Why You Don’t Need Fancy Content to Stand Out

Today’s episode is a bit extra special, because I’m recording from our very own beach house at the Outer Banks! I’m sharing the wild, emotional journey of how I was able to buy the lot next to my grandmother’s original cottage and how content creation made it all possible.

We’ll also talk about why the best content these days looks and feels like it’s coming from a real person, and I’ll break down strategies for simple, relatable posts that make you the friend people want to follow, no matter your business size or follower count. Plus, I’ll highlight real examples as inspiration so you can create easy, authentic content that fits right into your life.

In this episode we’ll be covering:

• The power of posting authentic, relatable content rooted in real life.
• A huge follower count does not necessarily equate success.
• Instagram’s new Blend feature and creative ways to use it for marketing insights.
• Why posting like a person, not a brand, connects and resonates better with audiences.
• Creating low-stress, effective content by simply documenting moments from your daily life.

Links to reels in this episode:

• Reel #1: Two player board games
• Reel #2: Person with this initial owes you a beer…
• Reel #3: Solution to my problems
• Reel #4: Color mixing station

Other episodes you might have missed:

• Episode 058: Embrace the Content Creator Mindset
• Episode 059: Are You Talking About What You Love?
• Episode 060: Nail Your Short Form Videos with This Simple Formula
• Episode 061: Use The Relatable Expert Hook to Create Your Next Helpful Reel

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Transcript

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:05]:
I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content. The podcast where I remove the never ending content creation guesswork and overwhelm, so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked, good content. I cannot believe I'm saying this, but we are recording Good Content from our beach house in the Outer Banks Of North Carolina. I'm actually looking at my grandmother's beach house right now. They bought two lots in the nineteen seventies, Milepost 7 in Kill Devil Hills, and built a tiny beach cottage. Right? 1978. And, they never built on the other lot.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:47]:
This other lot was just trees forever. And when my grandma passed, you know, she was basically almost basically a mother to me. And, because I wasn't far far from her growing up and, you know, I'd come down here to the beach house in the summers with my cousins, and she's a huge part of my life, and was just, she was just the best. She passed, gosh, three years ago now. And I knew we couldn't afford to buy the beach house. I was devastated. It was you know, the family decided no one wanted it, and I was just like, I was devastated. We said goodbye to the beach house.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:17]:
My dad was here. We all drove away, and I was and I remember looking at the lot and going, I'm gonna get that lot. I'm gonna get that lot. I can't afford this beach house. And my dad even said, he was like, Shannon, not only can't you know, is it expensive to buy, but it also needs probably $200,000 of work because it's it's old. Okay. And yeah. And so I I drove away, and I was just like, I'm I'm gonna get that lot.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:40]:
I don't know how I'm gonna get that lot, but I'm gonna get that lot in this crazy story. So I didn't know what I was gonna talk about today, but here we go. I I put my head down. Grief is weird. I just worked myself to the bones, really. And, I was doing Instagram audits and Instagram audits and Instagram audits, and I just was working, working, working. I hadn't started the Reels Lab yet, but I was doing a ton of audits and was just I don't know. I was Ryan was like, you are literally, like, I was working till midnight till 1AM, getting up, working before the kids were up, working with Chloe and Cam were at school.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:08]:
You know, I was just every free moment of my life, I was working because I love what I do. So I decided, well, instead of sit around and cry about losing my grandma, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna pour into work. All of a sudden, Ryan goes, you know, because he I'm not the money. I don't do money. It's not my specialty. And he's looking at my bank account, and he's like, you know, I just feel like as much as you're working, there should be some more money. And I just I also remember I just released grow your Instagram guide. And all of a sudden, Ryan's like, you you've sold a lot of those.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:36]:
Like, where is this money going? All of a sudden, we're sitting there on the couch. It's like 08:00 at night. Kids are in bed and I go, oh my gosh. I had a VA before my current VA and I go, she had opened a Stripe account for me for my and again, I can't remember. It was either a Dubsado. It was something where all I think it was Dubsado. So all the money going through Dubsado. So if anyone bought a audit or whatever, the money was going into the Stripe account that I had forgotten about.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:02]:
Now, again, you guys are probably listening to this going, this is this, if you know me and you grew up, like my girlfriends are, if they're listening to this, they were going, yep. This is so Shannon. I'm like, type B to a T. So I'm like, oh my gosh. So my dad told us the amount of money we needed for the lot, the exact dollar amount when we opened that Stripe account. And I had to go to old email address, Boutique Social. It was back when my business was called Boutique Social. I mean, when my actual agency was called that.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:27]:
And, I had to find this old email that this VA had sent out, created for me. Like, we're talking, like, six years ago, or five years ago. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh. What was it? So I go to the email. I find the email. I have to, like, you know, get the password resent to me. All of a sudden, find the Stripe account that exact I have goosebumps. That exact dollar amount was in that Stripe account.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:48]:
And I joke that my grandma knew how bad I was about money that she made this happen. I was like, she knew that one day I was so anyway, long story short, we were able to buy this lot. We couldn't build right away. Right? But Reels Lab, by the grace of God and by all the support, and everyone inside the Reelz Lab who love it, I was able to get enough money to build this beach house. And it's a dream. And we named it Kitty's Cottage after my grandma. So here we are. We're this is our first official weekend staying here.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:17]:
We are gonna decorate. Obviously, there's not much to see right now. This is this is gonna be Cam and Chloe's room, but we're just ecstatic. And it just shows what happens when you post online. I coulda let the comparison get to me thousands of times. I coulda let the people copying, stealing my content get to me and quit and throw it away. I could have let, the embarrassment of being cringe on video make me go, you know what? This ain't for me. I could have let a lot of stuff stop me and I didn't because I truly do love what I do.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:49]:
And I hope you guys can feel that it's this is, again, I didn't make a dime doing this for five years. I really didn't make any money doing social media management. It was it was $300 a month. I was like, I'm ballin'. So trust me, it's been a grind and it's been a journey and I'm just, I just, it, like, it still doesn't hit me. Do you know what I mean? I'm still like, is this, is this for real? Is this for life? So thank you again. I just, I don't know if you thought that story was cool, but it's just, it just just shows what happens when you keep posting. You guys, I hit 6 figures in my business before I hit 10,000 followers.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:22]:
Okay. So do not think you need a million bajillion followers. There are people in my world, in my Instagram world with way more followers than me, but it doesn't matter. I'm going to keep going. And in you just keep going. You just keep going. Okay. So with that said, why don't we just do an old fashioned episode of Good Content and scroll the gram and look at what's going on now? I actually just did a show with Jerry Potter, his social media marketing talk show just now.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:49]:
I just got off of it. And we did a lot about like updates in Instagram world. You know, they've they just launched Blend, which is super fun. So if you have a group chat, you can now merge your algorithms in a way and scroll a reels tab. So and it's funny because at the bottom, it will say like, I just did it with my friends, Carly, Marissa, and Autumn. And so at the bottom, it will say this reel was suggested to Carly. This reel was suggested to Autumn and Carly. This reel was suggested to Marissa.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:14]:
And so as you're scrolling it, you're seeing what the algorithm is feeding your friends. And I was thinking for a marketing perspective, for a business perspective, maybe you have a team where you guys kind of brainstorm ideas. That'd be a really cool way. Cause now you're not just seeing your little bubble of the internet. You're seeing other reels that you're not seeing. Right. If I open my husband's reels tab, it's gonna look totally different than mine. It's gonna be golf sports.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:34]:
Right. But there's stuff in there I would see going, wow. That's actually a genius hook or, wow. I bet that's why that went viral and I can use it. So that's kinda cool. So if you are like me and a nerd and wanna kinda look at what reels are performing well and why, Really cool. So check out Blends. Very, very exciting.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:51]:
Okay. Like I said, I just wanna help you guys. Last week, we talked about the r e p hook, and I did a reel yesterday about how, you know, stop posting so much like a brand and start posting like a person. And I've talked about this a lot, but that's why the r e p hook, which is using something relatable and then noting your expertise and also putting something in that's personable because we want to follow humans. And even if you look at touch land, Taco Bell, like all these big brands, their content looks like creators. Right? It looks like humans and they are using words and their hooks like me, I. Literally, if I go to Taco Bell right now, there's a reel and I feel like I even talked about this on the podcast a few weeks ago, but it says my Zen Garden. And obviously they're joking.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:31]:
That's like queso dip and their tortilla and, their tortilla chip. It's just silly. But again, it doesn't when you first see it, you think it's a casual, real or a casual Instagram story from a friend. That is what is working right now. So the more that you can add in "my" "I", here's how I do things. Here's what, or again, when you're doing POV reels, whatever it is, we want to follow more so humans and people than brands. So it doesn't mean that this is the only way to do reels. I'm just saying the more that your content looks like it's from a person, the better.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:03]:
We're on social. We'd like to send things to our friends. I always call it the group chat hero. So here's a great example. Two player board games. We can't stop playing. So this is like a couple, right? Tabletop family. I'll obviously it'll be in the show notes, but again, it's like suggestions, ideas, fun things that like, they're like, you want to share with your friends and family or people you work with.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:23]:
I love this one from a brewery person with this initial owes you a beer and they put literally the entire alphabet. Oh my gosh. That's really funny. So again, we're on here to have fun. What can you do to make your content? Obviously a lot of people have heavy stuff they need to share and that's different, but what are some ways that you can make it feel like a human touch? Right. Don't hide your face. Don't hide your employees' faces. And I love this one, and I gave this actually to my Reels Lab students last week.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:51]:
The solution to my problems may not be inside a cheese shop, but we should probably check. Right? And I'll give you one more example. Tate's cookies, they have, they're literally someone who's at the grocery store scanning the cookies, and it says me at 10PM after eating a salad for dinner. That's actually from the brand Tate's. So this is just to show you that we are going back to basics. We do not need fancy. We do not need we need relatable. We need to know who you are as as a human, and that's the content that's gonna do well.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:16]:
Because the more we got away from creating content that was deeply rooted in our life. Right? So what happened then was the human kinda disappeared, and then we got bored and everything just looked like just just didn't look like there was a person behind it and all this faceless marketing. And of course, there are gonna be faceless accounts. There's tons of funny meme accounts that are faceless. There's jewelry accounts that are faceless. But what I mean is like, if you wanna create good content, what is something that you can say that your person is going to attach to? That's what that R E P comes into. And also when I mentioned these reels of like, it's something you wanna send to a friend. It's something that you relate to.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:52]:
It's something that you wanna follow the person to see more of. And we're going to end on this because this is a brilliant hook and I'll give you the whole, like why I'm saying all this to you in just a second. It says this is brilliant. 60,000 likes. It says, and the mom's demoing. Right? I always say, if you can do a POV and demo what you're saying, brilliant POV, you set up a color mixing station and suddenly you're the coolest mama ever. Now, why is that brilliant? Because she got down to what the actual desire is. Yeah.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:24]:
The kids will have fun. Yeah. It'll be a cute memory. No. At the end of the day, I always joke like perfume. It's not that you want to smell good. Sure. You want to smell good.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:33]:
You want people to ask what perfume you're wearing. You want people to come over and be like, wow, where'd you get that piece of art? You want people to look at your outfit and say, where'd you get it? You wanna be the coolest mom on the block. And maybe you're listening to be like, I don't, I don't. It's what is something that you're like, you would love that feeling. That's what needs to be in your reel. So again, funny, taco bell, my Zen garden, silly, funny. You send it. That's the humor category.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:00]:
Right? The one about the paint, the one about the mom that's actually helpful because they're giving you an idea and they're show she's showing you exactly how she does it. That's helpful. And the heard actually is a little is humorous too. Right? The whole the solution to my problems may not be inside a cheese shop, but we should probably check. It's funny, but it also makes them go, yeah, that this account is for me. I get them. The, the beer, that's also humor. Tabletop family, the two player board games, we can't stop playing.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:26]:
We can't stop playing. So they know it's an actual suggestion. It's rooted in their life. They didn't have to go create content. They didn't, they didn't have to go think of something. They're like, oh, My family and I are obsessed with these board games. Let's tell it to people. Oh, I'm at Taco Bell.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:38]:
Let's make this funny, real, obviously Taco Bell made it, but still you're at a brewery. You're already poured the beer, create the content. Your walking to a cheese shop, take the B roll. You'll think of the idea later. You're setting this up with your kids, record it. All of these reels did not take a lot of time and did not stress them out because it was rooted in their life. It was part of their life. It was part of their day.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:00]:
So with this whole thing, this is a long episode. Sorry. My point is it's time to get back to creating content that is already happening in our life so that it isn't so stressful. You had an moment with a coaching call, with a, with a client on a coaching call. Talk to us about it. You just design a new website for your client and they already are converting 10 times what they were. Tell me about it. You discover this cool restaurant down the street and you are a local blogger or a realtor? Tell me about it.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:27]:
Take the pictures, document as you go. You can always create the content later. You don't have to do it on the spot if you don't want to. And trust me when I'm creating content this weekend, it's gonna be here at the beach and about stuff that we're already doing, because I'm not spending more than thirty minutes on a piece of content and neither should you. Okay. So we need to get back to the basics. We need to get back to knowing that we're following humans. We want content from you that is in a, that aligns with what you're already doing in your life and in your business.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:52]:
It's going to feel a lot more fun to create. And I had someone say, you know, Shannon, but no one's interested. Your people are out there. Maybe the wrong people are following you right now. Your people are out there. I promise you that when you keep posting and sharing things about your life, because that's all I was doing in the beginning was documenting my journey of being a business owner. And then I started sharing more tips and tricks and things like that, but I still all in stories. It's documented my life.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:13:14]:
You guys know what I have for breakfast or that I probably skipped breakfast. You all know where I'm taking my kids. You all know about this beach house. That's why a lot of people follow me. They don't only follow me for Instagram tips. Right. Anyone. There's tons of people out there giving Instagram tips.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:13:27]:
What makes you different as a plumber, a realtor, a boutique owner, a karate coach, whatever it is, we wanna know you, the human behind it. And the more that your content is about your day, what you did, what you learned, your perspective, the better. I love you, friend.