that you create, it would be coming up with better titles or again, subject lines. That first point of decision making for a person is gonna be the most important focus for your piece of content, not even the content itself.

Like I said, you could have the best piece of content in the world, unless you have good titles and thumbnails on your videos, unless you have a good subject line that stands out across the noise of all the other people trying to fight for that person’s attention, then you’re doomed. You have to stand out and you have to start with titles.

It’s such a counterintuitive approach because, here’s the thing, when you come up with a title, let’s just stick in the realm of videos for now. But again, this still pertains to all those other platforms that I mentioned earlier. Not short form. But when it comes to your video titles, for example, when you come up with a good one, a few things happen.

You now know what the first few seconds of that video should be because you know what a person might be thinking psychologically when they read that title and what they’re expecting to see and how you can connect that and keep people going. Same thing from an email subject line. That email subject line sets the tone.

The first sentence in that email is going to either keep them or leave them, but they’ve opened it at that point. And when you come up with the title, this actually informs how you shape and create that content. Case in point in my Pokemon channel Deep Pocket Monster, I had a video idea. Everything starts with a seed idea.

I’m not saying like you should start by just coming up with ideas for titles. Like if things come up from different inspirations and sparks that you have here and there. But before you start writing, before you start recording or filming, you need to come up with a title. ’cause this informs the direction that you’re gonna go.

So on my Pokemon channel, there was a seed idea that was inspired by a package that I received some Pokemon cards where the box was damaged. And I was pretty upset about it because my cards came back damaged inside as well. So I wanted to come up with a video, and the idea was, well, I’m just gonna teach people how to package and ship their Pokemon cards, so these things won’t be damaged.

So the initial title was How to Pack and Ship Your Pokemon Cards, but you’d have to be in a certain mindset to want to even click that video to watch it, right? If you weren’t shipping cards at all, well you didn’t care about it. If you didn’t care about Pokemon, you didn’t care about it. And how important is that to people, especially just collectors who might only buy things and maybe even never ship things out?

Sellers, maybe. But that wasn’t even my target audience. So do I scrap that idea? No, I come up with a title that actually is intriguing and I went through a couple dozen and now we have tools like ChatGPT, and Claude and other AI tools to help us through this brainstorming process. I didn’t have access to this back then, so I was using other people, my producer, Dan, and other people in the Pokemon space, and I said, Hey, I have this video idea, but I’m trying to come up with a title again, title first.

That would be interesting. And here’s what we came up with. Which shipping company damages my Pokemon cards the most? Now, in this video, I can still teach the exact same things, how one should be shipping their cards, but now the story is completely different. Now there’s curiosity. And whether or not you care about shipping cards or even do that, you are still interested in the answer to this question, which shipping company damages my cards the most?

And of course, the thumbnail had a box that was dented on the side and it had the logo for UPS, USPS, and FedEx. So the video now became a competition video between those three companies. And it allowed me to go, okay, let me get three of the same boxes, put three of the same kinds of cards in there and wrap them all the same way.

And this even inspired the idea to put an air tag in each of them, because I saw another YouTuber who had put an air tag and a package and sent it to North Korea. So again, pulling inspiration from other channels, but making it my own and putting it into this space that had never seen anything like that before.

And this video blew up. And so like 1 million views in six months, which was unheard of for a more educational type of video because it wasn’t just an educational video, it was entertaining. It was more wide reaching. It cast a wider net for who would be even interested in watching this, and that all happened because I was thinking about the title first. Without thinking about an intriguing title that was worth filming, I wasn’t able to understand how it should be filmed. It was just going to be a step one, do this, step two, do this, step three, do this. But I mean, I knew that wasn’t gonna work. So I started to think more deeply about the title, and that is where we ended up. Just 15 minutes is all you might need to brainstorm with other people or again, with ai.

To come up with a title that could get you excited and could bring excitement to a person who may end up watching the video. It is the best use of your time as a content creator, is to figure out how can I get a person interested in this content in the first place. So start with the title. That’s gonna be my challenge to you.

And if you were to leave now in this video, I would’ve given you. Kind of everything you would need as far as direction to already start seeing more immediate results. And like I said, the title can shape the video. In fact, choosing different titles can have you come up with several different video ideas, all stemming from one singular idea.

So title first, try that out. Try that out with your emails. It will help you connect the story between what a person sees and what they expect, and then what you show them. So do that. Now, I could end the episode there, but I’m not gonna do that because I also wanna give you some inspirational frameworks for titles and ideas and email subject lines.

And again, things that you could think about to then insert your own spin or your own niche and product into it to help you out. So I’m gonna give you 10 different titles that could be used in various kinds of ways, and you might need to adjust them a bit for your own stuff. But we’re gonna go through these 10 right now, these 10 frameworks.

Framework number one, the how to promise. So here’s the format, and you know what, we’re gonna have a download available where you can download this sheet. So let’s go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles. Again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles and that’ll get you to a page where you can go and download this inside of our sort of compendium of other resources that you can get access to as well.

A lot of people been saying some great things about the resources that are there, and you can find this one there as well. And, uh, now that I’m doing this on the fly, I’m gonna have to let my team know about that, but it should be pretty simple ’cause I have these all written right in front of me, and I’m gonna give them to you on a nice little PDF.

So again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles for the 10 powerful title framework PDF file. So here is number one, the how to promise and the format is this, how to achieve desired outcome without common pain point. So here’s some examples. How to launch your first course without working 80 hour weeks. The achieve desired outcome is launching your first course without common pain point.

Let’s try another pain point in there. How to launch your first course without putting your face on camera. Because I know, again, because I’ve been in this space and I know about my audience, that a lot of people are afraid to put their face on camera. So here’s how to do that. You could see how that can already start to capture people’s attention.

Alright, let’s try another one. How to grow your email list without spending a dollar on ads. How to grow your email list without seeming like you’re begging for subscribers. That’s one I’m, I’m just kind of using the same framework, a common pain point. Without feeling sleazy, how to sell and make lots of money without feeling sleazy, without looking like a slime ball.

Again, I’m just going through the iterations. This is what you need to do. You need to take this framework and start plugging and playing how to create viral content without sacrificing your brand values. That’s a good one. Now this works because it addresses both the aspiration, the dream, the what we want, plus the common obstacle.

The content is the bridge between them. So that is the how to promise, how to achieve desired outcome without blank, the pain point. Alright, number two, the numbered list. Now, a numbered list always works really well because people like to know how many of something and kind of, again, it expresses the desired outcome.

But there’s a missing component that most people have, and that is the adjective when it comes to the ways to do something. So here’s the format, a number, and then an adjective. Ways to achieve desired outcome. And I know when listening to this, it’s hard to kind of place it. So these examples hopefully are gonna be a little bit more helpful.

Seven unexpected ways to double your productivity tomorrow. The unexpected part being the adjective, right? Five proven strategies to turn followers into paying clients proven, kind of reinforcing that, helping it stand out a bit more. Nine simple tweaks to make your landing page convert two times better.

I really like the double your productivity or two times better. You know, anything quantifiable there can work really, really well. Three simple learning methods to save five hours a week. Something I might use if I was writing an email or something for Lean Learning, which is my book coming up. So this works ’cause it, it is just clear expectations, promises, multiple solutions.

You know, a lot of people like to know that there are multiple choices and it just feels more digestible and it’s easier to scan or listen to. Right? There’s seven of them, there’s five of them. And yeah, odd numbers seem to work much better just for some reason. Test it yourself though to find out the answer for your audience.

Okay, next. This one’s one of my favorites, the curiosity gap. So here is the format, the blank or adjective, secret to desired outcome that most people or experts don’t talk about. So here’s some examples. This is the curiosity gap, the counterintuitive secret to client retention that most agencies miss.

The five minute habit for content creation that top creators don’t share the hidden psychology of pricing that business schools don’t teach. So I love this because it’s like, okay, you’re positioning these things as a expert level that are often hidden, right? It leverages that curiosity gap and the exclusivity of this information, right?

I use a similar format for my subtitle of my book, lean Learning How to Achieve More by Learning Less. It doesn’t include that expert part, which I really love, but what psychological experts don’t share with everybody. Again, I’m just making this up as I go, and you have to do that. You gotta get through the mess to get to the best.

You gotta be cringe before they binge. Alright, number four, the mistake alert. So here’s the format, the number adjective mistakes killing your desired outcome and how to fix them. So again, the mistakes alert. People definitely wanna avoid making mistakes. It triggers loss aversion, right? We’d much rather not lose something than actually gain something that’s just human psychology.

And we’re playing on that here. So here is the format. One more time. The number, adjective, mistakes, killing your desired outcome and how to fix them. So the three silent mistakes killing your social media reach and how to fix them. The five subtle funnel leaks costing you thousands and how to patch them fast.

The four copywriting errors destroying your conversion rate and the simple fixes. Man, those are really good. So make sure you download this PDF files so you can kind of just see it right there. So again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles. Number five, the case study. How I or name or client achieved specific result in timeframe using method.

That’s a mouthful. So let’s go through the examples. How I generated 50 K in 30 days using only LinkedIn content. The using method part, especially the only using method part is really good there. How I generated $50,000 in 30 days using only LinkedIn content. How Jane scaled her coaching business to 30 K per month using this three part email sequence.

Want it? What is the three part email sequence? How our Client tripled podcast downloads in six weeks with zero paid promotion. That one’s okay. The our client, I prefer not to use that kind of stuff, but how one customer tripled her podcast downloads in six weeks without paying a dollar. That one I feel works a little bit better than the example I had written down here.

So what I love about this is it provides social proof people online often when you tell ’em something that in a way sounds a little bit too good to be true using these proof points or case studies to support that, right? With specific results. Uh, it creates aspiration and suggests something that could be repeated or repeatable.

Alright, next, the contrarian view. The contrarian view, this is number six of 10. So why blank or why common belief practice is actually. Negative outcome and what to do instead. This one also speaks to my subtitle for Lean Learning How to Achieve More by Learning Less, but that one would be positioned if it was exactly in this format, like why Learning More is actually making you dumber.

That’s a great title. Oh my gosh, definitely. YouTube status there. Okay, here’s some examples why your content calendar is actually killing your creativity and what to do instead. Why most email automations fail and the relationship first approach that works. Why growing your audience too fast can destroy your business and the sustainable alternative.

And this works because it just, again, stands out from conventional wisdom. Everybody thinks this, but this is going in opposite direction. But it also positions you as the thought leader there. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes about building authority, having the sort of contrarian point of view with backed evidence. That evidence is really important. It definitely positions you as a thought leader for sure. Alright next, the future prediction. Predictions are also great, especially with back dividends and when you hit these predictions, it definitely plus ones what you’ve spoken about and increases your authority. You gotta be careful with the predictions though, because you know, if you’re way off it can come back.

Uh, had caught wind of some political related predictions before the, uh, most recent election and those people sort of dropped off the face of the earth for not so great predictions that didn’t match the outcome that we saw. So, just something to be said, but not everything is gonna be political and it might not be that big of a deal or that deep, but just something to consider that I wanted to point out.

So here’s the format for the future prediction, the number industry topic trends that will define upcoming year or period, right? So the six content distribution channels about to explode before everyone catches on or the coming shift in email marketing, five changes to prepare for now, the three creators that will define YouTube in 2026.

Pretty good. And this appeals to those who are listening or watching or reading who are more forward thinking, right? They love to know what’s coming. Most of us do and they wanna avoid making mistakes as things come. They wanna stay ahead of the curve. They wanna avoid obsolescence. That’s the uh, again, the future prediction.

Alright, here is the ultimate guide. This is number eight, the ultimate guide. So the Ultimate Guide to Achieving Desired Outcome, everything you need to know in. Current year or current time period. So here are a few examples. The ultimate Guide to podcast monetization, everything you need to know in 2025, the Ultimate Guide to building a personal brand that attracts dream clients, the ultimate guide to creating short form video that converts from strategy to execution.

So this, again, positions this content that you’re creating. Again, no matter what platform it’s on as the authoritative resource, right? The most comprehensive, authoritative resource. And of course, you have to support that with that comprehensive, authoritative, well-researched article, podcast, or video. But it makes it reference worthy.

This isn’t just like news. This is the ultimate resource to help you through or to something. All right. Number nine, the question headline, and there’s a million of these. There are so many different resources with different title frameworks, and these are my top 10 favorite that I’ve seen work really well and have used in different kinds of ways more recently, but there are loads of articles like this.

If you just wanted to deep dive into hundreds in case 10 of these that I’m sharing today don’t work, one of them should though. At least one. You can look online, just Google title frameworks and make sure it’s more relevant and kind of for the specific platform perhaps that you choose to put your content on.

So number nine, the question headline. Here’s the format. Are you making this blank topic mistake the cost slash consequence might surprise you. Now be careful with the. Yes. The end of that is very what I like to call Buzzfeedy. Remember Buzzfeed, it was like top nine things that will help you make more money.

Number seven will blow your mind, right? Like that. You gotta be careful ’cause you know, people are sensitive to that. So it’s something worth testing. However, the might surprise you part or might shock you part can work and it does, it does work, but it can be overdone. So just be careful about that. So here’s some examples again of the format.

Are you making this adjective topic mistake? The cost slash consequence might surprise you. Are you making this critical SEO mistake? The traffic cost might shock you. The cost to your business is unbelievable. Like if you wanted to lighten the little shock you part of it. Is your launch strategy missing this key element?

It could double your results. Okay, now I need to read that. Could your content strategy be working against you? The data says it might. I like that the data says it might, and now I’m expecting as a reader, viewer, or listener to see some data. Like immediately when I start watching or reading or listening.

So this engages the readers directly, right? It prompts the self-reflection because you’re asking a question, are you making this SEO mistake? Auditing or giving an opportunity for your audience in one way, shape, or form to audit themselves in the things that they’re doing is a really smart way to just kind of take their mind off of, well, is this gonna be a good article or not into, hey, am I doing something wrong? And what could this person or this article do to help me, you know, get through that, right? It builds curiosity about a potential blind spot. Next, number 10, the before after bridge. So the bridge being like, okay, from before to after. And here’s the format from current negative state to desired positive state, the adjective method approach. So from overwhelmed to optimized the three step content system for busy founders from invisible to in demand, I like that. It’s a little creative. Invisible to in demand has that in part, you gotta be careful with being too clever, but I do like that invisible to in demand. That makes sense.

The authority building framework for new consultants. From invisible to in demand, the authority building framework for new consultants. You can include some how tos in there as well, right? From invisible to in demand, how to get clients fast, or how to get your first clients by next week in 72 hours. I don’t know again, I’m just demonstrating this that you’re not gonna know right away. Using these frameworks can help. They can help guide. You can rearrange and add, subtract, and just again, go through many of them until you find that one that you’re like, yes, that’s the one I’m excited about filming. And then of course, when you’re more excited about filming it, your audience is gonna be more excited about watching it or writing it and reading it or recording it, and listening from crickets to conversations, a client attracting approach to social media.

I got that one from Claude, and I don’t like that one so much. From crickets to conversations again, don’t just follow what social media and AI is giving you. Get a gut reaction on how these feel and say it out loud. Imagine it in a person’s inbox. If it’s an email, imagine it showing up on YouTube, use a tool called thumbsup TV to include these titles so you can actually see them and what they might look like on a mobile device.

And make sure your thumbnails, if you are doing it for YouTubes, work together with that title. You don’t wanna put the same words in the thumbnail. You wanna have the thumbnail compliment what it is that the title is expressing, you know, almost as a, a part of the story or something that enhances or reinforces that curiosity gap.

So the before after bridge is great because again, it shows you like, here’s where you are and here’s where where we’re going. It speaks to the audience’s current pain paints a picture of the desired outcome and suggests that you know how to get there. So those are the 10 content frameworks for you.

Those 10, one more time are the How to Promise the Numbered List, the Curiosity Gap, the Mistake Alert, the Case study, the Contrarian View, the Future Prediction, the Ultimate guide, the question headline, and the before slash after bridge. And we will have these on a nice, handy, easy to download PDF file over at SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles. Plural. That’s SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles. You’ll have to gain access if you don’t have already to our resource library and it will be in there for you. So thank you for this. And if you wanted to do me a favor and not do what most people do, which is just listen to this and go, okay, that’s cool.

Now I’m gonna play the next episode. Like go and implement this. You can do this right now in your car, on the toilet, on a walk, whatever. You can think about a title for something based on a seed idea that you have for a piece of content and just come up with various titles, use tools to help you come up with even more to find that one that really helps you go, yes, that’s it.

And then you can kind of reverse engineer that video and film it or record it or write it that way. That’s your homework. Appreciate you and again, one more time. SmartPassiveIncome.com/titles to get that resource. And if you’d like to go to the resource page with all the links and stuff for this particular episode, as well as that link that I just shared with you, it’s all on our show notes page at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session864 against SmartPassiveIncome.com/session864.

And I look forward to more episodes like this that are gonna be helpful, stuff that you can implement right away. Speaking of implementation right away before you go hit that subscribe button and I look forward to serving you in the next one. Cheers.