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Finding Your Content Tilt Video and Podcast Transcript

[This transcript has been lightly edited to ensure readability]

Dave Dougherty: All right. Welcome to a new episode of Stitches and Picks. I'm Dave. 

Kristen Juve: I'm Kristin. 

What is a Content Tilt?

Dave Dougherty: Today we're going to continue our foray into the Content Inc. Model and how that has shaped our perspectives in terms of researching what we want to do, how we want to do it, and who we want to speak to. So we've already talked about two other concepts in the first two episodes, so if you haven't checked those out please go check those out.

Or you can bypass these conversations and just go buy the book (link above). It's a good book. But in this sense, the definition, and then we'll get to Kristen's project, a content tilt is based on the market and the players within the market that you want to try to have your side hustle, your side business, or your full business in. 

There are a couple of components to look into. The tilt is your unique way of speaking to the audience. Finding that market space to operate in and the way of communicating to your target audience within that space is the hard piece. 

So where is there a space within the market that has little to no competition? Where can you bring unique value to the conversations that are going on in the market? It can also be a combination of all three. It could be none of them. It just varies depending on what you're trying to do. 

So I know in the first season I kind of hinted at how I wanted to go to market with Beginning Guitar Online, and how I discovered, my approach to this.

But, Kristen, with your journeys into trying to launch Casting Knits this year or at the end of this season let's talk about your market and what's going on. I know there are a couple of established players, but give us an overview. 

The Knitting Market Kristen is Targeting

Kristen Juve: More than a couple, more than a couple. Knitting’s an interesting landscape.

You can understand the landscape from this major website that has all the patterns on it and has knitters. Not only knitters who actually do the knitting but also the designers who are selling their patterns on there. There's like a forum there. It still looks like it's a forum from 1994, so it's not even like it's… 

Dave Dougherty: You have to love those sites. Yeah. 

Kristen Juve:  But like at the time, it works. It's an MVP. They purposely whatever…I'm not, the point of this is not for me to defend them. I digress. Apparently, it's going to be one of those days. So just giving a forewarning, I have taken stock of the landscape of what I would call the market in terms of like...

So this is where I was getting hung up when you were talking about the market. I'm like, Oh crap. Every time I've thought about this, I've been thinking about it in terms of which platform. Because like is it the website or is it one of the like Instagram or is it TikTok?

And I've typically been thinking about it in those buckets because those landscapes are, they have overlap. They have a very clear overlap of people who are on those different platforms. But I haven't looked at it holistically from that point of view. And I think I'm intimidated to do so because, I don't know, I'm going to probably have to examine that. But examining what exists right now with this big website, with what I'm seeing other people doing, and I'm mainly getting that research from Instagram of understanding how, whether it's a knitwear designer or a knitter, that is producing content that is showing up in this space.

I have a really good understanding of what's happening on Instagram because I've consumed that content constantly for years. For me to jump into that world was hella intimidating. I didn't feel like I was going to provide anything new or worthy of being heard. And so I pretty much like I have a Casting Knits Instagram and I occasionally post on it, and I try to be really real because I don't want to show up as who I'm looking at as my competitors. 

I think I talked about this a little bit in the first season, where there are these people who show up on Instagram with this really beautiful, curated content. That's not who I am and that's not who I want to be, and that's not who I want to speak to either. Right? 

Dave Dougherty: So before you get too far down that rabbit hole, that's actually the topic for the next episode, is the channels and the whatever else, and I dunno how to talk about this. Okay, fine then. 

So the, the big example, and I'll link to a couple, um, examples in the show notes here. If you've ever heard of Entrepreneurs on Fire, John Lee Dumas, and all that. If you look at what he did when he launched that, that particular show addressed, a problem that nobody knew was a problem until it was addressed. There wasn't a business podcast that had a show every single day. So that was his unique way of going into the space of entrepreneurs looking for entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs looking for information on how to start and run their businesses. So then of course, as soon as he launched, there are a bunch of copycats that try to piggyback off of that format. But that was his unique selling point. 

So, for me, when I was looking at Beginning Guitar Online, to your point, I was familiar with the big magazines that are producing a lot of lesson content. They have relationships with the record companies and the gear companies and whatever else, to create their content. Then you have all these YouTubers that may or may not be valid, or it's artists doing random lessons on the back of the tour bus if they think about it.

Then you have these other guitar lesson sites as a kind of a third thing that were all subscription models and if you're a beginning guitarist, you don't really know how to evaluate whether or not $40 a month is a good value or if that's really expensive. Right? Because compared to a Netflix subscription, that's really expensive.

So in looking at all of that, there were a lot of ways that you could see where the cracks are in that. The magazines have the subscription model, but they're only going to be monetizing through traditional means: ads and subscriptions to the physical edition. Those guitar lesson sites are subscription-based, and digital, but again, higher barrier to entry because you have to convince people that what's there may or may not be a good beginner thing that might be more towards the intermediate or advanced player than necessarily a beginning one. 

And I knew from teaching lessons in-store that I had a lot of students that would just start on YouTube and say, Well, here's what I learned on YouTube before I came in. There would just be a lot of bad habits that were created because they were picking and choosing these random videos that were either suggested to them or they picked themselves. 

None of those groups were focusing on search engine optimization and given my marketing background, that was…We talked about finding a niche and finding what you can do. That was my area to be like, oh, okay, so actually I can play against these big guys because I know how to choose the right keywords and optimize the pages for that. And, recently, I mean, it's taken two years, almost two years of just producing the content to actually start seeing that we're starting to rank pretty well for some of these things. That was, my journey into this if that helps frame the conversation.

Kristen Juve: It does. When you first started talking, I was like, I don't have this. Like we've identified a missing link, and as you kept talking, I was like, No, I do have this. I just haven't thought about this in this way yet.

But I thought it was interesting that you talk about your go-to-market strategy, part of it, and your tactic of SEO, and that's a very technology-focused way to make a dent in the market. And it's one approach, I think another method is what I'm thinking of, which is like, I mean, I think you kinda mentioned this already, it's like how do you talk to your audience? Like that could be the way that you're kinda making a dent in the market too. So when you were talking, I was like, Oh shit! I don't have this. And then I'm like, No. No, I do and I've started. 

I think I actually just have come up to this and I started talking about it in one of the last episodes. There are so many people who are “Oh, knitting a sweater. Oh, I couldn't do that.” I truly believe that anybody that knits or doesn't even knit can knit a sweater. Like if you want to knit a sweater, you can 110% do it. Yeah. So I think the way that I'm approaching it, no one in the market is talking about the intimidation level of sweaters, the aspirational aspect. Breaking it down and actually telling people why something may look better on you or why it might be easier because of the technical skills in knitting that you'd need or whatever.

And then I'd broken it down further in kind of like, you said it like search engine optimization. TikTok tends to be the place where I'm able to break into this a little bit easier for me. At least the way that I'm approaching it and the way that I'm thinking about it because I get to have a slightly longer form of content where I can be on video and show like, Hey, this is what I'm talking about.

You're getting a visual representation and it's matching up to my voice and everything. So it's not just, you have to look at the picture and then read the text, so it's, it makes sense. It falls in line. So I think that's going to. Final answer.

Dave Dougherty: Now with, again, all I know is what you've, you've said over… 

Kristen Juve: You don't read knitting magazines. I'm really disappointed in you. 

Dave Dougherty: No, no, definitely not. And I think that's one of the things with what both of the sites that we're doing is that you either want to learn this or you don't care at all. So on the one hand, that's really nice because you don't have to spend so much time segmenting your market or audience into different things.

Kristen Juve: They'll weed themselves out. 

Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Like if you're searching for something related to this, you're already pretty close. Now you had already talked about in previous episodes the fact that there are these pattern places. So their business models, their way of addressing the knitting area, the knitting space tends to be just pushing product, right? Pushing the patterns. Pushing… 

Kristen Juve: So what's interesting, is it's not pushing patterns. It's a database of patterns, both of the two major ones that I'm thinking of. And they allow you to filter and look for patterns based on your wants. So it's its own search engine. They don't sell ads for patterns. They have not monetized their websites in that way. They do gain money from a pattern sale. They take like a 3% percentage of the price of the pattern, which is how they sustain their business.

But other than that, and they've intentionally…one of them, I don't know enough about the other one, one of them has intentionally done that and is very…That's one aspect that they're very transparent about because they don't want to, um, they don't feel that it's going to add value to their users to monetize in other ways.

I've kind of touched on this too, where, and I keep thinking about this, but in doing market research, I just need to get somebody who's got the technical chops and I know of a few people who can connect an API to a data visualization so that I can actually pull answers to questions that I have about the purchasing of knitting patterns and what's actually out there and all that good stuff.

So I'm, let's keep rolling around my head and I’ll sit down and actually do it. So, yeah. 

Where Online Are the Knitting Audiences?

Dave Dougherty: Now with the audience there, where are they hanging out? Like, I know you've had a lot of success with TikTok because it's easy just to show up and shoot.

Kristen Juve: A lot of success with finger quotes. Success for me. Please don't go onto my TikTok and be like, “She has a hundred followers. What are they talking about? Success.” Yes. For me, that's a success. Okay, thank you. 

Dave Dougherty: But a hundred followers in niche space is a good thing. Like this is one of the things that I've always struggled with during my day job. Where people will say, Well, this thing only has such and such search volume. If your product retails for $20,000 a pop, you only need to sell one. 

Kristen Juve: Yeah, exactly. 

Dave Dougherty: It doesn't matter. Now if you're selling $6 guitar pick packs, then yeah, you need some volume on that. Because that's a different kind of product. So, like any marketing conversation: It depends.

Kristen Juve: It does depend. So if I can continue on the same level of posting and engagement and stuff, I feel like I will be in a good spot with a very good level of an audience at some point to derive more success. Finger quote, “success” off of it. But right now I do believe it is a success. It's been great.

Dave Dougherty: And, in terms of the pattern sites, that's not necessarily what you're trying to build in the short term. Right? So you're… 

Kristen Juve: I don't have any plans for that ever to be my business model. 

Dave Dougherty: Okay. So you want to be more of that thought leader, creator, pick your buzzword, kind of helping hand through it.

Kristen Juve: Yes. Yes, in the world of sweaters and seamless sweaters. I haven't like, I don't know, I have like eight different things that I'd love to do and see. This one idea keeps rolling around in my head a lot, and I think it's because my daughter's getting older. I don't know everything that kind of has been happening lately, I don't feel like people should have to necessarily be good at something to drive enjoyment from it.

So like that's, I don't know. I feel like there's this level of like, everyone feels like they need to level. Like, I don't, I can't, I can't even articulate how this plays in exactly to this, but like there's, I've got so many thoughts. I'm sorry, my brain is just fried. 

Why You and Your Content Don't Need to Be Perfect

Kristen Juve: It's just like, uh, we should be able to enjoy stuff. Period. We don't have to be good at it. And I feel like what currently exists in the market is everyone's like you have, like, it's not with the curated content that's overly curated, says to everybody, you have to be perfect at it. You have to have a perfect life.

Dave Dougherty: I struggled with this, in launching the guitar site too. Because I knew that the vast majority of lessons that I taught in-store and a lot of the content that was being produced by a lot of the magazines was for, blues and blues rock playing. 

That's not what I play. I'll listen to it, not on a regular basis, but I'll listen to it and enjoy it and, have a good time with it. But it would be disingenuous for me to deliver that content, in the context of your classic rock/blues bar band, because that's just not what I play. So I have to write off that. 

With the curation method, I can say, Hey, here's where all these other things exist. If you're interested in that, by all means, go to these other sites. They're great. They do this. They're in it. You want that as a teacher. You don't want me as the teacher for that.

So yeah, I mean, we focused in on like a couple of genres and skill sets for Chris and me just because that's what we play. That's what would be more authentic for us and then we will make, we'll research some of these other sites and make our opinions available at least on which ones are worth pursuing.

Um, there's a really good video and it's specific to guitar players, but it does apply to other things. I've talked about That Pedal Show, which is one of my favorite YouTube channels for guitar nerds. And one of the presenters has a solo vlog episode where he talked about only being as good as he wanted to be or as he needed to be. He never had to be the best guitar player. 

Because Instagram and YouTube can be very intimidating places for technique-driven things because you're like, Oh my God! This person's so much better than I am. 

But if you don't have an interest in playing that fast or in that particular way then it doesn't matter. Appreciate it for the technical ability that it is but challenge yourself to go after what you want to be good at and what brings you enjoyment. 

Kristen Juve: Exactly. Yeah. And so your original question for me was like, What's your business model? Where do you want to see this go?

I don't have an answer to that other than there are major themes that I truly value and believe in and however this goes, I will follow those values. So if this turns into me owning…I mean, this would be a dream, right? A warehouse that is this amazing space where people can come and try out new things like dying yarn and spinning yarn and felt needle felting and just trying sh!t cause they just want to try sh!t and they don't have to be good at it. 

Like that would be an awesome dream. Like that would be where I could see this going. That's one very physical manifestation of that that I like. That would be awesome. But do I also feel that I need to take over the market, the knitting market and be like the next whatever? No. I don't feel the need to do that. So that was where my head was going when I was like, the enjoyment aspect is of the hobby is where I'm taking my business kind of thing. Such a vague value, but that is a belief I have so…

Dave Dougherty: Well, and part of the reason to have these conversations and part of this thing was to just say, Hey, here's the framework that has worked for many a brand, large and small, and see where we are, do the gut check, and show the example of where we are. So if you don't know, you don't know, and now you have some takeaways to go, research some stuff. 

One of the things that I found helpful and this is also just the kind of nerd that I am, was to go to like Bloomberg and Seeking Alpha and those, stock market observer-type sites and look at what the guitar market was, right? 

Kristen Juve: If you were on Shark Tank though, they wouldn't take that as an answer. 

Dave Dougherty: What was that? 

Kristen Juve: If you were on Shark Tank though, they wouldn't take that as an answer. Why would you invest in it? 

Dave Dougherty: Well, I don't care what they think. I don't care. So yeah, good on them.

I wanted to see and do a gut check on what those kinds of, investment media, and investment types are talking about the market generally. What's moving it? What's not? What are the old players doing, whatever, and actually that's an important thing. We should do a different episode on Shark Tank b***s**t. 

Kristen Juve: Ooh, interesting. I have thoughts on that. I have thoughts. 

Dave Dougherty: Okay, we're going to write that down as an idea. I might actually have to watch an episode because I haven't done it for a long time. 

Kristen Juve: Um, I mean, it's the same as it was 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure. Watch, I mean, I 

Dave Dougherty: I have complete respect for a couple of them.

Kristen Juve: Oh, same. Anyway, we're getting on a tangent. 

Dave Dougherty: Alright. For anybody who's followed the ping-ponging of this episode maybe you have a better idea of what, the tilt is, and how you can find it. Maybe you're just happy that you're not alone and not knowing necessarily where you're going to go with it.

Either way. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for hanging around. Thank you for looking at the Patreon, commenting on any of this stuff, listening, downloading, and all of that. 

As I said, I'll put links in the description on the website and the show notes. And yeah, like, subscribe, share, help us out, and grow the channel.

With that, we will see you. In the next episode where we'll talk about Kristen's channel strategy. 

Kristen Juve: Bye.