live workshop

This March, I had the honor of teaching my first paid content writing workshop. (I’m stepping out of my comfort zone by taking my first in-person speaking engagements this year. Till now, I’ve done webinars, podcasts, and lots of video. This January, I gave my first 20-minute live talk to a mastermind here in Austin, and it went well!) The March workshop was in Irvine, California, for a healthcare company called NextGen Healthcare. Sarah, Manager of the Marketing Content Strategy, asked me to come and teach a full half-day class on one of my favorite topics — strategic content writing techniques for web, blog, email, social media and downloadables (whitepapers, content upgrades, etc.) for a B2B audience. The workshop was on March 26, and it went very well! For several reasons. First, the team of people that were there! (*cue Hallelujah chorus*) Teaching is easy when you have such a great crew as students. These people were simply amazing. Smarties, each and every one! Secondly, it was great to have a live audience while teaching content — tunnel vision, farewell! I was able to see, hear and discover what people that work in a leading industry firm actually find difficult in content marketing, what they struggle with, and on the flip side, what they actually enjoy doing and are good at. I think I walked out with as much new inspiration and knowledge as I (hopefully) left my attendees with. Here’s a recap of my workshop experience. First, what went into the workshop; and secondly, some key takeaways from the conversations I listened in to. [bctt tweet=”Content marketing expert @JuliaEMcCoy gave a live content writing workshop to a healthcare firm in California. Read her top takeaways from the experience #strategy” username=”ExpWriters”] What Went Into My 4-Hour Content Writing Workshop It was fantastic to work with Sarah Andrade, who is the Manager of Marketing Content Strategy (that’s a mouthful) at NextGen Healthcare. She found me through our site at Express Writers, and sent me a warm, friendly email requesting my presence teaching the workshop and offering full payment. Content creation is my jam, so when Sarah at NextGen Healthcare found me, despite a short timeline (in two weeks!), I said yes to taking on content creation for the half-day workshop. It was an amazing experience. I can’t say enough good things about the content team themselves. Brilliant people, all of them! Sarah (the marketing manager who found and recruited me), Allison, Carrie, Michael, Holly, Eleen, Jaime, Cathryn, Michelle…and everyone else whose names my post-speaking mushy brain sadly didn’t hit save on. Seriously, it was a rockstar team. They checked all the boxes: Engaged, interested, and passionate about their jobs (the whole room was engaged and came alive when we paused for Q&A) Already knowledgeable in a variety of areas (from SEO all the way to how to post content on Instagram with the paragraph breaks — Allison and Jaime had a finger on SEO, social and content trends) Great at content (Michael, Carrie – rockstar content writers, serious OGs, I’d hire them — and I hire 1-2% of the writers I meet!) Here’s what the final outline of my workshop looked like: NextGen® Healthcare Content Creation Workshop Sessions & Outline Sarah gave me full liberty to construct the whole half-day workshop. So, with Sarah’s help, I came up with 20-25 minute speaking sessions, broken up by Q&A content creation workshops. Here’s the final outline of workshop I constructed and gave. I was able to get through all the sessions between a time span of noon to 5 p.m. We ended up spending a great deal of time in Q&A, which I loved. Session 1: Introduction to Modern Content Writing & Content Types — Learn It! Q&A and Homework Share Session 2: How to Craft Engaging, Optimized Blogs — Learn It! Q&A and Blog Content Creation Workshop Session 3: How to Write Engaging Web Content — Learn It! Q&A and Web Content Creation Workshop Session 4: How to Write Emails — Learn It! Q&A and Email Writing Workshop I spent a few back-to-back 10-hour days working on the content to get it all done, right after Sarah found me. In less than 10 days, I’d created 200+ slides, four PowerPoint presentations, four cheat-sheet PDF takeaways for each attendee, and two recorded videos for the class demo-ing how to use BuzzSumo for content analysis, and SEMrush for keyword research. If I had more time, I would have made the content even more tailored to their audience and conducted more research on their high-level audience – but, I was able to customize it fairly well. My designer did an amazing job on the presentation design (psst… this is something we offer in the Content Shop!): Here are a few of my favorite slides from the session (and I think everyone’s favorite, from the joyful and positive feedback that erupted after I presented the ‘icky face’). I took an overly stuffy home page tagline from the website for NextGen Healthcare, and rewrote it for the class: The ‘homework’ everyone was asked to do prior was a suggestion of Sarah, and I thought it was a great idea. We came up with three items (1. Bring your questions, 2. Bring a piece of content from NextGen to reform, 3. Bring a piece of content that makes you feel something – curious, inspired, joyful, etc.), and everyone that attended the workshop was all about it! Pretty much all of them had done their homework prior (again, so impressed with this team). In the homework Q&A time, lead writer Michael shared how much he took inspiration from Andrew & Pete, two content marketers that recently made a Top 100 Marketer list. I love Andrew & Pete myself. They’re outside-the-box thinkers who boldly and creatively go where few marketers go. Overall, it was an amazing group, and the experience of teaching a workshop was wonderful. 3 Takeaways & Inspirations Gained from Teaching My Workshop I was inspired by the live conversations I listened to, … Read more