296: Lo-Fi vs High-Fi Content 

There is a lot of marketing jargon out there. One I heard recently as a discussion at a conference was “lo-fi and hi-fi” content. 

So let’s talk about it. I want to share with you when you can create lo-fi content and when to create hi-fi and how to create a content strategy for both. 

This will help you know when to post “high quality” vs “raw and authentic” and I think it will be extremely helpful for the business owner doing it themselves. 

If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

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KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨ What is lo-fi and what is hi-fi content? 

✨ What a lo-fi strategy looks like 

✨ What a hi-fi strategy looks like 

✨ How to balance the two 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode 296, and I'm talking about lo-Fi versus Hi-Fi content, and what the bloody hell is it? Welcome to the Content Queen podcast. I'm your host Mariah, entrepreneur storyteller, digital nomad, creative content bootcamp, founder of Content Queen. I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content, and market your business with strategy.

Do the channels that work for you. Each week I'll deliver a story, help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing, business, and content creation. I'll also be joined by amazing souls and entrepreneurs who are here to share their own journey, along with actual steps to help you take your business to a whole new level through amazing storytelling, powerful line to marketing and content strategy.

Let's do it. Hello, gang. Hope you are enjoying your day, wherever you're listening to it, and at whatever time you listen to this. As I'm currently recording this, we are in Rockhampton, so now we feel we're really far. If you are from Australia, it's like Central Queensland, right? [00:01:00] But in my mind it's, it doesn't feel central at all.

It feels like we're so far away. But if you're not from Australia, basically we're in one of the northern parts of Australia, and it is far like across the last week and a half, we've driven maybe a total of. 15, 16, 17 hours. So it's been a lot. But I'm doing a workshop here with the amazing Emily Simmons, who I have.

Spoken about on social media. She is so much fun and she owns a business in Rockhampton. So we're gonna do a workshop together. If you are in Australia and you want to see the content Queen Roadshow near you, we are going to be heading over towards WA South Australia in the new year. Do we have a lot of time between now and Christmas?

Maybe just send me a message to your location and let's see what we can do. We're, we've got like a lot going on back and forth between Melbourne and Sydney and all the things, but I'm keen to tee up some more [00:02:00] events. So if you know of a space in your town, in your area that would facilitate workshops, please send me a message.

Speaking of workshops, I went to one called the Social Summit a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned it briefly in one of the episodes, and I did an email on it to my list around some of the things that I had, like some of the core, I guess, learnings, but there was a lot deeper topics that I was like, these are podcast episodes, so let's dive into them.

And one of them was lo-fi versus Hi-Fi content. And this is an interesting topic, right? And if you are thinking, Mariah, what is lo-fi versus Hi-Fi, let me quickly touch on that. Lo-fi is sort of your low production content. Anything from you talking to the camera, holding up your phone and speaking to it, to the trends you do.

Maybe the B-roll content you put together with some music and text. Um. Potentially some of the graphics that you might make to a degree. [00:03:00] Anything sort of less polished, I guess anything. Maybe it's like an image carousel with text on it, whereas your Hi-Fi content is your branding images, your marketing campaigns that are more like polished videos.

This is where potentially some people hire filming content creation people to do the work. We've done Hi-Fi shoots for clients when they're doing campaigns and they want that really polished look. So that is more your, I guess, polished content. Right. And a lot of us think, oh, well I, there, there can be a few mindset.

Beliefs around Hi-Fi and lo-fi. Lo-fi is like, oh, I look unprofessional. But then other people think I've only got the time and capacity to do life lo-fi content. Whereas Hi-Fi, some people could say, yes, I wanna do that, but I don't have the time and energy that's aligned to my brand. Whereas others are like, oh, that doesn't feel like me.

So today I'm gonna talk about. Hi-Fi content and what a strategy in lo-fi would look like versus Hi-Fi, how we [00:04:00] balance the two, how we can create Hi-Fi type content without. Needing a full production team, right? Because depending on what you're trying to do with your content would depend on whether you need low-fi or high-Fi.

So just think of it as like low quality versus high quality. Although low quality content can get the most engagement sometimes because it's very natural, very authentic, whereas your High-Fi is more your polished, basically. So. As I said, there's sort of a lot of misconceptions around them, right? Like, we might think we need more Hi-Fi content.

We might think that for our niche, lo-fi is the way to go. Um, so anyway, I wanna talk about it and how we use what when. Right? So. Lo-fi strategy in this workshop, they talked about lo-fi versus Hi-Fi. In my opinion, I think we need a balance between the two, but I think we need to be strategic about when we use it.

So if we think about lo-fi content, this is where yes, we might be engaging [00:05:00] in trends. We might be doing just very raw, authentic content. Your talk to camera. Videos are as if you are FaceTiming the person on the other end. So this is where we can create more connection. So if you are looking to create audience, you are looking to grow your brand, then lo-fi might be the way to go.

But it depends on how you want to be seen. So if you go back to branding 1 0 1 and think about how do we wanna be seen as a brand, and I think. As an entrepreneur and as a personal brand, then lo-fi content should be a main priority because we are looking to connect and sell ourselves. People are buying us, right?

So when we're thinking about our strategy, we go, all right, we want to have probably more of a top heavy lo-fi strategy. So this. Me talking to camera, me filming content, really behind the [00:06:00] scenes raw, authentic. So it's a lot more of your kind of top of funnel. Middle of funnel is very engaging. It's, it's aimed to be engaging.

It might be aimed to be a bit more controversial. You might take a stance on something because your HiFi content is not gonna be like that. Your Hi-Fi content, which I'll talk about in a second, is more of that how we wanna be seen, how we wanna deliver. How we want to build trust through maybe more luxurious or how we wanna build a persona or be a thought leader, right?

So yes, if we're thinking about our lo-fi strategy, this is really good for platforms like TikTok platforms like. Instagram when we're doing that really video heavy type content at the moment, a lo-fi strategy for a client I'm doing is they are opening up their space for the first time. It is a recovery space and it's in a certain community, so the goal is to go lo-fi content at the moment and show [00:07:00] behind the scenes.

Of building this business. So I've got the owners doing voiceover to some of the kind of log style we've put together. My inspiration was a girl in Melbourne who opened her own wine bar from scratch and she documented the process. She had a line out the door when she set to open. Now she's actually doing a bit more of a strategy where her brand is more Hi-Fi.

So her Instagram, you won't see any of that content. She only decided to do it on TikTok Now. Do. Does everyone have that time and energy? Not really. So in the ideal world, we might have a Hi-Fi strategy on one channel versus a low-fi strategy on the other. But for this client, I'm doing it across the two, and eventually I'll probably just go low-fi on TikTok and a mixture of low and high on Instagram.

So yes, we are doing behind the scenes, getting the audience involved, asking them questions, just keeping it really raw and authentic. So that is the low-fi strategy. That's what [00:08:00] that can look like. Then if we go to a high-fi strategy, this is very polished. So this might be used when, for example, this brand, this recovery space we are opening.

So we might wanna do a rule luxe opening. I don't know yet. 'cause I'm still sort of navigating it as it expands and evolves and seeing what works to begin with. But we might go with this really dramatic kind of good visuals, high quality content, and really showcase what the space looks like. Does a brand need a, a video company production to do this?

Absolutely not. You can still film this content from an iPhone. You could still take photos of your product or brand that is high quality with an iPhone or. You can pay for it, right? So the misconception that we need to pay lots of money is not true. But think about HiFi content. Say for example, you get a branding shoot.

I think lots of us have had a branding shoot. This is where you'd be posting those types of visuals to showcase you [00:09:00] as an authority. So as I mentioned, this is where you can do certain campaigns using really high quality. Visuals and photos still can be taken from a phone, still can be utilized using minimal equipment, but it's just how it's delivered.

Now, if you wanna go down just a Hi-Fi strategy where you really wanna be seen as luxe and professional and all things, just know it's gonna take longer to develop if you're gonna do it yourself, to learn editing, to learn those sort of shots and all that. Totally impossible on minimal equipment and yourself without hiring a team, but it'll just take a little bit of time to learn.

So if you were going to have just a HiFi strategy, it might also take a little bit longer to build trust with your audience, because if it's always polished, people aren't really seeing the authentic side. But this is where brands like, I guess Louis Vuitton, um. You know, you've got, uh, [00:10:00] Chanel all those brands.

Although to be fair, they are starting to go a little bit lo-fi, probably more on those sort of TikTok channels. But you might just go, you know what? I want to be really professional, so that would mean filming all my videos where I'm. Talking to camera, but they're a little bit more professional like I'm presenting.

That's totally okay if that aligns with your brand. Again, don't need to have this. This podcast is filmed on a really good camera. You don't need to do that. This.

Could be counted as Hi-Fi content because it is filmed on a really good camera. The edits, the cuts, right? And I do that because I want my podcast to be seen in a certain way.

So then let's go into a balance of the two. What does that look like? So for me, in my business, it is yes, having, you know, more of those polished campaigns. I did a campaign around the world in 90 days. The videos that we presented were more Hi-Fi content production cuts. A certain [00:11:00] brand message was all embedded in that these podcast videos that go on social media, they're a little bit more Hi-Fi, more value, more professional.

But then we balance it with low-fi content, which is when I show behind the scenes of my business, the travel side of things, I might just film while I'm making a cup of tea. I might film as if I'm like just FaceTiming and having a conversation with you. I like the balance between the two in the sort of.

BAU content business as usual. So when I'm doing business as usual, we have a mix between the two. I probably go more down the the lo-fi strategy route because the people that I'm wanting to attract on social media are small business owners and entrepreneurs who are doing their own content. If I was to go down the route of attracting retainer clients, I would do a little bit more of a different approach.

But I am, for me, I'm really top of funnel in my social media. So I'm really just trying to engage an audience, basically, and just trying to [00:12:00] bring people into my space and gain trust. And I think the best way to do that is through low-fi content. It's very raw, authentic, and yes, of course you can build trust with HiFi because it can be very professional.

But at the moment, in the current landscape with how social media is going, people wanna see the raw, authentic things until it that changes. You know, pre COVID. Lots of our Instagram feeds were polished, were curated. Mine is in a way still curated, but it's got a blend and a balance of visuals and rawness.

And behind the scenes we can also look at different channels and different elements of the channels of low and Hi-Fi. So if we think about maybe our feed more polished on Instagram versus our Instagram stories, Hi-Fi content, lo-fi. So, do you need to document this or write this down? No, but it's just understanding the different types of content that we have and how we use them.

As I said, if you were looking to do a marketing [00:13:00] campaign where you wanna get more sales and generate more leads, you might look at more Hi-Fi polished content, especially in your ads, et cetera. But you, it might not work.

Also, we did in this talk on the social summit, there was another talk where he tested.

It was all about ads, really polished content versus user generated, employee generated content. The polished stuff was higher converting, but the. Low-fi content was getting more clicks, more eyeballs, but it wasn't converting. So that's quite interesting. Right. So maybe thinking about, okay, well if I do wanna convert people, maybe I do try more polished content.

And if you're running ads, maybe I try more polished for me, my lo-fi content is performing on my ad. Is it a conversion sales ad? No, it's a lead. Add to my mailing list, so a little bit different. Whereas for my sales ads in the past, I had this [00:14:00] more like polished graphic for content bootcamp and that got.

Conversions. So very interesting to play around. Obviously I'm not an ads expert, but just thinking about lo-fi versus Hi-Fi content and how we can balance the two for a product base that's more of yet your, um, product visuals that look really clean, really professional versus maybe a video of someone using the product, user generated content, or even an employee using the product.

So balance the two. Have a look at the content that you're currently doing. Is it more heavy on one side than the other? And go back to your brand, what makes more sense and tweak and play around with the types of content that you can create. And just remember, you can absolutely do polish content on your own, but just know polished stuff does take a lot longer than just chucking up, uh, your face on camera and speaking.

I've had a client that did that with an ad. I know she listens to the podcast and that was really. Really well done and got [00:15:00] conversions to a online webinar. So again, it doesn't mean that low-fi content can't convert, it just might convert in a bit of a different way. So I'd love to know what you think about low-fi versus Hi-Fi.

Has it given you a bit of a more of an understanding, I guess this is a bit of like a marketing jargon episode, but just so that you can understand it, what you can do with this information. As I said, look at the brand, look at the content you're creating and go. Okay. What's Hi-Fi? What's lo-fi? When should I use Hi-Fi?

If you're looking at your campaign throughout the year versus business as usual content, and I'd love to know what comes up, what you sort of plan, what you might do with that information. And if you have any questions, just reach out to

me, but be a content queen or king, and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to your Insta Stories and taking me at content Queen Mariah, or just tell 'em about it. If you do rate and review on whatever platform you're listening to is on, it does help [00:16:00] me get this podcast out there.

Get more amazing guests. We've got loads of guests lined up. I've been doing some interviews. Very good episodes. We're gonna absolutely love them. Next week, we are kicking off with pitching podcasts. Which is I know a fear of many people, including my own. So you are gonna love it and follow me on Instagram or TikTok and let me know what you thought of the episode, any topics you want me to talk about in the future, what guests you'd like me to get on, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Bye.

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment