I do a lot of things in my spare time, but if you read this blog regularly, you’d be forgiven for thinking I spend every day watching TV talk shows!
I’ve written before about how James Corden is a master of segmenting his content, and this week I want to show you what every content creator can learn from Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel.
Seriously!
The two Jimmys have perfected the art of curating content from their audience – asking questions, curating the best answers, and using that as the basis for a future segment in their show.
Learn how they do it, and more importantly what you can learn from this and incorporate into your content, by listening to the podcast episode below. Or, read on to find out how you can bring a bit of TV magic to your content.
Here’s a short video about this week’s episode:
Jimmy Fallon’s quality content curation
Not all of your content has to come directly from you. In fact, there are some really fun and creative ways you can get your audience to contribute to your content – and the two Jimmys are proof of this!
Jimmy F and Jimmy K use Twitter to involve their audience in their content and actually curate their responses into content for their shows.
Jimmy F will often tweet out a request for stories from followers or play games based around a hashtag.
He’s done…
#AllIWantForChristmas
#AskTheFallons
#ResolutionFail
#SummerSongs2020
#AddAWordRuinATVShow
And lots more!
These tweets get thousands of replies compared to the dozens or hundreds he normally gets and I think this makes a lot of sense. He’s giving people the chance to be involved in his show, to share funny stories to a big audience, and to get a bit of validation or the chance to say “I was on Jimmy Fallon!”
The hashtags trend worldwide, too. So, even if you’re not a fan of the show, you’ll usually end up knowing about the content he’s curating.
After a while, he’ll take some great examples and make a segment out of it – reading out the responses, commenting on them, and adding his own ideas.
It’s such a clever way of getting his audience involved and it has worked for him for years and years.
Jimmy Kimmel does it too
Another example of expert content curation is Jimmy Kimmel and his infamous Mean Tweets segment.
This is slightly different in that Jimmy K isn’t asking his audience for their contributions, but instead is curating content that already exists without his influence. Celebs read out mean tweets about themselves and you wouldn’t believe how well these segments do.
Curating content that is already available and repurposing it into its own segment is a great idea – and these clips do amazingly online as well.
At the time I’ve recorded this, the most popular Mean Tweets video has over 83 MILLION views on YouTube.
So, let’s just get clear on this…
They repurposed content that already exists…
Curated it into a segment on the show…
And then repurposed the segment of the show for YouTube.
Jimmy Kimmel – you are a content repurposing wizard!
Why does asking, curating, and creating work so well?
I think the primary reason this method is so effective is because it gets your audience involved in your show.
People love seeing their name in lights and being able to tell people they were on TV. Of course, your podcast or video series probably isn’t as big as The Tonight Show, but if you have dedicated listeners, the chances are they’ll be really excited to be more closely involved in the show.
Another reason why this is a great idea for content creators is that, if you’re gathering questions using a hashtag, you’re getting free advertising from everyone who participates. Every tweet, every story, every post that involves your hashtag will be shown to that person’s followers… the potential for increasing your reach is pretty exponential.
Also, you’ll build more affinity and interest in your future content. As your audience become more involved, they’ll become more invested in your show. Plus, if they’ve taken part in your curation efforts, they’ll want to see whether or not they made the cut!
How you can use this in your content
It’s all well and good holding TV stars with giant production crews up as examples of great content, but how can regular creators like us use the method of asking, curation, and creation in our content?
Here are a few of my ideas…
- You could take the Jimmy Fallon approach and ask your audience questions in advance, using a hashtag to get all the responses in one place
- You could ask question on LinkedIn and generate a long thread with lots of engagement, then repurpose the discussion from that into your podcast/videos
- Use the native features on Instagram and Facebook Stories to ask questions (polls, question stickers, surveys)
- Run a poll on any of the social platforms to help you test ideas or opinions for your show
- If you ever interview guests, ask your audience in advance whether there are questions they would like to hear them answer. You can let them submit their own questions to you and even have a specific segment of your show dedicated to “the subscriber question of the week” (or similar)
If you get people involved beforehand and promise a chance to get featured in your content, this can help build a fanbase or fan culture around your content. People may even pay to get that closer access to you and your content via platforms like Patreon, for example There’s the chance you could start trending before your main content has even gone out.
And, of course, you can repurpose your curated content to create more content afterwards.
The best way to get started…
Is to just start! Embrace the concept and have fun with it.
The odds that you’ll get hundreds of millions of views like the two Jimmy’s aren’t great, but that’s not the point.
We aren’t creating content and building a relationship with our audience for vanity metrics like views and followers. The reason this idea is so effective is because it lets you get closer to your audience, no matter what size they are.
If you can do that, you’re going to see your content perform better and you’re going to develop more connections, see more conversions, and see your content help to grow your business.